Werewolf Santa

Werewolf Santa (watched on DVD)

After Santa is bitten on Christmas Eve, amateur monster hunter Lucy witnesses his transformation into a werewolf. Armed with only a rusty ice skate and a vague understanding of how werewolves operate, Lucy and her family set out to save Christmas.

This was a fun watch. Although the budget partially restricted some effects and script in places, this didn't stop Airell Anthony Hayles and the team from creating a fun, British horror B movie. Katherine Rodden does a great job as a foul mouthed badass blogger.

The comic book opening and text box wraparounds didn't work for me, as they looked cheap and contradicted the found footage style.

The practical effects worked in most places, but fell flat in others.

The script was funny, some gags a bit flat in places, and enough werewolf lore to keep it "believable"

Overall, just based on the subject matter story, it IS worth a watch, just go in open minded and middle expectations. Fun found footage horror comedy.

This is called 'Werewolf Santa,' it was evidently made on a tiny budget and it's a found footage movie. One would be daft to anticipate a masterpiece. But even with expectations lowered to rock bottom this simply isn't very good. The hilarious possibilities for werewolf Santa mayhem are never realized, the characters are poorly-developed and the direction is fairly incompetent from the perspective of spatial coherence. All of which might be forgivable if the dialogue was funny, which it generally isn't aside from a few dry one-liners. The premise merited a manic, high-energy gorefest but this one stays stuck in second gear through a tepid finale.

Lucy and Dustin are paranormal investigators with a YouTube channel called "Monster Hunters". They are in their home town of Hastings on the Sussex coast, it's Xmas Eve coupled with a Full Moon. Whilst out in the woods they spot Santa (yes, the real one) taking a leak when he is attacked by a night creature, this turns him into a werewolf. "Santa's turned into a werewolf. Might need your help to save Xmas" Lucy tells somebody. I don't usually watch Xmas movies out of season but last night was a Full Moon and looking for a werewolf movie that I had not seen before I found this British "comedy" on Prime. Hand held movies shot in the style of Found Footage have been done to death but at least in this instance the fact that the events were shot for YouTube gives it some credibility. However, be warned that there are moments of excessive shaky cam. Joining the twosome are Lucy's mum, played by Scream Queen Emily Booth, Lucy's father, a token American (Mark Arnold,) and their very annoying Irish pal Rupert. Booth and Arnold are both wasted appearing in this. There is some fake looking snow but it only falls in certain spots. We don't see much of Werewolf Santa close up, which is probably just as well because it looks like a Halloween mask that can be purchased from the shops. Worst looking werewolf I have ever seen! We hear flies buzzing around very fresh corpses despite it being mid-Winter. The film may only run 71 minutes but there are stretched out periods of boring dialogue that are meant to be funny but aren't. There are three things that I did like however. I did enjoy the character of Lucy and thought that Katherine Rodden put in a good performance. One scene takes place at an amusement park and inside a ghost train, which was cool. And although I have seen her in far better roles Emily Booth is always nice to see. As both Xmas horror movies and werewolves movies go this really is the pits, less Ho Ho Ho, more No No No!

Were to start?

The poster looks good, Emily Booth looks fantastic (as always) and that's where it ends!

I had high expectations for this when I saw this advertised in a Facebook group and really looked forward to seeing it as I thought it would be great to watch. After sitting through 70 minutes of it, I was wrong, so, so wrong!

I am thinking both Emily and Mark (Arnold) have fallen on hard times and are doing any roles to let them pay their bills as this wasn't a movie. This was more like a high school drama project that was created by a student who was either in a rush or had procrastinated for most the year and needed to 'put something out' to be marked!

Dialogue between characters was basic, the humour/jokes weren't funny and hardly landed, in fact the funniest part was in the trailer for the movie (the "I'll get me coat" line) For being a horror movie there was very in the way of horror or jump scares.

The only horrific thing about the movie was the was the look of the werewolf/Santa! I am sure we've seen scarier Halloween masks from the local cheap shop. As for the actor who played Santa/the wolf you could tell they were putting everything into the role however they seemed to be bereft of any acting ability or screen presence, I would maybe consider a new career in woodworking as they are that wooden I thought at times they had just hung the wolf suit up on a coat hanger.

I have a feeling a lot of the positive reviews will be from the cast and crew but do yourselves a favour and give this a miss.

Can I mark this lower than one?

I honestly believe that I could make a better movie and I cant act and I haven't exactly got a big budget to deal with either. But for the 70 minutes I spent watching this film with my family we all had a laugh watching the bad acting, the absolute no sense writting. I can be forgiven for a film with a low budget and a unique name but this was awful. They did at least try and comparing this to some big budget Hollywood films this one at least had some character to it. At the end of the day I laughed my way through this movie and had a good time watching it, maybe I'm laughing at how bad it is rather then the film itself. But like I said I could do better.