Krampus

Sorry for the delay. November was National Novel Writing Month, and I did just that. Although, it could have been National Take a Massive Dump of Words Month, and I did that just as well. I’m back now, though, and ready to take a dump on your eyes.

Speaking of which, my old roommate Barry’s girlfriend had a thing for eyeball shitting. He let her because she was prettier than he deserved. She called the act a Boise Rayban. Barry had chronic pink eye until he finally went blind, and then she dumped him.  Now he can’t see, so if a girl wants to leave a shit on his eyes--she wouldn’t even have to be pretty. She could just tell him she was.

I am saving my eyeballs. I want to see the girl who asks to shit on them. I didn’t need to save them for Krampus, though. It’s a misfired comedy-horror with a PG-13 tag that’s as soft-headed as it is soft-hearted.

Krampus is a Bavarian folktale character who punishes bad kids at Christmas. Santa brings toys for the good boys and girls, but this horned, hooved beast comes and shits on the naughty children. Sort of like Jared Fogle.

In the movie, Krampus descends on a family who has lost the Christmas spirit. He then picks them off one by one in a frozen winter wonderland with the help of fang-baring nutcrackers, crazed teddy bears and nail-gun wielding gingerbread men.

The movie starts with a well-orchestrated Black Friday rampage at a big box type store. It’s a well-done opening, even if Black Friday is a bit obvious as a symbol of spiritually bankrupt consumerism (and cheap motor oil). But with this setup, I expected a sly indictment of how Christmas has devolved into a excuse to sell worthless shit nobody buys for themselves but think is good enough for relatives: charm bracelets, tins of stale popcorn, gloves, flasks and holiday mugs filled with marshmallows and cocoa. Garbage. I thought maybe it would be smarter than it is. I was hoping for a Joe Dante movie--subversive fun that isn’t afraid to tell us we’re all jerks.

The misery in this movie’s family is deeper and sadder than consumerism, but not intentionally. Probably director/writer Michael Dougherty meant to indict consumerism, or all the ways in which society has transformed the season into something bereft of meaning but easier to buy. He fucked up, though, and instead takes aim at fatties, a mean dad, teenagers, drunk aunts and gun-toting conservatives. All are easy targets--too easy-- and yet Dougherty does little more than hang them up to see, without ever taking a shot. He may have had grand dreams of satire, but he doesn’t deliver.

Worse is that the Krampus family is nothing new. A rich family hosts its bumpkin relatives who bring a dog, dumb kids and belligerent old person. Just like Christmas Vacation and many others, and retreading all the old frictions of sibling rivalry and low-brow belching gags. 

There have been many awful Christmas movies about bickering families. Most of them are hollow exercises that better illustrate how fucking stupid Hollywood thinks we are than how commercial Christmas has become. The grassfuckers think they can profit by delivering soulless, trite sermons about our soullessness. And they can, but only if there are exposed tits. This movie has none.

When the power goes out and the neighborhood goes dark, Krampus and his minions come out and terrorize this extended family. There is an opportunity here for comedy, but Krampus doesn’t take it. The few stale attempts at humor are front-loaded into the first 45 minutes. Once the violence takes over, there are no laughs. 

The horror is PG-13, meaning it isn’t terrifying. It’s done better than most teeny-bopper scary movies, though, because it doesn’t rely on jump scares and things creeping up behind people in mirrors. Instead, it’s a lot of Christmas iconography with sharp fangs, kids being eaten by treetop angels and jack in the boxes looking like slimy grubs.

Easily the worst thing about Krampus is the end. I’ve got no problems spoiling any movie where a kid wakes up and discovers it was all a dream... or was it? Either way, that’s literally the cheapest and laziest way for moviemakers to shed themselves of the straitjacket their own story put them in. 

The second half of the movie is chaos, violence and destruction, and the audience can see no happy resolution. A great movie surprises us, though, with an escape we never would have thought of. A shitty movie just says, “Screw it, let’s just make it a dream and wrap this turd up.”

That’s not the magic of Christmas. That’s the tin of popcorn, the gift that says the giver couldn’t be bothered to figure out what we really wanted or deserved. Ultimately, it’s cheap, empty calories wrapped up with a bow. Two Fingers for Krampus.

In case you didn’t hear, Mystery Science Theater 3000 got crowdfunded back into existence for a new season. This is pretty fucking great news. So great that some of the money you gave me has been redirected from my liver and toward the project. What I like about the revival is that it won’t use the old cast and crew. Instead, it’ll be the old premise of riffing bad movie with new writers and actors. In short, new blood creating something original, and not just a nostalgia trip, the TV equivalent of Styx at the county fair.

That got me to thinking. I’m going to get old, too. Not yet, although I wake up with my face glued to my pillow by snot more often than I used to. And my pee is a rustier orange too. Someday, though, I’ll be ancient and slow. I’ll prefer the early seating for dinner at the retirement home over going to the movies because the pudding hasn’t had time to form a skin yet. I’ll be poor and an incoherent raging alcoholic, but without all my current savoir faire. 

The options are to just let the Filthy Critic fade into oblivion or to find someone young and fresh to replace me. The first option obviously would have a negative impact for dozens, if not scores, of people who loyally read the first few sentences of my reviews on Monday mornings before getting bored and switching to porn. The second, though, will ensure the title of America’s Most Important Fake Critic doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, and that someone is out there tirelessly maintaining a static web site for what everyone else is doing on social media.

Here’s the thing: someone can’t just step into my shoes. Literally. I have a debilitating fear of shoe thieves and put tacks in the toes whenever I’m not wearing them. Also, it would take decades of physical and mental abuse to become what I am. That’s why I’ve started scouring the local grade schools searching for my successor. Training must begin at seven or eight years of age. It must be a kid from a broken home, a kid who has easy access to liquor and drugs, a child whose already seen the inside of both a juvenile detention center and a dead hobo’s gaping mouth. I’m looking for a kid who already shoplifts, already punches walls, and already wakes up crying and can’t remember why yet is haunted all day by a vague sense of dread.

Do you have a child? Does your child qualify? You can only hope so, right? If not, maybe you can start getting them ready for me? Divorce your spouse, leave the liquor cabinet unlocked, move into a trailer park. We need the youth of America to be miserable fuck ups, or else a future generation will be deprived of the incoherent rantings they so badly deserve. Thank you.