Christmas comes but once a year, and within this year of prolonged absents of family trivialities one may just use this time of abstention to mould past angers, past resentments and embittered grudges; time here is certainly not the healer of festive cheer.
An examination of an unsettling character study of a family gone awry during this festive period of togetherness and tolerance is set against a family reunion that besets the inner circle with bitter hostilities and sour truths. It is quite frankly a boiling-pot of frustrations and indifference to any form of respect and love toward one another; these blood-lines have been severely severed during time and this winter solstice celebration of Christmas tidings have reached the equinox and irreversibly tipped into a state of perpetual darkness.
This disturbing dark comedy has a rich, if not too seemingly cliché, contemporary, and most notably, fractured, middle-class nuclear family at its epicentre and with a varied personality clash as the middle-classes values and moralities we see a notorious and foreboding nucleus imploding resulting in old and fresh wounds opening with a vengeance.
The writers' here have prepared a wonderful dish of an evil and sardonic flavour that cuts with a fervour of pure malice; the essence of hate and jealousies convey an ambiance of uncomfortable resilience of portraying what exactly lies under the surface of this family get-together. Notwithstanding the diverse cast of characters, it is really the script that hits home and does its utmost to deliver a plentiful feast of derision, scorn and contempt. It is more than a dialogue but a central nerve that teeters on the brink of insanity; sharp, focused and predacious in nature.
The team of Mr. Robert Kurtzman and Ms. Marcia King-Kurtzman have added a palate of equal measure of gore to the festivities, pushing a strong combination of horrific sights and wonting violence. It is all fitting in very well in conjuncture of said vicious script and its violent sequence of events that push home the narrative of how much integrity can both inflict pain and relief anguish. To paraphrase the old adage that "many a true word is said in jest" or that truth is often found in comic utterances is that drives its agenda.
This is an exceptionally cruel and unpleasant film to watch, notwithstanding, and not necessarily because of, the bloodshed but simply because of this feuding family. The grinch like tone has come and taken the spirit of Christmas and turned this festive mood into a moot point of family ethics and tolerance.
The Christmas horror film genre has come a long way since the days of Scrooge (1951), Black Christmas (1974), Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) and Mercy Christmas (2017) for example, it is all a varied style of Yuletide horror, and being a mixed bag of festive frights, all this fun and frolics only add to the delight of Santa's secret bag of goodies: enjoy.
