Krampus most overrated horror film of the last decade

Posted Dec. 11, 2022

By Tyler Lamar

Cub Reporter

The 2015 film Krampus, directed and produced by Michael Dougherty was surprisingly and unfortunately a success, yet has to be one of the most overrated horror movies of the past decade. 

It attempts to fuse Christmas, horror, and comedy; three genres that can so easily be terribly made, and in this case, are just that. This movie demonstrates exactly what a low budget can do… not a whole lot. It makes you wonder if they purposely add comedy to their movie descriptions to try and disregard the fact that it unintentionally ended up being just straight up cheesy. It isn’t worth watching, even if you are deliberately looking for something to make fun of. That at least, is pretty impressive. 

The writers took from European folklore to try and create a cliche horror flick. It incorporates all of the classic horror movie necessities: scary clowns, predictable jumpscares, and of course the handful of scenes where all the characters try and stay as quiet as possible so they’re not caught. It has it all, except ironically enough, the actual scariness. 

It follows the story of a typical suburban family preparing for Christmas together, when misfortune follows all due to the loss of holiday spirit within the household. They all end up stuck together at home during a power outage, due to this sudden, monstrous blizzard. The audience is then met with some eerie hooved Christmas beast, which he and his evil elf minions terrorize the family for the rest of the movie. Not to mention, the toys in the attic end up coming to life to ambush the family. And of course, they couldn’t forget to add several gruesome death scenes that leave viewers with grimaces of discomfort on their faces. 

One of the worst parts of the film is definitely the acting. The actors all portray their characters in a very over the top way, which doesn’t help the corniness the film already holds. The comedic attempts are based around crude humor, and jokes that you can tell were supposed to be funny, but just were never worth a laugh. The intensity of the more dramatic scenes was ruined by the poor acting, that takes away from any potential convincing aspects. This might be because the characters were written without any depth and the actors were left with nothing to work with, or just because the film was a big rushed project. Either answer would explain the scripts remaining nothing short of bland throughout the film. 

The cinematography in the movie also really does not lay well. They attempted to throw in random jump cuts for spontaneous effect, but their presence really just gives the poor viewers headaches. The cinematographers also seemed to toy with slow motion a bit too much, especially for a horror movie, which didn’t work out very well in their favor. A lot of the time, the movie seems like it was made by an ambitious student’s film school project, with too much money and too much free time. 

The creepy characters that show up throughout the movie are very overdone, and are far too tacky to be taken seriously. The CGI is especially bad during a specific scene showing evil gingerbread men attacking the family. It is on the line of seeming like maybe it was supposed to look animated and almost cartoonish, and being a failed attempt at seeming realistic. The bad CGI was without a doubt the last straw pulled in terms of potential for the film. 

Overall, Krampus was a rushed, cheap movie that is not worth sitting through the almost two-hour runtime. From the classic unbearable in-laws, to the bloodthirsty jack-in-the-box, the movie seems to hit every cliché… except for the ones that might actually make it enjoyable and of good quality. It’s definitely a huge disappointment. Perhaps this is proof that you can’t mix Christmas with horror and expect it to make a decent movie.