Christmas really isn’t a great time to be a sorority house girl. Aside from summer-time camping trips I would say, staying on campus over the holiday season has got to be one of the more perilous times of the year.
Since the iconic ‘Black Christmas’ of 1974 gave all manner of stalkers and weidos and excuse to make the festive period distinctly unjolly, horror fans have enjoyed an almost annual visit from a murderous Mr Claus to their TV screens.
This year, it’s the turn of Mrs Claus to deck the halls with the arterial spray of horny teens and twenty somethings.
The plot of Mrs Claus plays it safe, and well within familiar territory, as we follow a perilous night at the Delta Sigma Sigma Sorority house as a stalker, dressed in the familiar ‘Claus’ outfit, picks off the guests at a rather lack lustre party. The film opens with a rather cruel hazing prank, which ultimately leads to a rather grisly murder/suicide altercation between pledge and queen-B. Cut to the ‘present’ and we see that there is still unfinished business to attend to -hmm, I wonder who the killer could be…
As a film ‘Mrs Claus’ is a mixed bag, easily divided into very identifiable good and bad. I will start with the former.
Clearly influenced by slasher films of old, the film is surprisingly brutal. The kills are violent – bloody, albeit not very gory, and there is decent enough body count to keep your entertained. The effects look good, and there is an interesting diversity in murder weapons despite the films restrictive theme. The killer looks nice and creepy, and whilst the film doesn’t dish-up anything particularly new in terms of motive or MO, there is some nice attention to detail in making the antagonist stand out.
It is, therefore, a shame that the rest of the movies content and technical aspects fall into some to some of the classic pitfalls of low budget film making.
The characters are bland and uninspiring, the average acting is not helped by a notably poor script. The bulk of the movies second act is shot at the ‘party’ consisting of about 5 people who each take it in turns to tall mundane stories, whilst one at a time, they, on cue, leave the room, alone, to have their turn to face off against a full armed Mrs Claus. Its boring, and whilst I enjoyed the deaths when they came, everything in between is throwaway.
Overall, there isn’t much else for me to say. It’s worth a watch, perhaps, if you have a penchant for sorority themed slashers, as something new to get you warmed up for the plethora of other Christmas titles which become staple viewing at this time of the year. It could have been so good, and it’s such a shame that the old school style and feel of the slayings didn’t diffuse into the film’s other scenes and content.