Reaction & Review | Christmas Bloody Christmas

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the "Reaction & Review Christmas Special". Yes, guys, it is that time of year once again where I cover a Christmas movie for this series. And for this year's Christmas Special, I have found a movie that has been sort of a running theme for these particular specials that I have done previously. It is a horror movie from 2022. That movie is "Christmas Bloody Christmas".

About the only thing I can really say that I know about this movie is that it features something involving a killer Santa Claus. But this one is a little bit unique because it ties back into what I just said a moment ago. See, the past couple of Christmas films I've covered have both involved a killer Santa Claus, AKA "Santa's Slay" and "Christmas Evil". However, unlike those two movies where both of the killer Santa's were human beings, this movie is changing it up a bit by having a robotic Santa doing the killing instead. Which sounds really cool, honestly. But then again, I am a fan of these absurd premises, so I'm hoping that this movie will be able to live up to it's somewhat unique change.

Now, I wish I could tell you anything else that I know about this movie. However, beyond what I just told you, I know literally nothing else beyond that. I haven't looked up any trailers or clips from this movie. So I'm pretty much going into this thing almost 100% blind here. I'm hoping for this thing to be awesome, however, there IS a slight chance that this movie could totally suck. I'm hoping that it doesn't, but there is still that possibility. So the only way I'm really gonna find out as to whether or not this movie will be any good at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Christmas Bloody Christmas".

2 minutes later

So according to that opening narration, the U.S. Department of Defense spent over a trillion dollars on robotic technology to defeat our enemies overseas. And that SAME technology is also being used to create a robot Santa for the purposes of replacing your standard mall Santa. You know, I *would* say that this is probably some of the most wasteful spending the U.S. has ever came up with. But then again, it's probably better than just wasting money to fund fake wars that are completely unnecessary to begin with. So...I guess that's one way to look at things from a different perspective.

7 minutes later

All right, guys, I can tell you one thing so far. Well, two things, actually. One, our main character, Tori, isn't really all that likable. And two, she swears a *lot* more than I do by uttering the word 'fuck' in almost every sentence she has. I'm kinda hoping, maybe, that this movie will either dial it back a bit or maybe give her some other creative curse words to use besides saying 'fuck' almost every single time. But as of right now, I don't really see either of those scenarios happening.

15 minutes later

All right, well, even though that kill was pretty brief, it was still pretty cool seeing Robo-Santa just almost slice a human being in half with a fireman's ax. I'm hoping that this is a good sign of things to come, because, so far, there still hasn't been a single likable character in this movie, and I'm hoping Robo-Santa just kills them all in really gruesome and awesome ways.

15 minutes later

OK, and now Robo-Santa just used the other side of the sharp ax to stab this woman's eye out. Again, that is pretty cool and is far more interesting than seeing our main characters having sex. But that's probably just me.

3 minutes later

I just saw Robo-Santa kill off the only kid in that house, too. Well...that was certainly fucked up. However, considering I'm not a fan of children to begin with, I really can't say I felt sorry for that kid since he was barely on screen and sounded a little ungrateful, too, after opening his Christmas present. So, he definitely got what was coming to him.

7 minutes later

Well, guys, I have awesome news. Robbie is now dead, and I couldn't be fucking happier, too! He was an annoying piece of shit, and I'm hoping that Tori gets the same. Granted, that might be asking for a bit much, considering she's the main character and all, but hey, I can still hope for it, right?

The Review

OK, that was a little bit of a weird way to end a movie by just having the main character's face open in either pain or happiness. Either way, I'm just gonna shut the movie off now...OK. Well, guys, that was "Christmas Bloody Christmas". So...where to begin with this one?

Well, I guess I should start by saying that what I'm about to discuss here is going to sound pretty negative to a lot of you guys. Now I am not going to say that the movie is completely awful or anything, but I will admit that it does start off kinda shitty, and it mostly ties into the writing. The writing in this movie feels completely flat and shallow. And I have a theory as to why that is. Now mind you, this is all just a theory, and I have no proof of this at all, so you have to take it for what it's worth. But my theory is that a good portion of this movie's dialogue was improvised. I have a feeling that the writer of this movie, Joe Begos, who not only wrote, but also produced AND directed this movie, gave out bullet points on what the actors should be discussing, but also gave them some free reign on whatever they wanted to say in their scenes. Which kinda works, in concept, but doesn't entirely deliver on that aspect. I'm gonna get more into that in a second here, but I am gonna say that the writing here could've definitely been fleshed out more. For example, why exactly would this company that built the robot Santa's would be using military technology on them? I know the opening prologue said that they were gonna use them to replace the mall Santa's, however, that gets kneecapped later on when we find out that they have been reportedly recalled because of some malfunction within their systems went haywired, It's stuff like that the movie could've explored a little more on, but didn't follow suit.

