Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

A Christmas Horror Story Blu-ray Movie Review

Visions of Bloody Sugarplums

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 18, 2015

Who remembers The Night the Reindeer Died? It was a fictitious Christmas special promoted by Bill Murray's cynical network executive in Scrooged, where Santa and his elves were trapped in an action movie spoof that got progressively more ridiculous, capped by the arrival of Six Million Dollar Man star Lee Majors. That story was positively tame compared to what happens at the North Pole in A Christmas Horror Story, the ingenious new anthology film from Canada's Copperheart Entertainment, creators of Ginger Snaps and its sequels.

Although it was inspired by Creepshow, A Christmas Horror Story (or "ACHS") isn't an "anthology" in the strict sense. With the exception of the North Pole entry, all of the stories are set in the same town, and they intersect and overlap. The town is Bailey Downs, which is not a coincidence. It's the same town where the Ginger Snaps series is set, and it's also the town where one of the clones resides in the BBC series Orphan Black, on which ACHS co-directors Grant Harvey and Brett Sullivan both regularly work in various capacities. And, of course, the name "Bailey" immediately suggests a famous fictional family from Bedford Falls whose trials and tribulations are the subject of one of the most beloved Christmas films of all time. But Bailey Downs is nothing like Bedford Falls, and no one with even a faint resemblance to Clarence the Angel (2nd Class) will be making an appearance this Christmas Eve.

After premiering at the Fantasia International Film Festival in July 2015, ACHS received a limited theatrical release the following October and was also released via video-on-demand. Image Entertainment is now issuing it on Blu-ray just in time for the holidays. It's the perfect stocking stuffer for anyone who loves horror comedies.

ACHS opens with the image of a bloodied and embattled Santa (George Buza) bracing himself at the entrance of his workshop complex to repel what sounds like the main assault of an invasion that has visibly taken its toll on jolly St. Nick. The film then rewinds twelve hours to show how the siege began. Intercut with this epic battle are four tales unfolding simultaneously in and around Bailey Downs.

In what is, on the surface, the most peaceful venue, local DJ Dangerous Dan does his Christmas Eve broadcast, bringing cheer to the town's citizenry. Dan is played by the legendary William Shatner, who uses every verbal trick in his considerable arsenal to play a man who's determined to make everyone feel good, including himself. It's a tall order for Bailey Downs, because this is the one-year anniversary of a horrific double homicide of two teenagers in the basement of the local high school. The spookily ritualistic murder remains unsolved, and the town has never recovered. As Dan broadcasts late into the night, the undercurrent of sadness and despair becomes increasingly difficult to conceal.

The cop who discovered the bodies, Scott Peters (Adrian Holmes), was so traumatized by the experience that he has taken a leave from the force and is now spending Christmas with his wife, Kim (Oluniké Adeliyi), and their young son, Will (Orion John). Trying a little too hard to have an old-fashioned family holiday, Scott takes Kim and Will into the woods to cut down their family tree, but he ignores the "No Trespassing" signs surrounding the land of Big Earl (Alan C. Peterson). The Peters family brings home the perfect tree, but they bring back something else that isn't nearly as festive. As the mysterious presence makes itself known, the Peters household comes to resemble a Freudian Halloween nightmare more than a Yuletide celebration. (ACHS's producer and co-director Steven Hoban won my admiration when, in the behind-the-scenes featurette, he referred to this story as "transgressive".)

High school students Molly (Zoé De Grand Maison), Dylan (Shannon Kook) and Ben (Alex Ozerov) have returned to the scene of last year's crime, so that Molly can tape the ultimate journalistic report. Don't worry though; this segment of ACHS does not involve anything so ordinary as "found footage". The trio barely gets the camera on before uncanny forces manifest themselves, with doors that mysteriously lock and unlock of their own free will, ethereal sounds, fleeting apparitions and bizarre ailments. Like so many locales in horror films, the maze of corridors beneath the school has a dark history, which erupts into the present with evil intent.

