Main cast: Dee Wallace (Diane), Geoff Morrell (Joe), Sarah Bishop (Suzy), David Collins (Peter), Janis McGavin (Ginny), Deelia Meriel (Hope), Gerard O’Dwyer (Jerry), Bjorn Stewart (Scott), and Sam “Bazooka” Campbell (Cletus)
Director: Craig Anderson
Red Christmas is an Australian home invasion slasher flick that demonstrates how easily such a movie can fall apart when there is absolutely nobody worth rooting for among the cast of characters.
Diane, a widow, has her family join her for the annual Christmas gathering. Only, this time there is simmering tension between her and her daughters because she is planning to sell their father’s house, put her son Jerry (who has Down syndrome) in an assisted living facility, and then take off to Europe. There is one pregnant daughter that continues to smoke and snort lines of powder, another daughter that gets into a slap-down with the other daughter over the meringue pie, and a few more loathsome people with barely any discernible personality that doesn’t reek. When a heavily robed and bandaged man shows up claiming to be the son Diane once attempted to abort some twenty years ago, she has that man tossed out with unnecessary cruelty. Hence, it is hard not to root for this man, Cletus, when he decides that none of the loathsome people would live to celebrate Christmas the following year.
I am not sure what the point of this movie is, because the killings take place only after the midway point or so, and by that point, I have had enough of the odious family’s various antics. I don’t know what director and scriptwriter Craig Anderson’s intentions are. Maybe his idea of horror is to terrify me with the dysfunctional behavior of his characters.
Even when the killings start, it’s not like the party has finally kicked up a notch. Cletus is like the Terminator, as he can be stabbed at, shot at, and what not several times and still run around acting as if everything were just peachy. Things get even more ridiculous when Diane exhibits the same trait—maybe this trait is hereditary—and these two soon embark on a repetitive “Killed you! Nope, you’re still alive, ha ha!” wild goose chase that soon becomes tedious.
As for the gore, there isn’t much. There are some plastic limbs and some fake blood for the first two kills or thereabout, but I think the budget soon ran out as eventually they give up even on having convincing blood splatter in the death scenes.
There is some kind of abortion theme in Red Christmas, but it doesn’t matter whether the movie wants to be for or against it. Everybody in this movie shouldn’t have been born in the first place. Actually, maybe this movie shouldn’t have been made either, not until they had scavenged enough money to buy a better script and better… well, everything else.
