Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022) review – A loud and obnoxious festive fail

Welcome to Knockout Horror. We are continuing our Festive Frights season of Christmas-themed horror movie reviews today with a release from 2022 – Christmas Bloody Christmas. If you are looking for more Christmas scares, be sure to check out our Awful Advent category.

I almost turned this movie off

Full disclosure: I so badly wanted to turn this movie off within about 15 minutes of it starting. Getting through it was legitimately painful, but I did it so you don’t have to. Christmas Bloody Christmas follows obnoxious record store owner Tori (Riley Dandy) as she battles for survival against a robot Santa gone rogue on Christmas Eve.

Yes, it is a dumb premise, but that wasn’t a huge issue to me. Hell, the last thing I watched featuring a killer robot Santa was Futurama, and all of those episodes are hilarious. I was fully on board with some goofy, robotic horror silliness; I just didn’t realise that it would be quite this bad.

This is a movie that does just about everything wrong. I always try and find things to praise when it comes to horror because I appreciate the work that goes into making a movie, but I just can’t do it with this. I can’t find anything to praise. Everything is just so bad, but let’s start at the top.

Noisy, Bloody Noisy

The movie opens up with around forty minutes of the most obnoxious character interactions I have ever seen in a movie. Clearly, the actors were given basic script outlines to follow and told to improvise their dialogue – a task that is very apparently out of the question when considering the ability of said actors.

“The result is a whole bunch of very limited actors shouting over the top of each other, dropping f-bombs as if they were commas, and, generally, making you want to tear your ears off.”

The result is a whole bunch of very limited actors shouting over the top of each other, dropping f-bombs as if they were commas, making constant juvenile sex references despite them all clearly being in their thirties, and, generally, making you want to tear your ears off.

I swear a lot; bad language is not an issue to me, but this is ridiculous. Every other word is an f-bomb or a reference to genitalia. It doesn’t help that the characters don’t take a single breath.

It is talking, talking, talking non-stop throughout – just a huge wall of noise as these detestable people attempt to act like they are actual friends. The conversations are horribly inauthentic, the references to metal bands and horror movies are eye-roll inducing, and the whole thing reeks of a group of people who think they are a hell of a lot more interesting than they really are.

This shit goes on for 40 minutes… 40 minutes. We are even subjected to a noisy, clothed sex scene between these freaks that acts as simply a momentary inhale before another 40 minutes of breathless screaming. It is horrible. I wish to Santa’s rosy red ass-cheeks that someone would have told director Joe Begos and the cast that, in the case of movie dialogue, less is more.

Obnoxious, Bloody Obnoxious

I have harped on about unlikable horror protagonists in the past, especially when it comes to males writing female characters. In the case of Tori, however, it seems as though actor Riley Dandy is partly to blame for making her the most unlikable character ever. She screams non-stop; literally non-stop. She is infantile, obnoxious, poorly acted, loud, aggressive, unrelatable, and irritating.

Much of the blame here must lie with the director. You don’t hire an actor whose credits barely stretch outside of bit parts in Christmas movies and Hallmark romances and ask them to improvise an entire film’s worth of dialogue.

“Tori is a very atypical protagonist that had a lot of potential. It is just, sadly, completely wasted by making her the most unlikable character ever.”

Dandy seriously needed some direction and someone to dial her back a bit. She repeats the same annoying phrases with the same inflection all the damn time, shouting over other characters at every opportunity, which forces them to shout to match her energy. It’s like ear napalm.

As my fiancée put it, she screams so much throughout the entire movie that when she is screaming for an actual reason, it has no consequence or impact. Improv is fine with an experienced actor; this is clearly not the case here. Dandy is out of her depth, and it is almost impossible not to find yourself rooting for Santa to shut her up once and for all. I can’t help but feel like this is a real shame; Tori is a very atypical protagonist that had a lot of potential. It is just, sadly, completely wasted.

Problems, Bloody Problems

That’s not this movie’s only problem, though. There are, actually, far too many to list, so I will briefly go over some of the most significant. The first of which being the fact that Santa looks horrendous. The only thing that indicates that he is a robot, and not a dude in a suit with a fake beard, is the robotic sounds he makes when walking.

Other than that, he looks fleshy, moves like an overweight human, is completely unimposing, and, generally, looks terrible. We get to see things through Santa’s eyes here and there as well, which also sucks and looks stupid.

“The only thing that indicates that he is a robot, and not a dude in a suit with a fake beard, is the robotic sounds he makes when walking. Other than that, he looks fleshy and completely unimposing.”

Pacing is horrendous. It’s thirty minutes before anything of note happens and then another ten to fifteen before things pick up again. The last 40 minutes are just a bunch of screaming and horribly predictable Terminator Santa stuff. Director Joe Begos has stolen liberally from a bunch of other slashers and action movies to bring together something that is entirely unoriginal and derivative.

Camerawork is nauseatingly poor. Begos has tried to incorporate a bunch of different visual styles, but the chaotic and spasmodic cinematography looks horrendous. He sure loves neon colours and blacklights as well, which, I guess, is something. The score might appeal to some and it isn’t the worst part of the movie, so that is a plus, I suppose; it is slightly reminiscent of 80s horror.

Christmas Bloody Christmas is also very repetitive, and the final fifteen minutes or so feature the same exact scenario playing out over and over again four or five times, which is quite frustrating. I don’t think I have ever seen quite so many false endings in horror before. I just can’t think of anything positive to say.

Our Scoring Philosophy: A Fair Fight

Horror is a genre that thrives thanks to indie film makers and low budget creators. At Knockout Horror, we firmly believe that every movie that we review deserves a fair fight. That's why we grade on a curve. Our star ratings are all about context, judging a film on what it achieves with the resources it has.

A 4-star rating for a scrappy indie horror made for $10,000 is a testament to its ingenuity and raw power. A 4-star rating for a $100 million blockbuster means it delivered on its epic promises. We don't compare them side-by-side; we celebrate success in every weight class, from the back-alley brawler to the heavyweight champion. Please keep this in mind when considering star ratings.

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