KRAMPUS: THE RECKONING (2015)

Studio:       Uncork’d Entertainment
Director:    Robert Conway
Writer:       Robert Conway, Owen Conway
Producer:  Owen Conway, Joseph Mbah, Robert Conway, Justin Anderson
Stars:     Monica Engesser, Amelia Haberman, James Ray, Kevin Tye, Sean G.P. Anderson, Owen Conway, Carrie Fee, Shawn Saavedra, Nathaniel Burns

Review Score:

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Summary:

A child psychologist works the strange case of an orphan who can summon Krampus to kill naughty people with fire.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Padlocked in her bedroom by her abusive foster mother Katie Hoelzer, eight-year-old orphan Zoe Weaver takes a homemade Krampus doll out of her small sewing kit. Zoe removes the chain binding Krampus’ wrists and puts him with yarn dolls made to look like her foster parents. Krampus supernaturally appears and burns Katie and her husband Teddy to death.

A neighbor finds the bodies the next day and calls the police. Investigating officers find Zoe still locked in her bedroom.

Child psychologist Rachel Stewart meets detectives Miles O’Connor and James Cegan at the hospital. Dr. Tom Jennings takes Rachel to interview Zoe. Zoe only tells Rachel that “he” took her foster parents because they were bad. Zoe then asks Rachel to bring her the sewing kit left under her bed.

Zoe frightens other patients in the children’s ward. She also has an odd encounter with nurse Joe Mooney.

Rachel retrieves the Krampus dolls and brings them to Zoe. Zoe tries asking Rachel about a burn scar on Rachel’s arm. Rachel reveals she is the foster mother of a boy named Lamaar Coleman. Zoe tells Rachel about Krampus and claims he burns people who are naughty.

Rachel later begins researching Zoe’s history and finds photographs that suggest the girl doesn’t seem to age.

Zoe uses the Krampus doll alongside another yarn doll made to resemble Joe the nurse. While Joe looks at child porn at home on his computer, Krampus appears and kills him.

Miles shows up at Rachel’s house drunk. He tells Rachel that his wife Elizabeth is divorcing him and spends the night on Rachel’s couch.

While sleeping, Rachel has a nightmare flashback to trauma seemingly experienced with her sister as a child.

The online case file for Zoe’s previous foster parents mysteriously disappears. Child Protective Services tells Rachel that the file they have on Zoe Weaver dates back to 1992.

Miles investigates the crime scene at Joe’s home. Miles connects Joe to the hospital where Zoe is.

Rachel goes to see Zoe’s previous foster mother Delores Kelly, who is now in a state of perpetual shock. Delores’ son Andy tells Rachel that after her husband Henry died in a fire, his mother swore Zoe had the devil in her and never parted from her Krampus doll. However, those events took place more than 20 years ago.

Zoe is scolded for bullying young burn patient Ashley Ellsworth. A nurse confiscates the sewing box, but Zoe holds on to the Krampus doll.

Rachel and Miles return to the hospital to see Zoe. Rachel asks about the Kelly family, but Zoe refuses to give details unless Rachel brings her some yarn. Zoe lashes out in anger and scratches Rachel’s face.

Dr. Jennings disciplines Zoe. Zoe takes yarn from a frayed blanket and makes a doll that she gives to Ashley as an apology.

Rachel tells Miles about her strange discoveries over drinks at a bar. Miles has a tense encounter with drunkard Clay Ellsworth, who fell asleep with a lit cigarette that burned down his house and disfigured his daughter Ashley. After Clay leaves the bar, Krampus kills Clay inside his car.

Miles goes home with Rachel. After kissing, Miles asks Rachel about the scar on her arm. Rachel tells Miles she doesn’t remember anything about her childhood prior to being adopted by her foster parents.

Zoe creates a Rachel doll. Rachel dreams of her and her sister reading their grandmother’s Krampus book. She also dreams of Krampus tearing out her heart during sex with Miles.

Rachel wakes to find blood on her sheets. Zoe appears in Lamaar’s room as the house begins burning. Rachel and Lamaar flee the house and drive away in Rachel’s car.

