Christmas at the Kringles
Writer: Zack Imbrogno
Director: Kevin Lewis
Cast: Ron Livingston, Rachel Bilson, Rob Riggle, Thomas Lennon, Arden Myrin, Donald Faison
Christmas horror being oversaturated as it is with Santanic material, it’s nice to see the genre tackle the season with imagination and flair, if only intermittently. Kevin Lewis appears to share the sentiment. His latest effort, Christmas at the Kringles, is not only a Christmas horror movie, but a Valentine’s Day horror movie; if those qualifiers aren’t enough, it’s opening just in time for Halloween, the scariest day on the calendar (other than April 15th). The cherry on top? The target of Lewis’ social commentary isn’t so much the holiday itself as toxic positivity, and what happens when terminally happy assholes rub it in everybody else’s faces how miserable their own lives are. Joy! Joy! Joy!
That three-letter word is a four-letter one in Lewis’ calculus. Christmas at the Kringles starts in media res as an anonymous woman stumbling terrified around a Christmas nightmare land before literally losing her head (or, for accuracy, having it taken from her); we cut from there to the family Serverson — Mark (Ron Livingston), Julie (Rachel Bilson), and their son, Bobby (Jack Jewkes) — stuck in traffic, the price they must pay for moving out of their city home to an anodyne suburban one. At least they have neighbors, like Daryl (Donald Faison), friendly and welcoming, though too forthcoming about his OnlyFans addiction, the sort of detail a person would keep to themselves who isn’t hobbled by crippling loneliness and “most divorced man in Florida” status.
On the flip side, the Seversons have patently weird neighbors, too: the Kringles, Nick (Thomas Lennon), Carol (Arden Myrin), and their kids, Rudolph (Zeke Jones), Merry (Alexis Kemp), and Elf (Elliott Egler). It isn’t odd that Che Kringle looks like Christmas threw up all over it, what with it being December and all. It is odd that, as Daryl notes, their home is covered in bright Yuletide bile 365 days a year. Something’s off, despite Nick’s unfailing exuberance and his unbidden acts of kindness, a’la saving Christmas morning from Mark’s apathy. From without, Mark looks like a deadbeat father and an absentee husband, selfishly moping over his new house and his career; if not for the fact that Christmas at the Kringles is a horror film, his surface level malaise makes it a cinch to ascertain that it’s actually the Kringles who are rotten from within.
People are hiding something when they maintain their chipper facade. What the Kringles are hiding in Christmas at the Kringles falls in the outfield of horror’s cult niche — not cult films, but rather films about cults. Who’s pulling the strings behind the Kringles’ gaiety? Lewis lets that simmer for about half the film or so, and unspools the thread with a clever device: a VHS tape playing in the background as Mark, Daryl, and Drunk Santa (Rob Riggle) — a mall Santa with a bad attitude, a slight drinking problem, and, beneath his grouchy exterior, a heart of gold — wander through the Kringle manse, trapped like mice in an incandescent-lit maze of cheery dread. The answer hinges on an hilarious cameo, but also cuts to the heart of what drives all lifestyle fads founded upon unsustainable emotional demands. (Hint: it’s fascism.)
Stringing a narrative along multiple genres has its perks and its downsides; here, the Christmas spiritedness of it all functions as a MacGuffin of sorts, because Christmas is text next to the motivational subtext. Lewis gets to that theme around Christmas at the Kringles’ third act, and while the effect of the reveal is appreciable, it remains too slim for the film’s good. The effect dilutes the “Christmas horror” angle and leaves the truth unfulfilled. Happiness trends facilitated in the social media age by unqualified frauds, not to mention a handful of freakazoids, have their negative side effects, as documented by research and journalism alike. Christmas at the Kringles is content to explain its plot motivations without exploring them further, a choice that cuts the head of steam Lewis builds up through the rest of the movie. The resolution is perfunctory.
Getting there, at least, is a hoot. Livingston plays checked-out American men with ease and likability uncharacteristic of the brief; Lennon isn’t a new hand at horror, but he’s having the time of his life embodying Nick as the host with the most and a basement full of unsavory secrets, an energy that Myrin reflects with manic delight. Riggle is the best surprise here, folding his patronizing jerk routine into Santa’s heartfelt responsibility as a representative of the holiday’s promise: it’s a time of year when, Fox News be damned, we bond as communities in goodwill and, yes, joy, but the healthy kind, and not the kind enforced by chainsaws and red-hot charcoal. Merry merry to all, to all a good night, and a severed head atop a Christmas tree.
