Horror Movie Review: Krampus: The Reckoning (2015)

What ever you think you know about Krampus, forget it because Krampus: The Reckoning has completely different ideas. Very bad and very ugly ideas.

Directed by Robert Conway who wrote it with Owen Conway, this is not the Krampus of folklore. In fact, if it wasn’t in the title or said constantly throughout there would be no reason to think this was even a Christmas horror.

This Krampus is a horrendously ugly CGI demon thing that appears when a young girl wishes to punish those who she believes are bad. Starting with her foster parents who made the mistake of telling her to go bed so they could have sex.

Krampus the shitty looking demon appears and turns them into baked goods. Surprisingly, considering how bad the CGI is, the burning effects are decent.

Anyway, after that, the little girl (Zoe) is housed up in a children’s ward of a hospital where the police struggle to get answers from her. Enter Dr. Rachel Stewart (Monica Engesser) who tries to get through to Zoe (Amelia Haberman). However, she has her own dark past and is going to find out that the legend of Krampus is more real then she thought.

Well, not the actual legend of Krampus. This film’s version of the legend which is ‘spirit demon’ conjured up by a child.

I can’t stress enough just how rubbish that plot-point is. This is not Krampus, so don’t call your film Krampus: The Reckoning. During the period of 2013 and 2017 there were quite a few Krampus related films released. The likes of the big budget Krampus in 2015 and many low budget offerings like 2013’s Krampus: The Christmas Devil and 2016’s Krampus Unleashed. As terrible as some of them were at least they didn’t do this.

It’s particularly frustrating as this isn’t the worst Christmas horror you’d ever watch. It’s not good but it has some passable acting. Some decent effects and a surprising ending that is quite dark.

However, it’s way too long which really highlights just how many scenes are nothing but filler. This could have easily had 15 minutes shaved off it and it wouldn’t make any real difference to the story.

It’s a low budget horror flick but I’ve seen others work wonders with even less money. Also, a low budget does not excuse poor writing and the idea behind Krampus itself here is so flawed it’s an instant turn-off.