Once Upon a Time at Christmas

Unsure if this was meant to be a deliberate so bad it's good B Movie but it's mostly just bad. Awkward dialogue full of cliches. Inconsistent performances with some actors trying hard for a serious tone and some trying to wink at the camera.

Someone clearly wanted to make a serial killer Santa Claus and then added a Mrs Claus in the style of Harley Quinn. It's hard to get the tone right for a B Movie but even harder to do a decent Harley Quinn impression.

Even those with a high tolerance for cheap horror films will find this hard to love. Perhaps save yourself the time watching this and seek out a better Xmas horror like Anna and the Apocalypse or Krampus.

Horrible acting paired with a predictable plot and unnatural dialog makes this movie very unpleasant. Don't waste your time with this one, you could probably figure out exactly whats gonna happen in the first 10 minutes and I have never heard so many clunky and uncomfortable conversations in one movie before. Absolutely awful in every way.

I do not know Jeff Ellenberger (who played Deputy Fullard). I have never seen him in any other film, nor even heard of him. But I know this about him: He deserved better than this film. He seems like a good actor trapped in a bad film and it saddened me. In fact, his presence just highlighted for me how bad everyone (and everything) else was in the film. I hope he has better luck in future films.

I am still puzzling over the sheriff talking to a coroner with a VERY heavy British accent who uses an unfamiliar British slang word that causes the sheriff to say, "Oh, right, I keeping forgetting you're a Brit." Of all the many hard to believe things in this film, THAT one really knocked me for a loop.

This movie takes off well but gets ridiculous early on. Ok, 2 people dressed as Santa & Mrs Claus go on a killing spree in an upstate NY town. The Santa character looks intimidating, from well planned camera work, unfortunately Mrs Claus is a very bad Harley Quinn rip off.

So before anyone gets wound up - yeah there are a ton of Camp slasher movies out there too, but do they put a guy in a hockey mask with a machete? Ah no they leave that for Jason. "Bloody Murder" yeah hockey mask. I can excuse a killer Santa using an axe even though thats a SNDN thing, but to mimic Harley Quinn? Serious? Doesn't anyone have any imagination at all? Dont give me that homage BS either.

I streamed this on Amazon and i do give it credit for being better then many others i have watched lately. The story is decent, the dialog not bad. The sound mixing is bad, i was up and down on the volume the entire movie. The directing was ok, but it appears the director settled for the poor performances rather then encouraging and mentoring the cast.

The casting was not good at all to the point it fliped the movie. Brook Fletcher plays Lucy, she appears to have little experience. The Cops were good, the FBI folks must be new to acting. The teens, no matter most became victims.

Now the humor! This isnt a horror comedy, but in the 2nd half of the film you see the Killer Santa, Simon Phillips standing near others and its a WTF moment. It becomes clear that in the first half of the movie the camera shots hid the fact that Simon is a small guy. Not only is he shorter then a teen girl he stands next to, he looks like 160 pounds. This is the guy who takes out 10 plus people in a bar? OMG a killer elf! I wasn't expecting a towering Dwayne Johnson size guy, but he looked about the size of Tom Holland.

This has the same terrible writing and dialogue. The two guys that wrote it have no idea what they're doing so everything happens solely to move the plot forward without any nuance and there's just tons of stuff I could rag on like the bad acting and half the cast doesn't even bother with the fake American accent and this could all be a fun bad movie if it didn't take itself so seriously!!

Like I can just see the two guys that wrote this sitting at a bar giving each other congratulatory slaps on the back and that just drives me nuts for some reason!! Ok in all fairness, they actually do try to inject some humor in ONE scene, but it's so awful. AWFUL!!

But I'm still gonna give it two stars because the lead is a Clarice Starling knockoff FBI agent who wears the same outfit for the entire week or whatever this movie takes place over and in some scenes she has blonde highlights and in some she doesn't and I absolutely loved that.