This weekend I attended one of the first screenings of the horror Holiday film "Krampus," which tells the tale of Tom and Sarah (played by Adam Scott of "Parks and Recreation" and Toni Collete of "The Sixth Sense"), a suburban couple with two kids, who reluctantly have their dysfunctional family from the countryside (run by comedian David Koechner) over for the holidays. Yet their family rivalries take a back seat when a malevolent entity known as "The Krampus" and his mischievous henchmen terrorize their neighborhood and enclose on their quieted home.

Now if I'm being perfectly honest, I came into the theater expecting to HATE it. It's not that the premise wasn't interesting, I was actually fairly curious about the Krampus and how much the film would explore the original German folklore. The problem was that it was being advertised as a Holiday Horror film. While it is a fairly unique genre that we don't see a lot of, horror films can either be great, like the cult-classic slasher flick "Black Christmas" (the original 1974 version, of course), or very, very bad, seeing as there are so many b-movie horror films that attempt the Christmas premise and fail miserably.

Thankfully, I enjoyed this film a lot more than a thought I would, not because of the scares, but because of the satire. The film's opening scene occurs during one of the busiest shopping days in America, and shows the brutality of holiday doorbusters in slow-motion, and with Bing Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas" wafting in the background. I knew by this genius opening what this movie really was; a political satire of the American commercialization of Christmas, as well as a parody of the generic cookie-cutter Christmas films of the past. These painfully realistic metaphors are not only unique for a Holiday film, but also bring a very interesting way of showing black humor in a supposed horror film.

While I mostly see this as a Christmas parody film, the Krampus and his henchmen do bring some minor yet intriguing scares. The designs of the Krampus and his elves are fantastic, with holiday motifs being blended together with an occultist flair, most likely based off of its more Nordic background. If creative looking villains aren't enough for a horror movie, the middle arc of the film should tide you over. I don't wanna spoil anything for anyone who wants to see the film for themselves, but the scenes with some of the Krampus's toys turn out to be genuinely disturbing in terms of bringing fear from your parent's creepy toys to a whole new level.

While I did like this film, I can't say that I thought it was great. While during most of the film I couldn't pin-point where I found the problem, I eventually found one of my biggest problems, which helped put the dot on where my main issue fell when I saw how the film ended. Again, I won't spoil anything if anyone wants to see this film, but I will say that the films seems to have pretty good ending, only to have another thing happen that just seems absolutely corny. But while I didn't approve of how the movie ended, I could see why filmmakers ended "Krampus" the way they did, which was most likely because they didn't have any other choice. Even though "Krampus" is advertised as a horror-comedy of sorts, the truth is its still widely considered as a Christmas movie, therefore it is still boxed into the generic, PG-13 rated Christmas film censorship. Even when most of the film uses the Christmas time setting to its advantage, there's no way for the film to branch out as a horror film due to the festive stigma.

Overall, seeing as it's not the best film I've seen this year, I'd probably put "Krampus" down as a guilty pleasure film. As far as whether anyone should go see it, I would simply say it's up to them, since I could only see moviegoers with a more open mind and an understanding of satire and horror-comedy actually enjoying the film. "Krampus" may not be the best in terms of a horror film, but it is very imaginative, it keeps the viewer guessing and wanting to watch more, and if you're like me and have a more cynical view of Christmas and a distaste for the classic Christmas film, then "Krampus" may be the perfect film for you to bring out every year, to bring joy to your inner Grinch.