Halloweenie Review: Krampus (2015)

October is Halloweenie month here at Flick Chicks, the month that Jenna and I put on our big girl pants and force ourselves to sit through a few horror movies. You can read more about it in our announcement post here!

Upon realising that Jenna and I don’t live close enough to watch every single scary movie together, I think I fell into my comfort zone a bit, Christmas movies! Krampus (2015) was originally going to be the movie of choice for my family’s annual ‘weekend before Christmas’ cinema trip, until I managed to convince them it was by no means a movie for children, and hey, perhaps we should see The Force Awakens instead?! I have since happily reported back to my Mum she would not have survived this movie.

Krampus is exactly what you think it is. One Christmas Eve, a young boy has a hard time understanding why his family have to get together every year when they clearly can’t stand each other, and in his anger, he accidentally summons a horde of Christmas demons to his home, led by none other than Krampus himself.

The opening scene to this movie might just be my favourite of any festive films I’ve seen. The contrast of the beautiful music “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” with the chaotic, hellish scenes of the rush before the big day, screaming children sat on the laps of miserable mall Santas, people barging others out of the way to finish their shopping, it was so well done. The movie also stars some of my favourite faces from TV, Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation), Allison Tolman (Fargo) and David Koechner (The Office) so I had plenty to look forward to.

As funny as it was, the first chunk of the movie felt like a poor man’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, but nonetheless, I enjoyed it. I’m a sucker for a cheesy festive flick. It’s actually easy to forget that you’re watching a horror, that it, until a once hopeful letter to Santa gets torn up and thrown out of the window. From there, it’s a fast paced, adrenaline fuelled ride to hell. It’s quite jumpy in parts, especially the scenes outside in the blizzard, but I got used to it after a while. Watching the movie through a layer of cardigan sure helps.

I do have a few issues with Krampus. It’s described as a Horror Comedy, but it doesn’t blend the two genres well at all. The first half is pure comedy, the second part is pure horror, but that cheesy kind of horror that makes you laugh because it’s a bit well, bad. Perhaps that’s what the team was going for, but it felt off to me. The characters were scary enough, that’s for sure. It’ll be a while before I forget that teddy bear’s face!

If you can see past the corny one liners, Krampus is actually quite enjoyable. It also has quite a sentimental lesson behind it, and although it felt rushed, I enjoyed the ending. It wasn’t as ‘happily ever after’ as I expected it to be. 

Review: The Gift (2015)

This gem of a movie has been so falsely advertised! Look at that poster. There’s some really creepy guy at your door with the most beautifully wrapped gift for you. It’s going to be a severed head, isn’t it? A bloodied knife? Am I going to die now? No, calm down. It’s not that kind of movie!

Married couple Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) have moved cities and are settling into their new home. Whilst out shopping, Simon bumps into someone he used to know in school, Gordo (Joel Edgerton), although he doesn’t recognise him at first. Gordo leaves a bottle of wine as a gift at their home the next day, which worries Simon and Robyn as neither remember giving Gordo their new address. 

Eventually, Gordo starts to turn up uninvited at their home when he knows that Simon is at work during the day. Robyn feels sorry for him and lets him in to chat with him, although she’s never truly comfortable in her presence. The movie starts to take a turn when we see a meaner streak in Simon, telling Robyn that Gordo was given the nickname ‘Weirdo’ in school, and he even crosses out Gordo’s name on their noticeboard to replace it with the cruel nickname.

After a dinner party ends rather disastrously, Robyn hears a strange noise the next morning and finds the koi fish in their pond dead, and their dog, Mr Bojangles, missing. I don’t want to go into any more details in this review as I think it’s better to watch The Gift when you know very little about it, but that should at least be enough for you to know whether it’s worth your time or not.

What fascinated me about The Gift was the lack of definition between good and evil. How on earth can you work out who to root for when you don’t know who the bad guy is? More importantly, how do you interpret that open ending?

This has been the first serious role I’ve seen Jason Bateman play, and I was really impressed. I thought I could only enjoy him when he brings dry, sarcastic humour to the table but that was nowhere to be found, and instead he was quite terrifying.

If you’ve been thinking about watching The Gift, please give it a chance. It isn’t the horror it’s made out to be, although there was one moment that made me jump out of my seat to be honest. It actually gave me tingles down to my fingertips! But then, that time that the cat jumped out in Horrible Bosses made me to the same, so interpret that however you like!