Ticketworthy - Christmas at the Kringles

There are many wonderful examples of holiday-themed horror movies that range from cute to funny to even actually scary. Movies like Black Christmas, Gremlins, Thanksgiving, and Heart Eyes have all been perfectly fun and enjoyable horror twists on traditional holiday films. They, and plenty of other movies like them, have also been well-received over the years and developed cult reputations. So, it’s not terribly surprising that another entry to the genre has found its way to the big screen in Christmas at the Kringles. What is surprising, aside from the fact that it was released on Halloween weekend despite clearly being a Christmas movie, is just how little effort appears to have gone into literally every aspect of the film. The jokes are terrible, the scares don’t exist, the action is poorly choreographed, and the plot really doesn’t matter. It’s like whatever the opposite of a Christmas miracle is.

The story, such as it is, is about the Severson family. They move to the suburbs from “the city” (which is never named and remains the lone funny bit throughout the film) and find themselves living next door to a Christmas-obsessed family, the Kringles. While Mark Severson (Ron Livingston) doesn’t really care for their new neighbors, his wife (Rachel Bilson) and son (Jack Jewkes) are drawn in by the seemingly warm and festive nature of the Kringles. To nobody’s surprise, the merry façade the family puts on turns out to be hiding a dark and twisted secret, and it’s up to Mark to rescue his family from the Kringles’ murderous clutches.

Had the movie cared even a little bit about its plot, there’s actually not a bad horror-comedy hiding in that premise. A family of Christmas-loving psychopaths murdering their neighbors could make for a very fun movie. Sadly, Christmas at the Kringles is in too much of a rush to get to the next joke or the next bit of gore to even try to make anything of its premise. Maybe you could justify that approach if said jokes were funny, but they aren’t. At one point in the film, a gruff mall Santa is forced to fight a Christmas gimp, then a grandmother that only sometimes speaks in an Eastern European accent for reasons that are never properly explained. The movie treats this like the height of humor, with the titular Kringles quipping and laughing incessantly while it happens. It is exhausting.

The movie gets no help from the cast, who in turn get no help from the script. The writing is nonsensical, sure, but the acting is doing nothing to elevate it. There are very funny people in this movie, but none of them manage to salvage anything out of the mess. Thomas Lennon comes closest as the patriarch of the Kringle family; he has a few moments where you can see the talent and humor creeping through, but even he ultimately gives in to exaggerated camp that is mostly just annoying to watch.

There might be some salvaging the experience if the action or gore was particularly good, but Christmas at the Kringles manages to fail there too. None of the violence is inventive or even that exciting, quite a lot of it actually happens offscreen, and yet somehow the movie is soaked in the fakest blood I have ever seen. I didn’t know a film could be this over-the-top and somehow also incredibly boring, but it manages.

Meanwhile, it’s not as though the film even has anything interesting or insightful to say. It isn’t a critique of consumerism or the commercialization of the holidays. It treats Mark not being excited about Christmas as a character flaw, except he’s also completely right and his lack of holiday spirit is the only thing that ends up saving the day. There’s some vague commentary about appreciating your family, but it doesn’t really get that much time to develop and gets undermined when Mark’s inattention and absence are the only reasons he’s not captured with everyone else. Not every movie has to have a message, but you kind of expect one in a Christmas movie. Especially one that has so little else going for it.

While watching the movie, I was actively trying to find aspects of it that I could say were good. Maybe there are some things you can enjoy if you don’t really think about them all. In the end, though, I realized I was spending more effort looking for something to praise than the filmmakers seemed to spend just making an enjoyable film. Christmas at the Kringles is the kind of movie you turn on as background noise while scrolling on your phone. I’m not sure what naughty list I was put on to end up having to sit through this one, but I’d rather have just gotten coal.