Deck the halls with a Christmas anthology, because A Christmas Horror Story (2015) unwraps and stitches together four tales that unfold under the glow of Christmas Eve. One story roars to life like a sleigh ride through a snowstorm, wild and thrilling, another struggles to keep the candle lit, while the other two falter, one so bad it’s practically buried in a snowdrift.
We’ll carve through these tales from best to worst, but brace for a wild ride: watching A Christmas Horror Story feels less like a movie and more like flipping through late-night TV, just as you start to settle into one segment, it abruptly cuts to another. Each story is broken into smaller chunks, making it hard to fully invest before the narrative jumps again.
Playing a host-like role is William Shatner as Dangerous Dan, a jolly radio host whose Yuletide cheer crackles through the airwaves as he reports on local events in the fictional town of Bailey Downs, where the anthology takes place. He’s the movie’s secret weapon, but his segments are like scattered gingerbread crumbs: too few and far between, leaving the movie in need of a whole lot more Shatner under the tree.
Santa Claus vs. Zombie Elves
Ho-ho-horror, the crown jewel of this anthology. Starring a Santa Claus (George Buza) who’s more Rambo than Rudolph, he faces a full-blown holiday apocalypse when sickly elf Jingles (Joe Silvaggio) snaps after Mrs. Claus offers him a cookie. In an absurd fit of rage, the elf loses his mind and hacks into his own hand, unleashing a bloody infection that turns his once-jolly kin into a horde of ravenous zombie elves that are about to ruin Christmas.
Santa is an entertaining, ass-kicking badass, wading through buckets of gore and snarling, foul-mouthed elves that would make Rudolph blush, even squaring off in a Mortal Kombat-style showdown with Krampus himself. The cherry on top? You’ll just have to wait and see. Without this segment, the anthology would be like getting coal in your stocking.
The Changeling Tree
This segment feels like it had the brightest spark of potential, especially if you were looking for a more grounded tale without the outrageousness of the Santa bonanza. Unfortunately, it's the one most undermined by the anthology’s choppy, fragmented structure. A family, searching for the perfect Christmas tree, trespasses onto a cursed lot nestled among the evergreens. Their son slips away into the woods, only to be found later curled inside the hollow of an ancient tree, his soul now touched by something dark.
The story aches for more time to develop its haunted family and the mysterious landowner who steps in, trying to help piece their lives back together.
Krampus’s Hunt
The "tinsel-filler" segment of the anthology, a monster ordeal with Krampus in the spotlight, that doesn’t offer up much to get excited about. A family trudges to their grumpy Aunt Edda’s, where the holiday spirit is nowhere to be found, and even less so when their clumsy son shatters a Krampus ornament, unleashing evil as they become hunted.
The Haunted School
This spectral snooze is the anthology’s biggest misfit, as enjoyable as we’d imagine eating yellow snow to be. A group of thrill-seeking teens sneaks into their school’s basement, drawn by whispers of a double murder that still haunts its walls. Compared to the others, it feels like it wandered in from an entirely different movie, its tone and atmosphere completely out of sync with the rest of the anthology.
Once locked in the basement, we’re stuck with a story that drags its feet, taking up far too much screen time with dull, cardboard characters who can’t lift it. It’s the segment that overstays its welcome, dragging the entire anthology down.
A Christmas Horror Story would have been far more effective to let each story shine on its own, unfolding in full, aside from the school segment, which should just be dismissed altogether. We could see this approach working had the stories been tightly woven together, though none of them are connected in a way that justifies the choppy, disjointed storytelling.
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