The festive season has always been a popular setting for horror movies. This may in part be a natural evolution of the old tradition for setting ghost stories on Christmas Eve, but I daresay it’s more of a Grinch-like reaction against the crassness, commercialism and artifice of the event in modern culture; how, as much as we might like to claim it’s all about togetherness and giving and bringing out the best in us all, for a great many of us everything that we do for the holiday is out of a sense of obligation, demanding we put on a brave face and attempt, often unsuccessfully, to bury old tensions for just the one day. The season’s ugly underbelly has been exposed in a great many festive shockers over the years, but where many of these – including but not limited to Black Christmas, Gremlins, and more recently Krampus – show Christmas going to hell in a hand basket as the result of some kind of external threat, we all know the true source horror in the holidays: your own family.
Director/co-writer Adam Marcus’s Secret Santa may have a title which would seem to imply it’s another Saint Nick slasher in the vein of You Better Watch Out and Silent Night, Deadly Night, but one film it brought to mind for me almost immediately was You’re Next. If you recall how the first half hour or so of Adam Wingard’s home invasion horror went, we got the impression that if the masked assailants hadn’t showed up when they did, the family dinner probably would have turned into a bloodbath soon enough anyway. Secret Santa takes a similar conceit, and plays it out to the logical extreme.
We centre on a wealthy family having their annual reunion at the most wonderful time of the year. Adult siblings April (A. Leslie Kies), Penny (Ryan Leigh Seaton), Kyle (Drew Lynch) and stepbrother Jackson (Nathan Hedrick) head down to the idyllic family holiday home, with April’s boyfriend Ty (Michael Rady) and Jackson’s girlfriend Jacqueline (Michelle Renee Allaire) in tow. There, they all grit their teeth and brace themselves for their overbearing mother Shari (Debra Sullivan), their equally unbearable aunt Carol (Pat Destro), and their ineffectual uncle Carter (Curtis Fortier).
Just when it looks like it’s going to be the usual, awkward display of half-hearted declarations of familial affection, back-handed compliments and passive-aggressive displays of disappointment, things get a whole lot more uncomfortable with the unexpected arrival of their father Leonard (John Gilbert), long since divorced and legally withheld from such family gatherings, but whose success in the pharmaceutical industry has paid for pretty much all the family’s luxury. With extreme reluctance, Shari allows her ex-husband to stay, and the family soon take to the table to dine on the feast (which Shari claims to have slaved over when everyone knows it was the work of the caterers), whilst sipping on punch and indulging in their annual tradition of playing Secret Santa. However, tensions soon rise to literal breaking point, and verbal sparring gives way to full-on physical violence. Whilst the family struggles to process the shocking events that unfurl, it becomes apparent that there may be something more than just fruit, sugar and booze in the punch bowl.
It’s worth acknowledging that Adam Marcus has long been a bit of a divisive figure among horror fans. While his CV may not be all that extensive, it includes 1993’s Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (his debut as writer-director at the age of only 25), and screenwriting duties on 2013’s Texas Chainsaw 3D. Both of these films tend to be classed among the worst entries in their respective franchises, so we might be forgiven for having little interest in what their creator has come up with since. A further warning sign might be identified in Secret Santa’s readily apparent low budget, with cheap-looking digital cinematography and sound, and worse yet an over-reliance on unconvincing CGI splatter: and that’s all the more dispiriting when none other than Robert Kurtzman is listed as the head of special make-up FX, as well as an executive producer.
However, while Secret Santa may leave a bit to be desired on a technical/aesthetic level, it stands head and shoulders above most microbudget indie horror of recent years when it comes to the writing and the acting. With two generations of a family, plus partners, plus the unwitting caterers, there’s a pretty sizeable ensemble here, and the script from Marcus and Debra Sullivan (also producer) doesn’t sell any of them short. This is a film that takes even more glee in the barbed remark than the bloody exit wound, with sharp witticisms hitting hard left and right throughout. The cast, happily, is more than up to the task, all and sundry doing terrific work balancing the outrageous humour with a real sense of pathos. However, while the younger cast members all give performances to be proud of, there can be little question that their elders steal the show, as Debra Sullivan and Pat Destro give us two of the most beautifully despicable matriarchs from Hell that we’ve seen in many a moon.
Again, it’s a pity that the violence and gore aren’t as well-realised as the family drama and observational humour, and it’s hard not to wish they’d had at least a Blumhouse-sized budget with which to bring it to life; yet if we can get past these minor complaints, there’s no doubt that Secret Santa has automatically earned itself a spot at the table among the best Christmas horror movies ever. I’d say Adam Marcus more than makes up for any past sins here, and I truly hope this paves the way for bigger, even better films from him and his team at Skeleton Crew.
Secret Santa is available now on DVD, and comes to VOD on 3rd December, from Signature Entertainment.