For a while now it has been pretty standard practice to flip Santa and make him a character to be feared. Christmas Evil attempts this but never makes it off the Naughty List.
Harry and his little brother Phil, along with their mother, stay up one night to witness Santa come down their chimney. They stay quiet long enough to see him lay out some presents, wash his hands, and then eat some cookies. One of the boys giggles and Santa becomes aware of them watching him. He acknowledges them and then disappears up the chimney. Later we see Harry trying to sleep in his bed unsuccessfully. He sneaks back downstairs to find his mother and Santa are, let’s just say, getting more closely acquainted. Harry is distraught by this and runs back upstairs to the attic and breaks his Christmas snow globe.
Flash-forward about 30ish years and Harry lives in his apartment covered in Christmas decorations. Harry has taken it upon himself to watch the neighborhood children and check if they are being “naughty or nice.” Harry takes note of their actions and puts their names and deeds in his books to keep track of the good and the bad kids. Harry is also a newly appointed manager at the Jolly Dreams toy company. He enjoys his life and his job but soon realizes that his co-workers are taking advantage of him. They call him names and make him take shifts he doesn’t want because he is the manager and also a pushover. Pushed too far, Harry snaps and takes out his rage on the people he deems to be on the “naughty list.”
I don’t know that this movie deserves much of a review. Christmas Evil, aka You Better Watch Out, aka Terror in Toyland is a really boring movie. Sure, it’s creepy to see a man watching kids to determine if they are naughty or nice, but that’s the premise of that song anyway. Besides the killing part, the movie is basically the song “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” but taken to a weird murderous extreme. It was just odd and sometimes confusing. For some reason, Harry, as a kid, decides to cut his hand with broken glass from the snow globe after the initial incident. Why? No idea, as it is never explained in any way. Maybe it was a bad transfer that Amazon had but the movie was incredibly dark. Not dark as in “moody” just physically dark. It was hard to see what was happening and I was watching it at night with the lights off. Can’t recommend this one except to the most curious of horror fans out there.
Comments