I really don’t think I’ve watched this much Christmas-horror in my life! This one’s available on Netflix instant, too! This one was called Saint Nick. Doesn’t sound scary, does it?
Unlike my last Xmas-horror film, I actually kind of liked this one. I didn’t think I would at first, as the Xmas-horror genre doesn’t exactly put out Academy Award nominees, but Saint Nick, or sometimes called just Saint, did a really good job of setting up tension at the beginning and not showing exactly what was killing these people. It’s a Dutch movie, and the Netflix version was dubbed, which bugged me. I would have very much preferred subtitles as the voice actors were pretty bad, and it’s annoying to see lips not matching what they’re saying, unless, of course, you’re watching a spaghetti western.
Anyway, it’s a pretty odd premise. Saint Nick is evil (those aren’t toys in that sack of his) and comes back to kill people on December 5th if there’s a full moon. This time, he meets a little resistance.
As I said before, I liked it. However, what didn’t make me want to make this movie a holiday favorite mostly stemmed from being a bit lost in some of the plot details. Somehow, there was a subplot involving some sort of ghost ship, much like The Fog (awesome movie!) or Pirates of the Caribbean. The movie had some very similar scenes to The Fog, too, when Saint Nick would unleash his zombie minions upon his victims. This really reminded me of the ghosts in The Fog by the way the costumes were. I wasn’t exactly sure how that was all connected to Saint Nick, but one thing that was pretty cool about it was that the effects were actually pretty good for a movie who’s production spending was probably low. There was some cgi, but it wasn’t too bad.
Well, Jake has told me I need to include my rankings in the movies I post about, and Sitz seems to be into it, albeit using an outrageous scale, so I suppose I’ll start doing that, too. Acting was 4/10, production value was 8/10, scariness was 8/10, story was 6/10, overall weirdness was 9/10… So, I’ll settle on a whole movie ranking as 7/10 for this one.
Anyone gonna give this one a try? I’d love to hear a second opinion.
Hey Deuce!
Nice review, and I like your rankings at the end. I agree with Jake that it’s kinda fun/interesting to have some kind of ranking or ratings, especially since I know you both are in to that. And sorry that my scale outrages you, but I guess that’ll just have to be my thing, haha!
I’ll have to see if it’s on Netflix here in Costa Rica, since the selection is often quite different. Although in this case, maybe it’d have subtitles instead of dubbing, so it could be better.
And about the weird premise, have you ever heard of Krampus? I don’t know too much about him (though I should probably, since I studied German), but I guess he’s kind of an evil equivalent to Santa Claus or Saint Nick. I guess they mainly talk about him in Germany, but maybe that helped influence this movie, since the Dutch are fairly close to the Germans in some ways (just don’t tell that to the Dutch, though!).
Anyhow, here’s a bit more about that guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krampus
Whoa! Krampus is scary! I’d be interested in a Krampus movie.
Thats a pretty good rating, Dusty. I wasn’t expecting you to rate it so high. I want to watch this now.
That Krampus looked awesome! Weren’t you telling me the other day, Dustin, that this movie took place on December 5th and they put their shoes on their porch at night? I might have dreamt that. But, yeah, a Krampus movie would be fantastic. You should write it!
I agree with Sitzman, I’m glad you started putting these ratings on here. I especially like rating the individual aspects of the film. I might do that too. Also, I personally enjoy Sitzman’s rating scale (especially because you have to do some math in your head to see what percentage it is).
I do enough math everyday. I’ll keep my ratings under the “normal person” scale.
To each his own (movie rating scale). Deuce, I also like how in your movie log you include other aspects like if it’s the first time you’ve seen it, the year, the movie’s rating out of that year, and about 10 other statistical points that I didn’t really understand. But I was indeed impressed!
Well, I was planning on leaving out my movie log stuff out of the blog. Boring stuff… Really it’s just for me to be a geek… By myself…
Anyway, yes, Jake! I recently read somewhere that the Dutch celebrate Saint Nikola (sp?) starting sometime in November, leaving their shoes outside as part of it, and the it culminates to the Saint’s birthday on Dec. 5th. It was cool in the movie that the evil Saint Nick visited this village but was displeased with what they had left for them, so he posted, or rather stabbed with a large knife, a note listing all of the things he wanted. Check it out! I would love to hear if anyone actually watched this film.
Germans also celebrate Sankt Niklaus by leaving shoes out on the 5th. I remember I did it when I was living there with my host family, and I believe I got some chocolate and some new socks. But one can see how it could lead to a shoe and foot fetish later in life.
And that’s fine to keep the stats to yourself, as long as you don’t turn out like the guy in A Beautiful Mind.
I can only hope you’re a real friend rather than an imaginary one. Hope I didn’t spoil that….