Krampus

What was advertised as a dark and cautionary tale of a family who’ve lost the Christmas spirit becomes a film that, while delivering on these promises, is tempered by tones of a somewhat opposite genre. Michael Dougherty’s Krampus is a film that at times, if not more often, doesn’t know if it wants to be a horror or a scary family comedy. The film starts off as comedy, but remains to have comedic scenes and dialogue even as the film enters the second and third acts that follow horror conventions.

Sometimes during what normally should be scary or tense moments, the characters utter comedic one-liners and other dialogue that undermine the urgency of situations. Krampus’ “helpers” are designed to be monstrous perversions of Christmas-related toys, which have mixed success in appearing as serious or sometimes even effective monsters; the tiny killer gingerbread men, for example – while one alone serves as the ironic punisher of a greedy child, having three attack an adult with household appliances undermines the menace of the first. Krampus’ elves are the arguably the most credible threat, at least to the adult characters – though they would have appeared more threatening if the family actually fought back against them and still lost. The story struggles between suspense and predictable outcomes; with the exception of the ending that closes the narrative with twists and a haunting conclusion.

The film has a creative visual design, twisting the archaic or traditional toys and items often associated with Christmas into scary (though more often cute or funny) monster designs. The design of the Krampus character is a meld of the malicious horned-and-hooved folkloric figure and its benign counterpart Santa Claus with a dash of Jacob Marley. The design is beastly and intimidating, as his character plays upon the terror of the characters. As most good monster movies do, most of Krampus’ form is unseen for the majority of the picture. His face is mostly made as part of the costume, having only rare mix of CGI used with it, which at first allows the face to look both organic and realistic, but as the face is brought out of the shadows later on, the mask becomes more obvious as his expressions are frozen. At first this is distracting, but the unchanging facial expression at the climax of the film somewhat works to the advantage of the character’s inhumanity.

The protagonists, the family that Krampus plagues in the film, have distinguishable personalities and recognisable characters. The theme is well set up, albeit with comedic effect, and is the consistent precursor to the series of frankly chilling or otherwise woeful comeuppances. The film has an effective tone as it toys with the characters’ and audience’s sense of hope, making it quite effective as a thriller.

Krampus is a nonetheless an enjoyable picture. Its style mixes horror with whimsy, and while its jokes sometimes take away from some of the scary parts, just as many are fittingly sarcastic. The comedy is still a great part of the movie and most of the scary parts are still scary, providing much entertainment even if, on occasion, certain character attidudes fall short on urgency. Krampus is portrayed as a truly menacing supernatural villain that warps the friendly image of Santa Claus into a monster one might encounter in a classic Grimm’s fairytale. A cautionary Christmas story.

Victor Frankenstein

In an ‘era’ of constant Hollywood remakes and prequels, Paul McGuigan’s Victor Frankenstein is a breath of fresh air. Towards the narrative climax one worries that this may be just another made-up origin story that doesn’t tie up its loose ends. In fact, it very nearly is. While it doesn’t follow the plot of its well-known source material, being the prequel origin story that it is, it does however tell an open-ended and yet self-contained story with well-acted performances and satisfactory use of the tale’s criteria.

The casting is good, with Daniel Radcliffe as a sympathetic Igor and James McAvoy in an intense depiction of the mad scientist. Also starring is Andrew Scott as the zealous police inspector Roderick Turpin, who conveys his increasingly obsessive and religious character through a cold and stoic performance.

The film does its own take on the theme of the story, the “triumph of science over God”, or “over death”. Frankenstein and Turpin’s opposing religious views play out said theme; Frankenstein is depicted as the pseudo-atheist offended by the mention of God and Turpin’s fundamentalist Christian views – Turpin, a character who accurately deduces the circumstances behind Igor’s escape from the abusive circus and almost immediately disregards his deduction, distorting the truth, for personal reasons. This is the film’s subtext regarding the concept of religion.

The film follows a fitting recurring theme of anatomy – the structure of the body, how Frankenstein uses his knowledge of which to repair Igor’s spinal deformity, and further how they build their creations.

He treats Igor’s condition forcefully, without explaining his intention so Igor doesn’t panic and have to be chased around the room to fix it. The Frankenstein character is an equal mix of sophistication, egocentricity, intensity, sympathy and playful intimidation. The revelation of his motivation at the end, however, seems to conflict with his character that prizes science and logic over all else. Daniel Radcliffe’s Igor is unlike the character’s traditional depiction, being an intelligent, sweet-hearted and socially inept man with handsome features as opposed to a disfigured hunchback who finds entertainment in tormenting the creature. This version humanises him further by providing a love interest in the form of Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay), whose performance is beautifully simple and whose character is kind and moralistic, though could be considered somewhat shallow as she only ever associates with Igor after he becomes handsome.

