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Blending Christmas and horror is nothing new. There is something a little bit edgy about infusing one of the most joyous seasons of the year with something dark and malevolent. I hoped that Kevin Lewis' "Christmas at the Kringles" would provide that fun blend of horror and delight, but instead, it's just a mean-spirited, flat movie with no likable characters.
When Mark (Ron Livingston) and Julie Severson (Rachel Bilson) move away from the city into the suburbs with their son, Bobby (Jack Jewkes), they expect to slow down and work on their relationship. After a difficult interaction with a mall Santa (Rob Riggle), they meet their neighbor, Daryl (Donald Faison), who warns them to steer clear of their next door neighbors, the Kringles. When Mark and Julie meet Nick (Thomas Lennon) and Carol (Arden Myrin), they find their Christmas obsession a bit quirky, but harmless. However, when they start to notice changes in Bobby, they realize that those idiosyncrasies might lean in the direction of deadly.
The premise for this film isn't all that unique, but there should be enough juice to provide an entertaining time at the theater. But one of the elements that help make horror comedies work is when you actually like any of the characters, and there isn't a single character in "Christmas at the Kringles" who you can connect with, making the entire film feel tedious.
Unfortunately, there is little that the performers are able to do to lift Zack Imbrogno's script. Lennon and Myrin make a valiant effort, leaning heavily into the absurdity of their characters, and really giving their all to make the Kringles the blend of chipper and awful that you want. Sadly, that's where the caring seems to leave off. Livingston's deadpan delivery feels entirely wrong for his character. The only joke Faison's character seems to have is that he's divorced, and Riggle has such a mean edge to his character that I found him entirely off-putting.
There is, of course, an expectation that a horror film, even a horror comedy, will have odious characters in it. After all, someone is trying to murder other people. But "Christmas at the Kringles" feels like it goes beyond that, with even our good guys feeling kind of awful. There are only so many times I can listen to someone I'm rooting for calling another character a "stupid b#tch" before it starts to feel grating.
Holiday movies are generally harmless bits of entertainment, and mashing them up with something like horror can be a way to amplify that entertainment factor, possibly expanding them to audiences who might otherwise not care. "Christmas at the Kringles" may have started with that as the goal, but it fails spectacularly at that. Honestly, in this economy, even coal might be too generous a gift for this film.
Rating: 1.5/5
Alise Chaffins is a freelance and Tomatometer-approved film critic.