Horror Movie Review: Krampus: The Return (2022)

From Jagged Edge Productions, directed by David Gregory and with a screenplay from Ben Daly, Krampus: The Return or Return of Krampus may not be close to the best Krampus related horror but it’s also far from the worst.

There are a lot of horror movies with Kampus in the title, so it’s easy to get confused about where this one fits. Is it a sequel to 2015 high-budget flick, Krampus? Does it fit within the Robert Conway written and directed series; Krampus Unleashed, Krampus: The Reckoning and Krampus Origins? How about the Jason Hull (writer/director) double Krampus: The Christmas Devil and Krampus: The Devil Returns?

How do the Mother Krampus films fit into this? What about Bigfoot vs. Krampus? Or Krampus 2: Toys of Evil? Or Sister Krampus?

Surprise! This film is not connected to any of them. Instead, the title could be seen as a devious ploy to draw in unfamiliar viewers who believe this to be a sequel to the 2015 hit, Krampus.

If you’re familiar with the work of Jagged Edge Productions, and we certainly are, as this year we’ve already covered The Killing Tree and Jack Frost. You can cut and copy much of the same elements from their other films and paste them over this film. It’s both familiar and formulaic, with high points and low points aplenty. Sometimes entertaining and sometimes boring. It ticks along doing little to last in the memory but also doing nothing outrageously bad either.

The movie stars Natasha Rose Mills as Lisa, whose brother mysteriously dies in the lead-up to Christmas. Heart-broken and feeling a bit guilty (as she was supposed to go see him), she, her boyfriend and friends head off to his home to spend Christmas together and help get her through the festive period.

Unfortunately for them, the killer isn’t finished yet. It’s Krampus and he has more than coal to dish out this year.

The story is fine and has enough sub-plots to keep things engaging. The acting is fine, even if most of the characters have little in the way of definition. The horror is fine, although it’s in no way a scary movie, and the effects are fine, provided you can put up with rubber suits and a basic Krampus demon look.

The season is used well enough, not just in visual décor but in the horror elements too. Although, it would have been nice to have seen a few more festive-themed deaths.

Where the movie really fails is with the decision to go down the slasher route. This is Krampus and the lack of imagination involved in how he operates and what he can do is disappointing. Highlighted by the ease in which the demon is eventually dealt with in a seriously anticlimactic finale.

It’s a ‘middle of the road’ kind of film. Neither good, nor bad. It’s simply fine.