Krampus opens on slow-motion sadism, as Christmas shoppers trample and attack each other. Security guards gleefully tease prone customers while a dirty old Santa stares at a teenagers’ ass. Alright, you think, rubbing your hands together and licking your lips like a pervert, Krampus is going to be one nasty piece of business. It’s not.

Krampus is meant to be a horror movie. There are monsters, some with delightfully gooey Predator jaws that split open like toothy Rafflesia. But Krampus is neither scary, nor sufficiently in love with goo to mount a moment anywhere approaching a gremlin in a blender or a microwave. Yes, Krampus wants to be Gremlins, even copying the gremlins’ signature snickering. But Krampus is so far up Gremlins ass that it can’t see what made Gremlins work.

Krampus Movie Trailer

Krampus is comedic in tone, but not funny in practice. Perhaps believing that Adam Scott, David Koechner and Conchata Ferrell were sufficient, Krampus doesn’t really bother with jokes, preferring this formula of horror flick reaction shot:

monster bursts out, it’s a mutated Christmas toy

COMEDY ACTOR: You’ve got to be kidding me!

While the practical effects work is phenomenal, with Krampus and his bighorns leaping straight out of Dark Crystal, far too much of the heavy lifting is borne by Minions-esque CG gingerbread cookies and an unseen something that throws up an angry hump of snow like a Christmas graboid. Sure, one shot of a bloated, toothy, anaconda-of-a-Jack-in-the-Box swallowing a kid is a treasure, but then nearly half the family is carried away by an under-snow nothing from nowhere.

So what falls on the other end of the equal sign when you add together vague comedy-ness and horror garnish? Not much. Krampus winds up feeling as vague as the Christmas sentiment it plumps. Every bit of appeal feels massaged to a nub, leaving Krampus with not enough mean-spirited family, not enough goo, not enough comedy, and not enough horror. It’s not that anything about Krampus is particularly bad (in fact, were it worse it would have been better), but that it’s all so normal.