“He left me, as a reminder of what happens when hope is lost, when belief is forgotten, and the Christmas spirit dies.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking: it’s Christmas and, conceptually speaking, a dead Christmas spirit is not all that Christmas-y.
Sure, fair point… but what about hope? Belief? The fight to find that spirit? To earn it? To keep it alive?
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start over.
Growing up, Christmas was my favorite holiday. Presents aside, it was a time of year which celebrated games, good food and, of course, movies. My parents weren’t the biggest movie watchers, but, like the rest of their Christmas celebrating peers, they welcomed in all of the classic Christmas movies come Thanksgiving eve.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but these films were my first glimpse into genre aesthetic. The first time I was able to recognize tropes and archetypes, see reoccurring themes and enjoy the comfort of observing such similarities. After all, Christmas movies are sort of their own genre, are they not? They all tend to involve similar visual motifs, narrative thrusts and typically land somewhere warm, fuzzy and endearing.
Of course, I didn’t find my way to horror until much later and it was only then that I began to realize that my favorite time of year as a child had a darker side; that Christmas movies had roots which extended deep into the murky depths of horror. As I grew older and faced more hardship, I realized that these films were as much about finding the Christmas spirit as they were about maintaining it. More often than not, they were about fighting for it.
Slowly but surely, I reevaluated my favorite Christmas films. I noticed that at the heart of the hilarious and heartwarming Home Alone (1990) was the story about two grown men attempting to capture and more than likely murder a little boy. That behind The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)— quiet, it was my first introduction to the classic tale, alright— was a chilling ghost story about death, regret and the human condition.
Hell, even Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) is about toxic masculinity, bullying and features a horrific, yet misunderstood monster.
Indeed, horror’s blood ran through the veins of Christmas movies, providing the sense of chill and whimsy such films require to counterbalance their more saccharine tendencies. And when I discovered Christmas horror movies, those which fully embraced the darkness beneath the sheen of the red and green lights, I found a sub-genre that perfectly spoke to both my past and future cinematic proclivities.
So, when I heard that Michael Doughtery would be bringing his voice to Christmas horror with Krampus (2015), I was ecstatic. His previous film, Trick ‘r Treat (2007), is one of my all time favorites and a film that magnificently captures the holiday for which is was designed. If he brought even half of that sentiment to Krampus… then we would all be in for a treat.
And, lucky for us, Dougherty delivered.
The film encapsulates both sides of the Christmas genre, homaging the classic, family-oriented comedic tendencies of a film like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) as well as the zany, monstrousness and danger present in something like Gremlins (1984). It’s rooted in the challenging nature of belief and love but told in a manner darkly befitting the supernatural elements of those sentiments.
On top of the superb story and strong sense of character, the film employs a great deal of practical effects to provide weight, urgency and real stakes to the trials onscreen. These moments bring the general affectation of the first two acts to a head, forcing the character’s pettiness and discontent to transform into raw brutality and unfiltered emotion. At the same time, they allow for the levity required to make the horrific relatable and maintain the audience’s empathy for the characters on the screen.
No scene better represents the triumphs of this film as it navigates these waters and crosses genre lines, than that where Tom, Sarah and Linda first discover the full grown Clown Toy in the attic. A dread-inducing trek into the unknown featuring an impressively disturbing practical creature, the sequence conveys a subtle sense of absurdity, openly nodding at the ludicrous nature of the horror on display.
On the page, the scene is brief but sharp. It’s poetically written and invokes a sense of awe that matches the character’s fear and inspires the reader’s imagination. On screen, Michael Dougherty brought the words to life with stunning practical effects, fantastic performances and moody atmosphere, evolving the words on the page and bringing a more human element to the moment so as to engage the audience visually as the screenplay did imaginatively.
THE SCENE
Tom, Sarah and Linda move through the attic, following strange sounds. They come upon a wooden box, its lever turning slowly. Their flashlights follow a fabric clad body emerging from the box, which grows in girth until they discover it to be a demented clown toy. The clown’s horrific jaw is dislocated and its arms are shoving Jordan’s legs into its belly. The three scream and Tom opens fire after Sarah prompts him. The creature stirs and slithers away, out of sight.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
Weaving their way through a maze of junk, Tom, Sarah and Linda follow the CHEWING NOISES to the far side of the attic.
The scene opens with the three adults nervously navigating the attic as if they’ve never stepped foot in it before. Their actions feel right out of a slasher film, complete with a nervous character wielding a weapon he neither knows how to operate nor wishes to it in the first place.
Tom readies his gun.
