Nothing jolly about Christmas in Krampus

Eleven-year-old Max Engle (Emjay Anthony) tears up his letter to Santa and throws the tatters out his bedroom window into the clear December night. He wishes out loud Christmas would never come. It’s easy to see why.

Krampus opens in a toy store, where a throng of shoppers stampedes in slow motion through the aisles, while over the loudspeakers Bing Crosby croons, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” Then Max’s unsophisticated relations stop by for their annual three-day visit. As is their pastime, Max’s older cousins turn the Christmas feast into a bullyfest, while his father (Adam Scott) and mother (Toni Collette) look on impassively.

Max’s anti-holiday sentiment opens a can of wormwood. As his grandmother (Krista Stadler) explains after the terror begins, when the Christmas spirit inside someone dies, Krampus pays an unwelcome visit. The Shadow of St. Nicholas—a giant horned figure with sunken eyes cloaked in a thick fur robe wrapped in heavy chains standing on two large goats’ hooves—punishes the hopeless and drags them into the underworld.

Marking the arrival of Krampus, a blizzard blankets the street and knocks out the Engle household’s power. They step outside to find their neighbors’ vehicles destroyed, their houses ransacked and empty. Krampus and his minions occupy the attic and walls of the Engle house and begin to pick off the family members one by one. A double twist in the film’s final scene moves Krampus out of A Christmas Carol territory into The Twilight Zone.

Krampus (rated PG-13 for sequences of horror violence/terror, language, and some drug material) delivers both holiday jeer and fear. It’s definitely no Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Some truly grotesque and frightening monsters attack the family. An enormous slug-like creature with a Santa’s hat and rows of fangs set in bulging, red gums devours one of the cousins headfirst.

But a number of less ferocious (and more delicious) fiends also do Krampus’ bidding. In one scene, a trio of impish gingerbread cookies uses a nail gun as a weapon of Christmas destruction. But Krampus offers too little kookiness for a film obviously trying to go in that direction. With more humor, Krampus could have been a “krampy” Christmas classic.