CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS

 

The bloggy thing has been absent without leave this month and all I can say in my defense is that December has proved to be way more complicated than I had anticipated. Which is very scary because I was already expecting chaos in this holiday season. However...

Since I’ve watched several new and new-to-me Christmas movies, I’m going to present reviews of them during these remaining days before the holiday. Warning: some of these cinema celebrations will be too gory and violent for kids...and one is a Hallmark movie. Oh, the ho-ho-horror.

Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022) is today’s movie review. Written and directed by Joe Begos, whose previous credits include VFW, The Mind’s Eye, Bliss and Almost Human, his script started as a remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night with a Terminator-like robot as the Santa slayer. From the Internet Movie Database, here’s the summery of this stand-alone film:

It's Christmas Eve and Tori just wants to get drunk and party, but when a robotic Santa Claus at a nearby toy store goes haywire and begins a rampant killing spree through her small town, she's forced into a battle for survival.

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Tori owns what looks like a pretty cool record store, though, from the lack of background extras throughout the movie, it doesn’t seem the town is big enough to support either her store or her toy store neighbor.

The first half-hour of the movie is slow. There’s are old-time TV commercials for various Christmas joy and a newscast which reports on problems with the robotic Santas. These are robots built by the military but, when that project died, were re-purposed and sold to stores. What could possibly go wrong?

What went wrong, though it’s not explicitly stated in the movie, is that the some of these robots have reverted back to their original military programming. With no explanation given for this, I assume it was too many naughty kids sitting on their laps.

The only well-developed characters are Tori (Riley Dandy) and her employee Robbie (Sam Delich). Robbie talks Tori out of going on a Tinder date and spending the night drinking and sex with him. Okay, she keeps telling him there won’t be sex, but her resolve weakens quickly.

Once the robot gets his ax-wielding slaughter on, it starts taking out supporting characters pretty damn quick. Thankfully, since this town is severely under-populated, the body count stays at around a dozen friends, neighbors and first responders. That’s the business of the movie’s next thirty minutes.

Up to this point, Christmas Bloody Christmas is a decent film with excellent gory effects. But the last third of the movie is really really good. It’s Tori versus Robot Santa.

It’s an exciting sequence with some shocking surprises. I was on the edge of my seat right to the finish. Which I won’t be spoiling for you.

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Before I get to the ratings and recommendations, here’s a Christmas Bloody Christmas fun fact: The film features 487 uses of profanity, with an average of 5.6 per minute.

Rotten Tomatoes gives Christmas Bloody Christmas a 73%

IMDb awards it 5.1 out of ten points.

Until the final third of the movie, I would’ve given it two out of five stars. But the final battle between Tori and the robot pushes it to three out of five stars.

If you like holiday horror films and aren’t put off by the frequent gore and the profanity, I recommend Christmas Bloody Christmas. It is not a classic or even a great film, but it’s an entertaining 86 minutes. Give it a watch.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another Christmas movie review. See you then, my merry elves.

© 2022 Tony Isabella