12) Krampus – Attic Attack
There’s merit to the somewhat mixed reaction that Michael Dougherty’s Krampus has received since it debuted earlier in December. Although the film is by turns fitfully humorous and essentially the stuff of nightmares, those two sides don’t always mix as well as Dougherty’s trippy ode to Halloween, Trick ‘r Treat. There are plot holes aplenty here (why did the other home down the street get attacked if Krampus came for Max’s family? What’s the reason that hidden snow worm had for eating the elf? Where the heck did the gingerbread men get a nail gun?!), and still the demented little movie totally worked enough for me that I’ve since seen it twice.
The creative height of it sits firmly in the film’s middle section, in a sequence where Dougherty’s humor and horror blend in a couple minutes of transcendent glee, unlike other sections where the two tones war for dominance. When the under-siege, dysfunctional clan hear a noise in the attic, Tom (Adam Scott), Sarah (Toni Collette) and Linda (Allison Tolman) venture to the creepy hideaway to investigate the disturbance, with an axe and handgun between the three.
What they find there is indelibly traumatizing, even for this 25 year-old, as mother Linda witnesses the feet of her tween sticking out of the gaping maw of a carnivorous, over-sized jack-in-the-box. As if that wasn’t enough, the trio gets hit from all angles by a demonic, Bride of Chucky-esque Christmas angel, a teddy bear with a bloody maw and a shank-equipped robotic doodad straight out of Small Soldiers.
It sounds over-the-top (and it is), but Scott, Collette, and Tolman treat the wacky attack with such appropriate exasperation (“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” dad Tom yells as the little knee-biter of a robot begins stabbing him in the back), that it’s spookily easy to fear for their lives when things start going downhill for the perpetually arguing brood.
– Mitchel Broussard