Now the other bit in writing that is kinda shit ties into our characters. The characters in this movie have no depth, personality, or likability to them whatsoever. The only ones I can remember are Tori, Robbie, and Bobby, one of the officers. The only one that's really gonna matter is Tori, because that's who we mostly follow throughout the entirety of the film. And like I said, she really has no kind of character to her outside of *one* thing that stuck out at me. Mind you, it's not just her that has this sort of problem, it's almost the entire cast that has it, too. What problem is this? Well...I'm gonna give you guys a challenge, in the form of a drinking game. I know some people don't care for drinking games, but let's play the theoretical game for a moment here. If you and a bunch of friends ever get together on Christmas one night, and you want to watch a Christmas movie such as this, I want to propose a drinking game for you. I want you to take a shot every single time a character in this movie says the word "fuck". When that happens, take a fucking drink. I guarantee you by the time that the movie is finished, you will have died of alcohol poisoning. That is how much the characters in this movie utter that word. Mind you, this is coming from someone who swears a lot, but this shit is almost on another childish level! Part of me wonders if, again, that when the actors were improvising their lines, Joe Begos also suggested to them to say the word "fuck" a lot, as if it's suppose to be "edgy" and "mature". However, it just makes the characters all the more shallow and flat in the end. And you're really not gonna remember anything about them other than that they swear like a motherfucker.

Now I know I've been kinda harsh on this movie already, and while there are a couple of other issues that I'm gonna get into later on, I will say that once Robo-Santa starts to get into the picture, the movie *actually* starts to pick up a bit, as you're watching it just going after our characters while also going on it's killing spree. The only problem with this is that it's kind of a slow boil to get to that point. I'd say the first 40 minutes of the film is where it gets off to a little bit of a slow start. Robo-Santa does make his presence known during the 40 minute dry spell and gets in a couple of kills, but the film doesn't really start to take off until he kills a family that was next door to where Tori and her family was living at. And by that point, the film starts to get really interesting and you're gonna get hooked by that point because you're wondering where it's going to go next. I do think this film's pacing could've been better tightened had we not focused on our main characters just talking about random nonsense like movies and pop culture, or just trying to force the word "fuck" into almost every sentence that they have. It probably would've worked better if the film wanted to work in some corny dialogue. Something akin to, say, "Jack Frost" (the 1997 horror movie to clarify) or "Santa's Slay", where the dialogue in those movies aren't necessarily good, but still has a lot of charm to them. And unless you find the over-usage of the word "fuck" being charming, then there's really not much here in terms of charmingly bad dialogue when it comes to the characters.

So with that being said, the writing here is definitely the weakest aspect of the movie. However...I can sorta give the weak writing here a pass. I say this because the premise here still works, in which there's a robotic Santa killing people, and that's kinda what you really need to work the most in this situation. And for all of it's faults, the movie was still able to take it's absurd premise and make it work in the best way that it could. Now with that said, what about the acting? Well, like I mentioned earlier, I'm convinced that some of this dialogue was improvised, so the actors had to make due with what they could, despite the fact that they clearly lack any sort of depth. And I will say that almost all of the actors in this movie did a pretty good job here. The only one that sounded kinda bad was the only child actor in this movie that I referenced early on. Which makes sense, given that child actors are almost terrible by default. Thankfully though, it's really brief, so you don't have to worry about him being in the movie for too long. But like I said, every other actor turned in a pretty good showing. Which almost astounds me, to be honest with you. Because I didn't think these actors were gonna make this improvisation work here. But they did, and I commend almost the entire cast here for giving out a pretty good performance in this movie.

