Mother Krampus: A Horrible Holiday Horror

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: BRIEF YELLOW LIGHT PRODUCTIONS, PROPORTION PRODUCTIONS, ITN DISTRIBUTION, LEFT FILMS, DAREDO MEDIA
Mother Krampus, also know as The 12 Deaths of Christmas, may seem like a classic holiday film, but falls rather flat for the Interrobang.

The newly released holiday horror, Mother Krampus, (also titled The 12 Deaths of Christmas) directed by James Klass, tried to bring some Christmas scares back to life this year. Unfortunately, with the underwhelming acting, boring story line and lack of realism, the film provoked no emotion besides boredom and maybe some disgust at the best of times.

Mother Krampus plays off the classic tale of a woman who was believed to be a witch and was kidnapping the town’s children around Christmas time. The town folk get fed up with all the disappearances so they take matter into their own hands and drag the poor woman out into the woods to have her killed. This is when the curse is laid and every twelve days of Christmas, the witch will return to take away the town’s children.

If that plotline excites you, then you may find some enjoyment in the film.

However, if it seems like a complete cliché to you, then you are most definitely right and I would recommend skipping this film. While they tried to bring some originality to the film’s story, it simply gets lost in a mess of unnecessary drama and character development.

I at least, thought the saving grace of the film would be some gnarly gore and a properly designed witch.

In the beginning of the movie, we simply see shadows and a silhouette, but as the film progresses, we start to see more and more of the witch. This ended up being a bad thing. The witch was not scary at all, had subpar makeup and was followed by some pretty annoying sound effects that almost sounded like they belonged in the Jurassic Park.

Luckily, for any film enthusiasts who enjoy some gritty gore, Mother Krampus did feature some fairly horrific scenes like making gingerbread men out of skin or turning a person into a human Christmas ornament. However, these scenes were too few and far in between to save the film.

The ultimate killer in this film was the lack of realism. While horror movies in general don’t usually do a good job of this, Mother Krampus was completely unbelievable. It was so far past the point of realism that everything seemed so corny and fake (this also took away from the decent gory scenes mentioned above). For example, if someone gets a knife to the throat, I highly doubt they could run up the stairs and then back down while breathing perfectly fine. Also, it’s hard to imagine someone getting tied up with tinsel and not being able to break free in a matter of moments.

Overall, Mother Krampus was simply a horrible holiday horror film with very little thrills and an unoriginal concept. If you are looking for a good Christmas horror, stick with some of the classics like Black Christmas.