Within seconds, the flashlights illuminate what looks like a small WOODEN BOX, a faded JACK-IN-THE-BOX with a tiny handle — similar to the one Beth found when she was taken. The camera pans down onto the box, lying lopsided before them. In the background, the characters are obscured by the bright beams of their flashlights. The box becomes the centrepiece of the scene, emerging in the frame like some lost relic.
Already, the camera work and lighting is working to create a sense of awe and wonder, something that could be played for adrenaline infused excitement as well as dread. The screenplay offers character moments here such as They exchange nervous glances and Linda is shaking so badly, but the film cuts right to the chase, pushing more immediate reactions as opposed to thoughtful build-up.
The lid is already open, but instead of a toy, something else has emerged from the box. Some sort of “creature”…
The words, purposefully ambiguous, invite the reader to be creative in their depiction of the creature. They play with expectation. They speak of the thing as emerging from the box as something else, a phrase written in italics to further distance the creature from normality and place it somewhere distant… dangerous. Even the end of the paragraph offers little insight into the thing’s physicality, placing the word creature in quotes and ending on an ellipses.
The lines place the reader into the shoes of the three people standing before it, their flashlights hovering over its massive form— unsure of what exactly it is, drawn to their eventual discovery and yet repulsed by the notion all the same.
Onscreen, this plays out so quickly and so subtly that it is hardly evident, but its certainly informative, if only in the steady creeping of their flashlights as they follow the creature’s form. The lights move slowly across the box, toward the source of the grotesque and growling throaty noises, mixed with a low, hungry gurgling referred to in the screenplay only as the aforementioned CHEWING NOISES.
A medium wide shot of the box, its lever slowly turning, releasing sporadic, pinging chimes as it does, begins the slow pan up the creature’s form— the character’s flashlights the only light source, placing the viewer in their shoes. On paper, it reads:
Flashlights pan across its thick serpentine abdomen — like a massive fleshy intestine sprawled across the floor, only at least eight feet long and horrifyingly bloated and distended.
In the film, the creature is clothed in fabric, making its appearance more like that of a hideously oversized toy rather than a fleshy intestine. However, the imagery of the scripted creature is still present, one imagines, under the fabric. Still, the idea of it being bloated and distended is clear and, just like in the script, deeply unsettling. The continued repugnant sounds of the creature also serve to amplify its odious nature as the camera moves closer and closer to revealing its face.
Finally, the creature raises its head, its back to the camera, wearing a bright, red jesters hat. The creature’s face is clearly painted white like that of a porcelain doll. Here, the screenplay reads: A scream rises in Linda’s throat, before going on to reveal and describe the creature. In the film, the camera cuts away to a medium-close up of Tom and Sarah instead, allowing Tom the opportunity to say the unscripted line as the music drops out:
“Come on!”
Even in the midst of the terror and dread, the film smartly refuses to let go of the levity and ridiculousness which permeates the situation. Then, the camera cuts to the reveal as the giant head turns toward the three onlookers:
Its upper body is that of A CLOWN. A dirty, ragged HARLEQUIN TOY that clawed its way out of a childhood nightmare into reality.
The description is specific but still ambiguous, leaving out the more ghastly details in an effort to conjure a far more frightening sensibility. Frankly, I can imagine little more terrifying than something which has “clawed” its way out of a “childhood nightmare”.
Onscreen, the creature is rendered as scripted, again its face that of a painted porcelain clown’s but its maw more closely resembling the earlier, unused description of its torso: fleshy. The way the doll-like exterior juxtaposes against the meaty, greasy gums of the thing’s mouth feels, again, alarming and wrong. All of it continuing to suggest a hidden monstrousness to what we might normally feel is safe and as it appears.
The screenplay continues: Even worse, the Clown’s stubby arms are clutching JORDAN’S LEGS — shoving her head first into its dislocated jaws, trying to swallow her whole. This is done as the scene cuts back and forth between the creature and the adults watching it. The characters are far more verbal in their responses, screaming and audibly reacting to the horrors before them as opposed to the silent, wordless terror they seem to employ in the script.
The change makes for a more engaging sequence that feels visceral and, above all, real. What sells the ludicrous nature of the creature are the reactions to it. The film expands on the imaginative nature of the screenplay and tangibly provides an avenue toward facing childlike terror from an adult perspective in the real world.
A further example comes after the lingering shot of Jordan’s feet as they disappear beneath a mouth of razor sharp teeth jutting out of the monster’s lumpy pink gums, when the clown takes a handkerchief and wipes its mouth. Then, it burps. The creature itself, much like the narrative of the film, is an inversion of everything that Christmas represents. It devours children rather than strengthening them. It doesn’t warm or comfort. It frightens, stalks and even mocks its victims.
