Directed by Paul Tanter

Once Upon A Time At Christmas (2017)

Another entry in the deceptively generic titled category, Once Upon A Time At Christmas is the story of a Santa and Mrs. Claus themed slasher duo who terrorize an Upstate NY town right before Christmas. While that is happening, Jen, a young woman who is dealing with her parents’ impending divorce, tries to make it through this tough time of year. Jen seems like protagonist material, which makes it even stranger that 90% of the movie focuses on the police investigation into the killings, rather than on her. Once Upon A Time At Christmas has a ton of problems, like bad pacing, bad editing, and awkward dialogue, but this plotline sticks out to me because unlike the other things I just mentioned, this plotline was a conscious decision to focus on these two cops instead of the characters you would assume to be the protagonists in a slasher film.

Combining elements of detective work with horror isn’t a bad idea, there’s an entire subcategory of Whodunnit Slashers that can be quite fun, but the problem comes from the mystery being completely obvious to the viewers from scene 1, and the identities of the Slashers should be obvious to the cops 20 minutes in. It’s very frustrating when you clearly see a pear being eaten by a villain in scene 1, and it takes the cops over an hour to figure out what the pattern of the murders is based on, especially when they bring the FBI in and even they can’t figure it out! There are so many breaks with logic that happen in this movie that it is impossible to list them all, but suffice it to say that the narrative definitely isn’t precise enough to work as a detective movie. Sloppiness is fine in a slasher film but when the plot is about a criminal case I need a bit more structure and clear progression to make it feel like things are happening. Not an hour of two cops standing in a room saying, “Well I’m stumped, let’s go look at more bodies.” It’s kind of fun to discuss movies like this but not much fun to watch them. If you see this on a streaming service you can give it a pass and not miss much.