Listen, I love Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and A Charlie Brown Christmas as much as anyone. But every December, as it draws closer to the big day, I find myself needing more than the standard family-friendly holiday entertainment. At that point, sitting down with a quality Christmas-themed horror or action film to dilute the overdose of televised sweetness becomes top priority.
There are always the standards to fall back on, of course: Black Christmas, Silent Night Deadly Night, Die Hard, and Lethal Weapon, just to name a few. But every so often a new Christmas genre film comes along that blows me away. And that’s exactly what writer / director Joe Begos’ 2022 Christmas Bloody Christmas has done.
A sci-fi horror mash-up that’s a cross between Silent Night Deadly Night and The Terminator, Christmas Bloody Christmas stars Riley Dandy as Tori, the proprietor of a small-town record / video store. It’s closing time on Christmas eve, and Tori begrudgingly accepts an invitation from her lone employee, Robbie (Sam Delich), to join him for a few drinks at a nearby bar. After first visiting her best friend Lahna (Dora Madison) and Lahna’s husband Jay (Jonah Ray), who own the local toy store, Tori and Robbie spend the next few hours at the bar getting shitfaced.
But this isn’t going to be a silent night; the main attraction at Lahna’s and Jay’s toy store this holiday season is a robotic Santa. Using technology created by the military, this Santa is as advanced as they come, with a full range of motion and a vocabulary of over 9,000 words. Before the night is out, the Cyborg Santa (played by Abraham Benruni) will go ballistic, grabbing an ax and murdering everyone in its path. And it isn’t long before it sets its sights on Tori and Robbie.
As he did with Bliss, director Joe Begos floods Christmas Bloody Christmas with color, neon reds and greens that both evoke the holiday and lend an otherworldly feel to it all, especially during the film’s chaotic final half hour. Also true to form for the writer / director is the violence on display, which is graphic and often extreme.
Christmas Bloody Christmas feels like an ‘80s film, specifically a slasher. Comparisons to Silent Night Deadly Night are obvious: both feature a Santa that goes on a killing rampage. But this movie owes just as much to James Cameron’s 1984 sci=fi classic The Terminator. A highly-advanced cyborg, the Santa in Christmas Bloody Christmas is, like the T-800 played by Schwarzenegger, an unstoppable force of nature that will not quit until it has killed every person in its path. A scene set at a police station (yet another nod to The Terminator, which featured a similar showdown) is executed to perfection, ratcheting the tension up to a whole new level while informing the audience of the killer’s unwavering resolve and seeming invincibility.
Unlike the futuristic assassin of The Terminator, though, the robotic Santa of this 2022 film does not have a specific target. It slaughters anyone and everyone it encounters, and will not stop until the last person is dead.
My good friend and fellow podcaster Jason Pyles has insisted that 1984’s The Terminator is as much a slasher movie as Halloween or Friday the 13th. Christmas Bloody Christmas may be his best argument in support of that theory. A blood-soaked holiday horror film and an homage to the slashers of yesterday, Christmas Bloody Christmas is a great addition to that list of alternative Holiday entertainment.
Rating: 9 out of 10
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