After cutting back to Linda, Jordan’s mother, as she screams in agony, the Clown once again takes center frame. It releases a multi-toned, high-pitched screech— an animalistic cry that sounds like it should be coming from some horrible, carnivore found in the Jurassic Park franchise rather than a Christmas movie. Placing the disconcerting screech alongside a burp played for laughs again shows the duality of the emotion onscreen. The bizarre line that Christmas and horror walk is often torn between comfort and fear. Belief… and the lack thereof. Still, Christmas is a night of magic and infinite possibility, or so we’re told.
The screenplay takes a slightly different route to get to a similar point:
The Clown then winks its black soulless eyes as GULP — Jordan is fully devoured. Then, horribly, it wipes his putrid mouth and SMILES. Delicioussss.
No mention of the adult’s reactions, no mention of a burp and a wink that never occurs. However, the sentences provide an omniscient, expository acknowledgement of the creature’s state of mind. A way of telling the reader: this thing knows what it’s doing and it’s having fun doing it. A sentiment which makes the creature all the more frightening.
As written, the scene concludes: As Linda finally SCREAMS. In the film, the image cuts to a close up of Sarah as she shouts “Shoot it!” repeatedly to a petrified Tom, who struggles to find the nerve. Eventually, he does shoot, prompting the monster to dart into the darkness, slithering away and dragging its wooden box along the ground in its wake.
Rather than concluding on a release, a scream, the introduction to a full on creature ends in action. It’s then that the characters take ownership of their situation and that Sarah claims agency in the face of her fear.
It’s the first step in a long line of actions and decisions that will see the characters through the remainder of the film’s runtime. They’ll grow, evolve and reunite as a family— regardless of whether they emerge victorious or not.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
On the commentary track found on the Krampus blu-ray disc (Available here), Michael Dougherty recalled his aims when setting out to make Krampus:
“[I wanted to] carefully ride that line between what’s scary and what’s funny and cute and creepy and try to be in that perfect sweet spot.”
I always loved Christmas growing up and a big part of that love was born out of my passion for the season’s movies. As I grew up, I began to look deeper into those films which had defined the holiday and, slowly but surely, I came to realize that Christmas movies and horror were intertwined. They shared a message of perseverance that truly resonated with me: the idea that hope did not always come so easy and often our greatest enemies were our own insecurities.
Krampus is a film in the classic tradition of the greatest Christmas movies, placing character at the forefront and leveraging the supernatural elements of the holiday to instigate emotional change. So too does it play as a great horror film, inciting dread slowly and carefully throughout the film and bringing impressive practical creatures to life on screen to make the inverse of the Christmas spirit a tangible villain. All of this is apparent in the script and powerfully visualized, encapsulated in the moment when the characters first encounter the full grown clown.
In the commentary, Michael Dougherty explains that it took three people working in tandem to puppeteer the Clown, two in the torso and one in the head. In the feature “Behind the Scenes at WETA Workshop: KRAMPUS”, located on the same disc, the creators explain that a person (rather than an animatronic or elaborate puppet) provides more believable movement to a creature of that sort.
In that same feature, actress Allison Tolman who portrayed Linda talks about having to film an entire day of screaming in the face of the clown. In reflection, she remarks, “I don’t know if I would have kept it up with such intensity if I didn’t have this disgusting thing in front of me.”
Christmas and horror go hand in hand. Both regard belief. A sense of the unknown. Both unite their narrative’s protagonists under an affirming belief in self and capability. A realization of worth and an appreciation of those you love in the face of doubt, loss or even disaster— an enduring steadfastness toward what is right.
Krampus presents these ideas by way of visceral horror made real, utilizing the sort of practical effects so often absent in more modern horror fare. In this way, not only do the visuals land with more impact, but the performances are informed in an altogether different, more effective manner. The film is a loving homage to movies which populate both the light and the dark end of the Christmas and horror movie spectrum, deserving of a place sitting alongside them.
Ultimately, like all great films, Krampus works because the characters work. They’re flawed. Human. In Dougherty’s words from the commentary:
“[they’re] smart horror movie characters… armed with flashlights, guns and access and knew they were going up against something real.”
It’s that sense of realism mixed into the ridiculous that makes the film land. The difficulty of their fight that makes it, as Dougherty pointed out, real. And, even if it comes at a great cost, they fight for their Christmas spirit… and they earn it.
They keep it alive, at all costs.
I can’t think of anything more Christmas-y than that.
Written by: Michael Dougherty, Todd Casey & Zach Shields and Directed by Michael Dougherty
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