Krampus: Origins, despite the name, doesn’t actually show us how Krampus came to be. Instead, it shows us how Krampus got to Arizona from Europe. The film starts out in France during WW1 with a decent firefight between the Germans and the Allies. These first scenes are, unfortunately, the most violent and entertaining part of the film.
This movie is incredibly slow, taking place mostly in an orphanage in Arizona run by nuns and a drunk priest. We have over an hour of watch time before getting to see the Krampus at all, who inexplicably first shows up as a creepy kid with demonic black eyes. His obviously evil appearance troubles literally no one at the orphanage except the resident cleaning lady (witch?), who he promptly Force-chokes the moment she tries to warn the clueless nuns about him.
That, apparently, is the cue for the build-up to the climax of the film, where we get no gore at all, just a several minute long scene of the impressively re-imagined Krampus giving an expositive speech about his master plan for abducting children. By this time, he’s also killed all the adults at the orphanage except the cleaning lady and a teacher, but we don’t get to see them die. We just find them dead with what are clearly not fatal wounds, but we’re supposed to believe that facial scratches can be deadly.
To call this movie bad would be doing a serious disservice to all the bad movies out there that I love. This movie is boring, plain and simple. It’s barely classifiable as a horror movie. I’d call it gothic suspense, I suppose, where the suspense is mostly the audience asking, “How long does this movie go on?”
Krampus: Origins is a sad departure from the other fun, bloody horror movies which feature Krampus. While this isn’t especially surprising, considering it wasn’t produced, written, or directed by the same people in the big franchise – it is disappointing.
Review screener provided
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