Really Surprised!

good back-story, and good acting

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The acting in this movie is really good.

. . . says David Koechner as he's being attacked by evil Christmas cookies with a nail gun. It's a great line in a demented scene, and that's the kind of thing I was hoping this movie would have more of. It's seldom that I see a movie that leaves me unaffected, but "Krampus" fits that mold. It's pitched as a horror comedy, but it doesn't do either very well. It's passable.It's those opening scenes that held promise. The department store melee set to Christmas music; heavy-handed, but entertaining enough. 5/10

If the Brothers Grimm & Dr. Seuss wrote the story of Krampus we'd get this movie.Black comedies are hard to pull off, add Christmas expectations and it's a recipe for disaster in the wrong hands. Luckily, Krampus (with tongue planted firmly in cheek) pulls it off. From the slow-mo opening of the horrors of holiday shopping to the twist at the end. The play on Christmas traditional expectations are on full display. What Daugherty did for Halloween he has now done for Christmas, and gives us a movie that, like its near cousin, descends into the wilderness of visual and dark comedic excess in order to deliver its players to a moral that, somehow, manages to be universal and thoughtful. The methods at which he goes to make the point will be at odds with what you anticipate when going to a movie about the good old holidays, but that's precisely what makes it so distinctive.Many will perhaps find the tone unsettling and imbalanced for the nature of this premise, but "Krampus" is much smarter than it lets on This is everything that a holiday fable should be: brooding, cautious, dark, humorous and thoughtful.

"Krampus" is an American 95-minute movie from 2015 and if you have heard the name Krampus before and remember the reference, then maybe you will know that here we have a combination of Christmas and horror, in which the scary component, however, is far more dominant than the harmonic component. The director is Michael Dougherty and he is also one of the many writers working on this one. The most known cast members here are certainly Oscar nominee Toni Collette and Adam Scott from Parks and Recreation. I cannot deny that I am not a fan of the latter at all, also in this film, but it needs to be said in his excuse that honestly the material he and most of the other cast members were given here is never that amazing at all. There are also several child performers in here, who are probably not known to many and for me personally, that also includes the kid in the center of the story. The character of Krampus was included in many other horror films already, but this has to be among his most famous inclusion, probably even the number one. We see him in all kinds of shapes and costumes here and my favorite was probably the harlequin skin if you may want to call it like that. But besides that, I also felt sadly that most of the movie was really forgettable. The general idea about the summoning and the background story of the creature not only never had me on the edge of the seat, but never impressed me at all. It's pretty tough to find huge pros in here. I think the runtime was not (way) too long. The ending when it actually seems they kill the boy was bold and unexpected, but sadly they made up for that kind of quality quickly afterward by including a stupid "oh it was all just a dream" story line. I also did not find this one worth seeing from the Christmas film perspective. The only ones I'd really recommend it to are probably those who really really are into supernatural creature horror films although they probably have seen it anyway already. The ending indicates that there may be plans for a sequel (or prequel), but we will see about that. I am not sure if quality, critical reception and especially box office were successful enough for them to really go for it. All in all, my personal verdict here is rather on the negative side too. Gotta give this one a thumbs-down and it is clearly superior to some recent fairly decent horror films I've seen in previous months. My suggestion is you watch something else as this one clearly tries to include effects (even animation in flashback sequences) to make up for story-telling deficits. It's not worth your time.

I thought the movie was excellent (for sake of pure entertainment). The movie had excellent character design, and contained horror elements plus humor. Yes, there were stupid characters doing stupid things, but not as much as you see in other movies these days so what are you going to do. The movie deserves to be at least a 8 so I've bumped my score up to offset some of the younger audience, who was likely traumatized by this and came here to give the movie a 1. I read that many families took their young to see this movie (can't do anything to prevent the stupid these days) and because of that there were a bunch of kids who were traumatized and crying/shocked. I don't blame them! The character design was vivid and striking and surely would leave an impact for any young mind who envisions an endearing version of "Santa".So yea, the movie is about a 7.5 or so, the only thing I didn't like was how the antagonist "Krampus" was seemingly acting without real motive. What I mean by this, is his actions weren't to teach the "kid a lesson" about Christmas in a more violent way or anything, the demon was literally just there to kill and imprison everyone for no reason. I feel that this was perhaps one of the many alternate endings that the scriptwriting crew discussed while producing the movie, and they unfortunately went with this ending where I don't think it was the best. But everything else about the movie was great.