Radio DJ Dangerous Dan (William Shatner) is hosting his annual Christmas Eve show while slowly getting sloshed; meanwhile, Santa is fighting off zombie elves, a group of teens are investigating a haunted murder site, a married couple's son is replaced by a 'changeling', and a greedy family have an encounter with Krampus, the anti-Santa.
It took quite a while for me to realise that A Christmas Horror Story was an anthology (the title is a tad misleading, suggesting just one story), and when I did, I was more than a little disappointed: I had been looking forward to seeing how they were cleverly going to connect all of the different plot threads.
As an anthology, the film is sorely lacking. Rather than concentrate on one tale at a time, the film cuts back and forth between the stories, making it hard for the viewer to become too involved in any of the action. Furthermore, none of the episodes have particularly effective endings, whilst the 'wraparound' scenes of DJ Dangerous Dan are fairly pointless and exist simply to add some star power in the form of the ageing Shatner.
On the plus side, the 'Santa vs the elves' story delivers some fun gore, the jolly old fellow slicing up several of the toothy little monsters with his staff, and the tale about the teens in trouble offers some eye-candy for the fellas in the form of pretty redhead Zoé De Grand Maison, who has a steamy sex scene, albeit one without any nudity.
My rating: 5/10. While I'd still rather watch this sort of thing over saccharine seasonal pap like Miracle on 34th Street or It's a Wonderful Life, there are many much better Christmas themed horror films to be had.
It took quite a while for me to realise that A Christmas Horror Story was an anthology (the title is a tad misleading, suggesting just one story), and when I did, I was more than a little disappointed: I had been looking forward to seeing how they were cleverly going to connect all of the different plot threads.
As an anthology, the film is sorely lacking. Rather than concentrate on one tale at a time, the film cuts back and forth between the stories, making it hard for the viewer to become too involved in any of the action. Furthermore, none of the episodes have particularly effective endings, whilst the 'wraparound' scenes of DJ Dangerous Dan are fairly pointless and exist simply to add some star power in the form of the ageing Shatner.
On the plus side, the 'Santa vs the elves' story delivers some fun gore, the jolly old fellow slicing up several of the toothy little monsters with his staff, and the tale about the teens in trouble offers some eye-candy for the fellas in the form of pretty redhead Zoé De Grand Maison, who has a steamy sex scene, albeit one without any nudity.
My rating: 5/10. While I'd still rather watch this sort of thing over saccharine seasonal pap like Miracle on 34th Street or It's a Wonderful Life, there are many much better Christmas themed horror films to be had.