Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Joe Begos
Starring: Riley Dandy, Sam Delich, Abraham Benrubi, Jonah Ray, Dora Madison, Jeremy Gardner, Jeff Daniel Phillips
Lots of movies have featured killer Santas. Even more have given us
killer robots. Director Joe Begos's
Christmas Bloody Christmas might be the first movie to
boast a killer Santa robot (please let me know of any others).
Set in the near future, Begos's film opts for some Verhoeven-esque
satire in its pre-credits sequence as we're greeted with a series of
satirical TV commercials, including one for a blend of whiskey the whole
family can enjoy. But with this opening, Begos sets a comic tone for his
movie that it never quite recaptures.
The mall Santa seems like an occupation that's not long for this world,
with today's parents so paranoid about placing their little tykes in the
hands (or laps) of strangers. In the world of
Christmas Bloody Christmas the good old US military has
come up with a solution – robot Santas made from repurposed android
soldiers. What could go wrong?
Oblivious to a TV news snippet that informs us the Robo Santas are
beginning to revert to their original military programming and are being
recalled en masse, record store owner Tori (Riley Dandy) closes
her shop after a profitable Christmas Eve and heads to a nearby bar with
her employee Robbie (Sam Delich). The pair stop off at the toy
store run by their friends Lahna (Begos regular Dora Madison) and
Jay (Jonah Ray), where one such Robo Santa is beginning to kick
into killer mode, before returning to Tori's home for more drinks and
some fumbling, unaware that the killer Kris Kringle is on their
tail.
Just as Christmas themed pop songs inevitably sound like cynical cash
grabs for annual royalties by acts thinking about their future
retirement, Christmas horror movies too often feel like they've been
made out of obligation rather than passion. I don’t think that's the
case with Begos, as anyone who has seen his fun veterans vs punks
thriller
VFW
knows he has a genuine love of this sort of retro b-movie fare. I have
no doubt that Begos has long wanted to make a movie in which a robotic
Santa Claus chops people in half with a large axe. At the same time,
Christmas Bloody Christmas feels half-formed, as though it
was an idea Begos had sitting on a shelf for a while and found himself
in the position of having to bring it to fruition in a short space of
time. Begos's idea of character development here is to force us to spend
an insufferable amount of time with the drunken, loud-mouthed Tori and
Robbie, who with their sub-Kevin Smith arguments about music and movies
come off as little more than thinly written millennial hipster
douchebags. Admittedly Tori is a welcome departure from the
conventionally timid and withdrawn Final Girl archetype, but she's so
irritating that you may find yourself rooting for Santa to shut her the
hell up. Spending 80 minutes in the company of the screeching Tori will
make you realise what it must be like to be an Uber driver on New Year's
Eve.
The killer Santa robot is a great concept but it's poorly realised.
Played by actor Abraham Benrubi, it's never convincing as a
mechanical device – we always just think of it as a bloke in a Santa
costume rather than a malfunctioning robot. Begos adds some robotic
sound effects but they're so over the top that they just bring our
attention to Benrubi's unconvincing performance. It gave me a newfound
appreciation of just how great Yul Brynner and Arnold Schwarzenegger are
at portraying killer robots in Westworld and
The Terminator. It's only later when the skin is peeled from Santa and we're exposed
to its mechanical innards that we're reminded we're watching a cyborg
rather than some burly guy in a costume. Early on we're told the Robo
Santa is programmed with thousands of words, but Begos misses a trick by
never having it come out with some classic Santa catchphrases that might
be mined for laughs.
It's that absence of humour that proves
Christmas Bloody Christmas's greatest folly. After the satirical opening sequence it's played
relatively straight, but with no characters we care for there's a lack
of stakes. While Begos once again proves he's a filmmaker that knows how
to make a good looking movie on a limited budget (his customary primary
colour neon aesthetic is given a Christmassy green and red glow here),
there just isn't enough here to make
Christmas Bloody Christmas stand out from the overly
saturated seasonal slasher market.