Special effects in this movie are really good, especially for low budget standards, and that mostly applies to our robotic killer Santa. Most of the kills in this movie are done with his trademark fireman's ax. Well correction, he found the ax at a store where two of Tori's friends were spending the night there fucking each other. And no, I'm not kidding about that either, that *really* happened. But anyway, the kills Robo-Santa executes with his ax are pretty cool, even if they are a bit standard, considering that you can only do so much with a fireman's ax when it comes to creative kills. The only other weapon Robo-Santa uses is a shotgun to blow a cop's head off. Granted, you don't *see* the cop's head being blown off, just the body falling to the ground without his head present. Which is a little bit disappointing that we don't get to see that part, but it's not a huge complaint overall. As for Robo-Santa itself, it's mostly done animatronically, and it looks really cool, especially towards the final act of the movie. I won't go too much into spoilers here, but I will say that the design of the Robo-Santa in that particular aspect is very reminiscent to what you would see in "The Terminator". That stuff looked great. Granted, I'm not totally sure how much of it before then was animatronically done from before we get to see more of it's robotic aspects. I have a feeling that it was mostly being played by a human actor trying to act like a robot. If that is the case, then it still works really well. Though I have no idea how much of what I'm theorizing is actually true or not. But regardless, the special effects here are still really good for low budget movie standards.

Camerawork here is pretty good for the most part. Most of this was shot on a 16 mm camera, which looks pretty good, despite a couple of hiccups with shaky cam. The only bit of it that looks sorta questionable is when during a few shots, you get to see Robo-Santa going into first-person mode. Some of these shots look a bit wonky at times, and it could be seen as slightly distracting. Mind you, like I said, it's only for a few shots, and it ultimately gets dropped later on. Lighting here is actually a bit of a mixed bag. This movie's lighting feels very similar to what I watched back when I reviewed Rob Zombie's "The Munsters" film a couple of months ago, where everything in that movie, at least when it came to Transylvania, looked really colorful. This movie is trying to replicate that sort of style. However, given that both of these movies came out in the same year, I'm not sure if that was suppose to be intentional or not. But anyway, the lighting here feels like it was trying to capture the spirit of Christmas, while also trying to look unique on it's own standards. One particular color choice that this movie will go for is purple lighting. You're gonna be seeing that for a decent majority of the film, and it kinda works to a point. However, there are gonna be moments where the picture quality will look pretty damn grainy at times. I don't know if that was suppose to be deliberate or not, or if that was just the version of it I watched on DVD, but it is very noticeable. That being said, I will take the lighting in this movie over the obnoxiously AWFUL lighting that I saw in "Deathday" a month ago. Where in that thing, the lighting was just so fucking bright for no real reason at all, and it just took me out of the movie entirely. Along with the film itself being an unwatchable mess, but I'm getting way off topic here. Point is, the lighting in this movie is mostly a mixed bag, but I suppose it could've been a lot worse.

Our sound-mix here is mixed almost perfectly, save for maybe one moment where Robo-Santa is about to burst inside of Tori's house, and it seemed like the sound changed for a bit by sounding kinda muffled when there was music playing. However, beyond that one moment, the sound-mix here is great. The score and soundtrack, however, is complete shit. Most of it is just annoying rock music that I'm sure is, probably, from some high-profile rock bands, however, I'm not really interested in looking up this movie's soundtrack because it just sounds like shit to me. I could be totally wrong on this. But regardless, this movie's rock music is definitely shit.

So overall, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Christmas Bloody Christmas"? I can say yes, provided that you go into this movie and you're able to shut your brain off for about 87 minutes. If you're able to overlook the characters saying "fuck" almost every other sentence and that the writing itself isn't exactly grade A material, then you're possibly going to really enjoy this, especially if you're looking for a good horror movie to watch for the holidays. This will definitely provide that for you if you're someone who's looking for a decent slasher flick to watch during Christmas. And as for myself, while it's definitely nowhere near as good as the other two Christmas horror comedies that I mentioned earlier, the premise itself still holds it together, because you're here to see Robo-Santa go on a killing spree, and you're gonna get just that. So I'm probably gonna be watching this movie again next year during the Christmas season. And who knows? Maybe I'll warm up to it even more then. For now, though, I'm gonna go and watch another Christmas movie. And seeing as how I mentioned "Santa's Slay" earlier, I'm gonna go and watch that next because I've already seen "Jack Frost" twice this month, but I haven't gotten around to watching "Santa's Slay" yet. So I'm gonna go and do that next after I get done typing this review up.

And with that, guys, we come to the close of this years Christmas Special for Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and have a very Merry Christmas. Peace.