2022 has been a great year for the horror genre, but I really expected Christmas Bloody Christmas would be on the other side of that ledger. Surprisingly, I thought this was much better than it had any right to be.

This is the second “killer” Santa movie of the year, but Christmas Bloody Christmas could not have been more different than Violent Night. In Violent Night, Santa was our protagonist and in Christmas Bloody Christmas, Santa was the antagonist and not the real Santa Claus. Both were holly jolly butt kickers though.

In Christmas Bloody Christmas, according to IMDB, “It’s Christmas Eve and Tori (Riley Dandy) just wants to get drunk and party, but when a robotic Santa Claus (Abraham Benrubi) at a nearby toy store goes haywire and begins a rampant killing spree through her small town, she’s forced into a battle for survival.”

I found myself drawn to Tori and her friend Robbie (Sam Delich) and their adversarial and snarky relationship. Their banter was quick, funny, dirty as can be and real. I was rooting for them to both survive the night.

The Santa Claus robot was a clever idea and found plenty of ways to show off some vicious kills. I was also impressed with Tori’s continual attempts to survive the murder bot. However, one of my problems with this film is the same as I have with all of these films. When Tori had the Santa Claus down and out, instead of finishing it off, she would run off. I would keep shouting at the screen for her to “take the axe and cut off its head” but she just refused to do it. Sure, I buy the first couple of times, but as the Santa Claus kept coming back over and again, you’ve got to learn from the past and press that advantage when you get it.

The story is fairly thin, but what were you expecting? Director Joe Begos and the cast know exactly what type of movie this is and they go for broke with the slasher killer St. Nick. There is a lot of good natured cheesy fun and some cool kills. It does not come anywhere close to the quality of Violent Night, but it is a different sort of film. It was an easy watch on Shudder and I enjoyed suspending my disbelief, even if they wouldn’t listen to me about cutting off Santa’s head.

3.4 stars