Red Christmas

Dir: Craig Anderson

2016

**

While there is of course such a thing as a good horror movie and a bad horror movie, it generally isn’t as clear cut as all that. Red Christmas, you probably won’t be surprised to hear, is no masterpiece. However, it succeeds where most ‘bad’ horror films fails several times over. There is nothing wrong with the direction, editing, cinematography and gore fans are certainly catered for. The acting is mostly good, with the wonderful Dee Wallace taking the lead role. The idea itself is rather good, it is just let down somewhat by the writing. The film begins some twenty years ago at an abortion clinic. A man walks in, shouts something vaguely religious and lets of a bomb, killing most people inside. Fast forward to the present day and we join a family as they gather together for Christmas. It is set in Australia but it is clearly meant to be cold outside, which is an obvious mistake as Oz enjoys Christmas in the summer but I digress. Amidst the celebrations, a mysterious, cloaked stranger, "Cletus" arrives at the home and is taken in. Due to his strange behaviour, he is eventually forced to leave. It is eventually revealed that 20 years ago, the matriarch of the family, Diane (Wallace), traveled north to have an abortion. During the procedure a religious zealot bombed the clinic as seen in the opening scene. Unbeknownst to Diane, her child, Cletus survived the procedure and has returned to the family home to exact revenge in the most violent way possible. The film is an accomplished slasher/home invasion movie in it’s own right, so I applaud writer/director Craig Anderson for his originality and his attempt at trying something a little darker and a little different, but I do find the concept a little questionable. I don’t think Anderson is trying to make any statements about birth control or being anti or pro-choice, I just think that this is his version of a Christmas Evil/Basket Case mash up. Cletus is best when he is not seen. When he is seen he is performed dreadfully by Sam Campbell in what can only be described as an embarrassing and almost offensive impersonation of Joseph Merrick. It’s not in the best of tastes but it still manages to be entertaining enough. The rest of the cast are good in their performances but their characters are mostly too extreme to be taken seriously. Each character has a trait but each is a little too much; you have the stoner sister, the brash sister and the sister who became a vicar as well as their stereotype partners. None of the characters are convincing in knowing each other, let alone as being family. The script is awful, just awful, as so many horror film scripts are. Why are horror writers so inept at writing good dialogue? As expected, each family member is picket off one by one, it is predictable but following the introductory scenes it is most welcome. I certainly didn’t predict the order of who would get killed first, so that was something. The production values are what save the film as it always looks professional, even when it doesn’t sound as such. It really isn’t a bad slasher at all and the murder scenes will satisfy a wide cross-section of horror fans. I think apart from a more sinister villain and a total dialogue re-write, the only thing that really would have improved the film was if it felt just a little more like a Christmas film. It might be one of the few times I will say this but what this low-budget little horror film needed was a few more clichés. By far the best thing about the film was Gerard Odwyer. The downs syndrome actor clearly wasn’t just in the film just to make it more inclusive, he is pretty much the only convincing actor in character and he soon became the unintended hero of the film. There are many better Christmas horror films out there but there are also many that are worse.