As mentioned before, the film does not follow Mary Shelley’s plot. While the design of Frankenstein’s Monster, known as Henry or Prometheus in this version, is likeable and its characterisation is passable for a climactic scene, the film does not revolve around Frankenstein and his relationship and responsibility with his creation, and thus the Frankenstein Monster is reduced to a basic brute for the climax. While Andrew Scott’s role as the obsessive police officer is a worthy antagonist, other parties such as Victor’s schoolmate Alistair (Callum Turner) fall short, being a vain, avaricious and obvious villain without much complexity.

Nevertheless, Victor Frankenstein is an enjoyable film that takes the audience though the progress and milestones of Igor and Victor’s research and relationship. It has a fitting visual style and excellent character design, and is well performed by all. And unlike most prequels that simply exploit audience’s love of origins, this film draws its themes from the famous story of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and builds to the events of such in a manner that is open-ended, and yet self-contained as a good stand-alone movie should be.

Pan (Joe Wright, 2015)

Joe Wright’s Pan (2015) certainly has enjoyable value. It has a colourful and sometimes surreal visual style. The actors are entertaining – especially Hugh Jackman as the sophisticated and vicious yet oddly occasionally sympathetic villain Blackbeard, and the child actor Levi Miller puts real effort into his portrayal of the protagonist Peter. However, it is not without its share of plot holes, particularly surrounding the villain’s plan conflicting with his motivation, and implications of the story, sometimes thought-provoking but other times head-scratching.

Much of cinema in the 21^st century comprises heavily of reboots of, and prequels to, existing fictional universes. This leads to arguments regarding a lack of originality in Hollywood, yet ironically audiences are drawn to these so-called “reimagining” of stories they are familiar with. Audiences nonetheless have expectations for reboots, for the film to be faithful to its source material, and these standards even apply to prequels of the filmmakers’ own invention.

Take for example Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful (2013). Let’s give credit where it’s due – effort was put into the world of Oz to make it the as similar as possible to the original setting while introducing some fittingly surreal elements of its own conception. It was self-contained, filling in enough of the blanks to portray a relatively complete prequel to Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (1939). However, the prequel has no musical numbers, and in other instances doesn’t quite match the tone of the timeless classic. The Wizard of Oz is, by definition, a musical, and yet James Franco’s too-cool-for-school postmodern character flat out stops the Munchkins in their tracks as they begin to perform a song. If a film is made to extend the universe of a preexisting text such as a film or a book, it must be made in the same spirit as its source material.

Pan is presented as a prequel, an origin story for Peter Pan, and while it includes certain story elements from Peter Pan lore, it does not qualify as a faithful adaptation. The film is an origin story for Peter Pan’s arrival in Neverland and gaining his powers of flight, but none of the characters develop to the point of their relationships or personalities in the book, and so it fails both as an adaptation and as a prequel.

Tinker Bell, a chief character in J. M. Barrie’s novel and Peter Pan’s faithful sidekick/pseudo-love interest, is featured for all of twelve seconds and is never seen again. A major part of Peter Pan’s character is that he hates ‘grown-ups’ and the prospect of growing up, but the representation of the character in Pan is given no buildup to, reason for or even the presence of this important characteristic outside of Hook’s one line of dialogue, relatively early on in the film, where he expresses a pessimistic attitude towards adulthood. Captain Hook is replaced with another character altogether, essentially representing him as Han Solo in a cowboy hat. The film is advertised as having Peter and Hook meeting each other in Neverland and becoming allies, which would imply that their relationship would develop to their becoming friends-turned-enemies. But no such development happens. Peter never takes Hook’s hand and feeds it to the crocodile, Hook and Smee don’t enter their partnership as pirates – in fact Hook doesn’t become a pirate at all outside of attaining a ship. Instead they jokingly hint that Peter and Hook will become enemies in the future, but it’s hard to imagine this iteration of Hook becoming so obsessive and vengeful that he would dedicate his life to killing Peter Pan when at the end they’re the best of friends.

On the surface, Pan is an entertaining and nice-looking film, but it did not deliver the correct characterisation to its lead roles and as a result did not lead up to the setting of the well-known story. Because the characters of the beloved classic story have little to no presence in this prequel, relying on potentially nonexistent sequels to set up the story for that of the book or another adaptation of such, it fails as a self-contained story and a faithful adaptation.