The fourth story involves the Bauers, a Bailey Downs family visiting their forbidding Austrian relation, Aunt Edda (Corinne Conley), who sounds like Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein and looks just as stern. The Bauers quarrel in the car all the way to their aunt's gothic home, because no one really wants to see her, but the father, Taylor (Jeff Clarke), thinks it's smart to cozy up to a wealthy relative on Christmas Eve. Wife Diane (Michelle Nolden) can't believe the old bat will be fooled, and daughter Caprice (Amy Forsyth) would rather stay home. Son Duncan (Percy Hynes White) is just bored, but at his aunt's he becomes intrigued by an old world figurine representing the Krampus, who is Santa Claus's demonic opposite. Although Aunt Edda's handyman, Gerhardt (Julian Richings, whose gaunt face is ideal for horror films), warns the family to take the Krampus legend seriously, his warnings are ignored, as such warnings usually are.

Directors Harvey, Hoban and Sullivan split up the individual stories among them, with each director shooting one or more sections of the film as separate, self-contained short films. Then Sullivan, who is also an editor, and D. Gillian Truster, who works on Orphan Black, intercut them so that the individual tales play off one another, often to great comic effect, especially when cutting back to Shatner’s Dangerous Dan gamely cheerleading for the spirit of Christmas. The entire film accelerates toward a conclusion that effectively ties up as many loose ends as possible, but there's plenty left for a second installment. One gets the feeling that Bailey Downs has only begun to yield up its bloody secrets. As for the North Pole, it can always be rebuilt.

A Christmas Horror Story Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Although A Christmas Horror Story had three directors, a single cinematographer shot the entire film, Gavin Smith (Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed). The film was shot digitally with post-production completed on a digital intermediate, from which Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced by a direct digital path. The Blu-ray image is clean, sharp and detailed, with solid blacks that work effectively for the many dark scenes in basements, nighttime forests and other places where danger lurks. Except for the North Pole, which has an otherworldly quality to its light and palette, ACHS begins with bright and normal colors, but each segment quickly descends into something dim and unsettling. The exception is Dangerous Dan's studio, where the brightly festive holiday decorations seem to be struggling harder each time the film cuts back to them from the increasingly dark proceedings in the other stories.

Image has mastered ACHS with an average bitrate of 20.99, which seems to have been adequate given the digital origination and a large number of "calm before the storm" scenes, of which the compression appears to have taken full advantage.

A Christmas Horror Story Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

ACHS's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, uses deep (deep) bass extension to create unease and convey the power of the supernatural forces attacking various characters. To be more specific would be a crime, as would describing the many detailed sound effects that come at the viewer from various directions during the course of several tales, just as they come at the unsuspecting characters on screen. Suffice it to say that the mix can be lively and involving, when the need arises. It can also be still and suspenseful at the right moments. The segments involving DJ Dangerous Dan are probably the least showy in terms of sound editing, but who needs effects when you have the great William Shatner giving one of his over-the-top performances? His dialogue is clear, and so is everyone else's, except for that spoken by creatures who aren't trying to be understood. The energetic horror score is by Alex Khaskin (The ABCs of Death 2).

A Christmas Horror Story Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 14:45): This EPK-style featurette offers an overview of the film's development and production. It features interviews with producer/director Steven Hoban, his co-producer Mark Smith (who talks about Hoban's dual role), co-directors Grant Harvey and Brett Sullivan and various members of the cast. Unfortunately, William Shatner is not among the interviewees, but George Buza clearly enjoyed playing a different kind of Santa.



• Bonus Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Odd Thomas and WolfCop, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

A Christmas Horror Story Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The upcoming Krampus from Universal Pictures may turn out to be a holiday horror classic, but it already has serious competition. ACHS is cleverly written and skillfully made by people who know their genre conventions and understand how to use audience expectations creatively, especially when intertwining horror elements with Christmas imagery. The film provides laughs, jump-scares, a plethora of deaths, plenty of gore and even a sex scene. It's everything a horror fan could wish for, in a quality Blu-ray presentation. Highly recommended.