Christmas Horror Short Review: Gift Wrapped (2020)

Someone’s been naughty this Christmas…

From director Alex Magaña who co-wrote it with Jed Brian, comes Gift Wrapped. A Christmas horror short that stars Dylynn Abbey and Andrew Hughes.

The former plays Kelly, a young woman who gets a surprise when she finds a large present in her living room. It gets her attention by briefly shaking (warning signs right there) and when she looks, she sees that it is for her from Santa. She doesn’t seem to notice that the gift label has ‘nice’ and ‘naughty’ on it with the latter being ticked.

She greedily tears the wrapping paper off and finds nothing there. Absolutely nothing but piles of wrapping paper. Her confusion turns to terror though when an evil voice whispers and something moves under the mound of paper.

What was in her present? You’ll have to watch it below to find out.

The payoff makes this a worthwhile watch. At barely 2 minutes, it has to get things done quickly but even still, that’s no excuse for how dumb the character of Kelly is. A big present that shakes, turns up in your house and you’re not at all curious about how it got there?

Still, for all her silliness, Dylynn Abbey does do scared well and the reveal of what the ‘monster’ is will put a wry smile on horror lovers faces.