A schlocky romp of a family Christmas gone terribly wrong in a fun entertaining way. Because at Christmas ‘You tell the truth” 

• Scare factor: ★☆☆☆☆
• Fun factor: ★★★★☆
• Entertainment factor: ★★★★☆
• Schlock factor: ★★★★★
• Gore factor: ★★★★☆

Secret Santa is a fun mess of a dysfunctional family that takes itself not too seriously and neither should you and you will have a fun time. It stars A Leslie Kies, Michael Rady, Drew Lynch, Debra Sullivan, Ryan Leigh Seaton, John Gilbert, Pat Destro, Nathan Hedrick, Michelle Renee Allaire, Curtis Fortier, Freddy John James, Petra Areskoug, Jaden Reid. Directed by Adam Marcus and written by Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan. 

Duration 89 minutes. 

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Plot

It’s Christmas Eve and the four grown-up children drive up to the luxurious cabin of their parents to have Christmas Dinner and playing Secret Santa. But it’s a rather dysfunctional family where feelings like resentment, being mistreated, being condescended, disgust, insufficiency and other negative feelings towards parents, children and siblings are very present. 

This year April had to organize the Secret Santa and she has invited her father Leonard as well, while her parents had a nasty divorce. She brings along her boyfriend Ty who’s a lawyer. April is the cheerleader, good girl kind of girl. Kyle who stutters drives up to the cabin with his uncle Carter. Kyle is longing for his mother’s and father’s approval, while is he also secretly gay. Penny is driving alone and hates Christmas. She hates her mother who has issues with Penny’s weight, but she is a daddy’s girl and works for his company. Lastly there’s Jackson, the half brother and only shares their father. He’s a bit deranged, a sex addict and over the top and has brought his stripper girlfriend Jacqueline. 

In the cabin mother Shari, who’s a very nasty mean woman who treats her children like crap and her sister Carol, who’s a gold digger are waiting for them with a staff of three to cook and serve their dinner. 

When everybody arrives, immediately all the mean comments go back and forth while April and Ty try to calm everybody down. While the staff, the cook Gordon, and waiters Tilde and Dylan who is also the boyfriend of Kyle are being maltreated by Shari, they start with Secret Santa presents.

Things slowly start to get out of hand, when they drink too much punch, they are getting hot and are blurting out hateful truths about each other. Until it really gets out of hand and Leonard kills Carter. That is the start of a Christmas mess of a dinner, where everybody except for April and Jacqueline and Penny who didn’t drink the punch is completely out of control and starts their own rampage, trying to kill each other. And there’s something wrong with them too. They get all hot inside and get blisters with a deadly end. So what was in the punch and who put it in?

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Short Review

While it has low production value, especially the audio isn’t that great and the sound feels very hollow in the cabin, while the lighting and cinematography could be better, the acting is good and they all bring their caricature characters to life. It’s an over the top mess but in a good way. The film doesn’t take itself seriously and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. 

The story about the dysfunctional family is solid but very over the top. There is so much resentment, hate even, and Shari is the most horrible mother you can imagine. Her words are so abusive, that it’s a wonder that despite everything Kyle still loves his parents. But when he eventually tells his mother the truth about himself and what awful women she is, it’s a very good-for-you moment. Aside from Kyle, April is also a good character who means well, and Jacqueline is a bad ass who didn’t deserve her fate. The rest of them, are awful people. They truly deserve what they got. Don’t even mention the relationship between Jackson and Shari, which is gross, and Shari and Carol seem to be on the same page of horribleness, but that works against them in the end. Penny is a barrel full of resentment, hate and feelings of being unappreciated and feelings of being maltreated. And then there is Ty who turns out to be a real lawyer in the worst way possible. 

The staff of three are quite the characters as well. While only Dylan cares for Kyle, they all want to get some money out of the whole ordeal. 

Every character plays an equally big part that is responsible for mayhem, laughs, and just being over the top crazy bad people. It’s the pinnacle of a dysfunctional family. And that is what makes this such an entertaining film. Although they are all exaggerated stereotypes, caricatures even, of real people, they are relatable people to some extent. 

And then there’s also the killing and the butchering that is very the top as well. With a lot of gore and blood gushing all around, it’s just campy fun with a slasher that turns already horrible people into zombie-like killers with no inhibitions. With a surprise ending that continues during the credits, the story only seems to be the beginning. 

Secret Santa isn’t a film that must be watched seriously, it’s an entertaining film with enlarged characters that go on a killer spree against each other.