In the category of Unexpected dialog, I think Santa should have said, “Oh, hey, brother. How’s Dad doing?”
Immortal zombie elves are plaguing Santa.
That’s how A Christmas Horror Story (2015) kicks off, and from there it’s all downhill.
In some ways, this collection of four stories, set in Bailey Downs, are anti-stories. Intertwined and tenuously connected, they chronicle the sad plague afflicting, for no particular reason, the elves of Santa; the savage infliction of the birth of Christ on three teenaged journalists; a dysfunctional family paying a Christmas visit upon ancient Aunt Etta and her butler, Gerhart; the rum-based Christmas ramblings of an ancient radio DJ; and of a changeling, exchanged for a little boy, of a family stealing a tree from the lot of a man who rides herd on a collection of trolls[1]. None of these end well, although some feature a special guest appearance from Krampus, the ancient Christmas spirit accustomed to making meals out of evil people.
But, more importantly, none of these stories really has a moral for us. They function more as cups dipped into the swirling stream of Chaos that surrounds us, their reflections unwilling to fashion their madness into moralism for us, emphasizing that random darkness can afflict even those undeserving of it. That even those who are virtually venerated by their fellows die terrible, undeserved deaths.
“You were going to give me away as a gift, I heard you talking!” screamed Sparkly, just before he collapsed from glitterlung. Or so my Arts Editor assures me was said.
These are not noir stories, for noir stories depend on the bad behavior of their characters to lead to their sad, if well-deserved endings. These are nihilistic stories, told by spirits that do not believe in morality and its alleged consequences, but instead in a random Universe that multiplies the deserved desserts of their exemplars by a thousand, before tossing them into the hidden shoals of humanity’s wasteland, there to bewilder the explorers of history who stumble upon their monuments and corpses, and terrify those with the least grain of guilt.
My Arts Editor and I like to spend part of Christmas watching some movie or other that we’ve never heard of, hoping to enjoy it. Memorably, in this vein we’ve seen Rare Exports (2010) and Anna and the Apocalypse (2018). A Christmas Horror Story will be thrown on the Unmemorable pile, I fear. The bilge I’ve made up for this review may or may not be accurate, but the movie is certainly neither inspirational, fascinating, nor amusing.
It’s just nihilism. Have fun, philosophy majors of a certain turn of temperament. And those of you who are William Shatner completists, for there he is, taking a competent turn as the radio DJ.
Maybe we’ll find something better in the next week.
1 I have to wonder if the collective noun for trolls is bridge.