A vision of a burned girl causes Rachel to crash. She and Lamaar are taken to the hospital in critical condition.

While unconscious, Rachel has a dreamscape encounter with Zoe. Zoe tells Rachel that they were sisters. Rachel used the Krampus story to torment Zoe and ultimately started a fire that killed their parents as well as Zoe.

Dr. Jennings is unable to revive Lamaar. However, Lamaar comes back to life when Krampus kills Rachel in her vision. In reality, Rachel’s body spontaneously combusts.

Lamaar eventually recovers. Dr. Jennings tells Miles that he has no explanation for what happened to Rachel. Miles in turn tells Dr. Jennings that Zoe vanished without a trace.

Miles visits Rachel’s grave. Unknowingly, the grave of Zoe Weaver is located nearby in the same cemetery.

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Review:

“Krampus: The Reckoning” opens with young Rachel Stewart learning all about Krampus from grandma.  Oh, hold on.  The storyline has somewhere else to be all of a sudden.

Flash forward to a later date at another place with different people.  Troubled orphan Zoe Weaver has bones to pick with her abusive foster parents.  From under the bed Zoe pulls a sewing kit containing a homemade Krampus toy and some yarn.  Demonstrating dexterous craftiness for an eight-year-old, Zoe recreates mean mom and dad as voodoo dolls and the Christmas devil is supernaturally summoned to torch their real selves to a quick crisp.

Reenter Rachel Stewart.  Now a child psychologist, she partners with police pal Detective Miles O’Connor to break through Zoe’s zipped lips and uncover what really happened as burnt bodies begin piling up around town.

Zoe claims Krampus is merely punishing people for being bad.  Rachel doesn’t understand what the little girl is going on about.  She has never heard of the anti-Santa Claus before.

Wait, what?  The movie makes a point to start with Rachel’s Austrian Xmas education, yet two decades later she no longer knows about Krampus?

A reason for the discrepancy is revealed later in as clunky a fashion as it is initially presented.  Clunky describes the way every element of the story is introduced, from Rachel’s adopted son she rarely interacts with to the ludicrously roundabout revenge plot keeping Krampus on his unnecessary killstreak.

An early moment in “Krampus: The Reckoning” has a trailer trash woman watching a telenovela-type TV show intentionally written and acted to be terrible.  What’s unintentionally ironic is that this purposely awful scene is indistinguishable from the poor writing and drab acting in the rest of the movie.

“Krampus: The Reckoning” is to Christmas horror movies what Silly Putty is to Christmas toys, except no fun at all.  It’s a cheap, shapeless blob of colorless goop that can hold your attention for an instant, but is destined to be discarded in a junk drawer.

Energy is absent everywhere.  Camera setups are stationary more often than not.  Actors stand still on their marks or are already seated for exhaustingly gabby exposition.

This is a film whose head is not at all in the game of telling a fluid sight and sound story.  The driving directive is to simply turn on the camera and record a script reading featuring first-timers unlikely to appear in another movie.

Actors with some experience don’t do any better.  James Ray as the lead detective speaks in a gravelly back-of-the-throat mumble sometimes difficult to decipher.  Other performers at least enunciate clearly, though that’s largely because they are just saying words and not actually acting.

The ultimate kick in the chestnuts is Krampus has next to nothing to do with the story’s true theme and barely appears in the movie at all.  Safe wager says this is probably because the creature is CGI and the production could only afford to render half a minute’s worth of footage.  Without keeping count, 30 seconds might be a generous guesstimate of how much screentime the title attraction actually has.

In the spirit of the season, I’ll give the gift of a compliment to writer/director Robert Conway for making fire Krampus’ murder modus operandi.  Effects are mostly achieved through smoke and only a few flickers of flame.  Nevertheless, putting charred corpses onscreen takes effort with a low budget, and isn’t a lazy copout like resorting to simple slashing and fake blood might be.

As for everything else about the movie, there is so little left to say that I can’t even push this review over the minimum word count.  Might as well make room in that junk drawer instead.

Review Score:  15

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