To the best of my recollection, "O'Heilige Jul" ("Christmas Cruelty!") came out in 2013, i.e., before "Red Christmas" and is thus officially Norway's first Christmas horror movie. That said, the Norwegians have made some bloody decent slasher movies and are well known for having an "anything goes" attitude to making extreme horror (e.g., "Fritt Vilt" and "Dead Snow") "O'Heilige Jul!", though picked up by Unearthed was made on a US$ 220k budget and most of the key film crew, including the two directors (Magne Steinsvoll and Per-Ingvar Tomren) also had principal roles in the film. It thus sits firmly in underground filmmaking, and I tend to be more lenient on films made purely for the love of it and the burning need to "make a movie". Small budget films often must deal with constraints like shooting on inferior equipment, zero special effect houses being contracted and key personnel (e.g. Cinematographers and editors) not being industry professionals. It's clear that "O'Heilige Jul!", suffered amongst other things this exact list of constraints and the directors had to be ingenious in how they approached them. For instance, the anamorphic quality of the film (I assume VHS) was embraced to give the film a dirty, gritty (kinda like Schramm) and home-movie type (e.g. The first couple or minutes of Das Velangen Der Maria D.) atmosphere. Similarly, the obvious difficulties in the cutting room were embraced by exacerbating harsh cutting and cleverly adding some industry editing tropes. The film starts our serial killer Santa terrorising the captive member of a household and though it is brutal and fast paced, it is the foresight to cut away from some scenes which creates an additional layer of horror. The second act very successfully moved into character development placing the oddball dark comedy character development of the main supporting cast in juxtaposition to the calculated and sick character of the psychopathic killer. As an aside, the obsession and interaction with his daughter was written superbly. That said, the pace of the second act is way too slow create a cohesive whole and did not work in the greater movie. The third act is classic, though more extreme, final act psychopath slasher film, but with some well-scripted and -directed dark comedy sprinkled in and a great in-house soundtrack. The gore special effects needed a lot more work but did not destroy the film and at times worked pretty well (esp the knife work). Acting was much better than expected. All and all a very decent no-budget psycho slasher. 7/10.
Review of Christmas Cruelty!
