By Maeve Rourke – Staff Reporter

The new movie “Krampus” brings a scary and evil spin to Christmas.

This movie blends satirical humor about the unpleasant elements of the modern Christmas season with a scary tale.

The main character, a young boy named Max (portrayed by Emjay Anthony) has a dysfunctional family that clashes over the holidays and decides to turn his back on Christmas. Little does he know, his lack of festive spirit has spawned Krampus: an evil monster that has the intent of taking, opposed to Santa Claus who gives.

The movies starts off with with Max’s Aunt Linda (Allison Tolman) and Uncle Howard (David Koechner) visiting, and his miserable Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell), who immediately starts complaining to his stressed parents, Tom (Adam Scott) and Sarah (Toni Collette).

After Max ripped up his letter to Santa, a freakish blizzard blows through the neighborhood, cutting off all electricity and phone/Internet access. The chaos begins with a delivery man arriving with ominous packages, and when Max’s older sister, Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen), decides to visit her boyfriend, she never returns.

This movie has experienced skepticism due to its unusual take on Christmas. Despite the skeptics the film has drawn a huge curious audience.  The movie pulled in $6 million on its premier date and was estimated to make another $15 million last weekend.

In addition to the unique plot, “Krampus” contains many well-known actors. Comedians Adam Scott and David Koechner play a big role in the movie. Also, Emmy nominee Conchata Ferrell, best known as Berta the housekeeper in “Two and a Half Men”, stars in this film.

Although this movie has an unusual plot and well-known actors, it is hard to take the movie seriously. A big chunk of the movie includes cheesy build-up to the reveal of Krampus, and contains very little scenes that are actually scary.

Most of the scenes include cliché aspects of a horror movie. Much of the movie includes dark lighting, odd camera angles, and long quiet pauses with creepy christmas music playing in the background.

For example, when the monster, “Krampus”, finally does attack the family, it is usually in dark in enclosed spaces, and the camera is shoved in the actors’ faces while they try to do their best impression of someone being chased.

“Krampus” tries to portray the importance of family, and what christmas is truly about. It is hard to actually get a moral out of the movie when it isn’t very serious until it nears the ending.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars