Al's Omniflick: Krampus

Friday, December 11, 2015

Krampus

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Michael Dougherty/Starring: Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Conchata Ferrell, Emjay Anthony and Stefania LaVie Owen

In this season of manufactured goodwill and canned cheer comes a comedy/horror flick called Krampus; which proves to be neither funny nor scary. The film seems like a Hollywood studio's anemic attempt at cynicism and mordant satire. It at least takes a stab until the film's sentimental message about family unity and happiness surfaces. I'm not a fan of family-gathering holiday movies. I can't think of one that is worth the time or admission price. A recent film in this this woeful genre was Love the Coopers, which got its ass heaved from the multiplexes before it could wither and rot (I guess no one really loved the Coopers, eh?). Krampus Wants to be darker but the story clings too stubbornly to genre conventions.

Two families gather for the Christmas holiday season. One of the families; nuclear and typically suburban, play host to their relatives; a course, uncultured family of gun enthusiasts who couldn't be more unlike the people putting them up. The host-father; Tom (Adam Scott), is the antipodal version of his wife's brother-in-law Howard (David Koechner). Where Tom is refined and liberal-seeming, Howard represents conservatism and maleness at its most brutish. Even his daughters; a tough pair who make fun of Tom's son Max (Emjay Anthony) for writing a letter to Santa, seem more like Howard than their mother Linda (Allison Tolman), who is sister to Tom's wife Sarah (Toni Collette). The family's initial contact is awkward and unpleasant as Howard and his family show little but disdain for their hosts. Even their initial dinner together becomes one of discord as Howard complains about the food. Adding another dysfunctional element to the mix is Sarah's Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell), who makes herself an unwelcome presence from the get go.

Howard's family is but one problem Tom's family faces, as his own threatens to fracture from its own lack of unity. The lack of inter-familial connection and a general feeling of malaise becomes the prevailing mood. Just when relations couldn't become more strained, the neighborhood suffers a power-outage during a blinding snowstorm. When Tom's daughter, Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) sets out for her boyfriend's house after he fails to answer her texts, she sees a monstrous behemoth leaping across house roof-tops, wreaking havoc. Before long, she learns the thing has unholy minions (no, not those minions), who join their master in his agenda of terror. When she fails to return, Tom and Howard set out on their own mission with Howard's arsenal of guns. When the men arrive on the scene, they too encounter the strange creatures; including one that almost drags Howard away. Terrified by what they've seen, the men return home to alert their families. After the family seals themselves in, they eventually learn the creature's identity. Omi, Max's German grandmother, tells them about Krampus; a demon she inadvertently summoned during her childhood; who has returned to unleash hell on the holiday season. The demon's return is supposed to be a kind of reckoning, but for the characters, it serves as an opportunity to unite the family and remind them about the true meaning of Christmas.

Aside from Krampus' imaginative depiction, the movie is just a bore. It is never frightening and hardly (if ever) funny. The syrupy message about family is trite but the writers at least saw fit to give the film a bummer ending. About mid-way through the film, any pretense of being a darkly funny movie gives way to self-seriousness that bleeds all the fun from the story.

Though the film opens with a slo-mo sequence inside a large retail store, where mobs of shoppers snarl and scrap for merchandise on what is presumably Black Friday, the rest of the film doesn't live up to the beginning's nasty promise. Krampus is too timid to go for the throat. Rather than skewering the holiday for all its hypocrisy and phoniness, it really wants to sell us the idea that Christmas really used to be about love and family togetherness.

If the much-anticipated films of the season; The Revenant, Star Wars, Carol or Joy had opened the same day I saw Krampus, I might have waited or not bothered to see it at all. The movie was really just an alternative to The Peanuts Movie; one of the few late Fall releases I just can't summon any interest (or squander dollars) to see. I really hope there isn't a Krampus 2 but as the movie demonstrates, some curses never never die.

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.