Indie director Joe Begos (The Mind’s Eye, Bliss, VFW) is back with another throwback horror flick, this time full of holiday spirit (among other things) titled CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS. In probably one of the cooler concepts to come out’ve the genre recently, the movie’s antagonist is a murderous robotic Santa that goes on a rampage, killing everyone and everything that gets in its way, and that’s pretty much the movie right there, not that I’m complaining. 

Unfortunately, we do have to sit through quite a bit of lengthy and mediocre dialogue between several obnoxious characters before the movie really starts to pick up the pace. By that point it’s already halfway through the flick, but luckily, once Santa does set his sights on our female lead the rest of the movie is just a relentless onslaught of blood and violence (Yay!), in what is obviously heavily inspired by the Terminator movies, specifically the first one. 

If you’re familiar with Joe Begos' previous work, the director rarely uses CG, if at all, and favors practical effects in his movies. That’s no different here, as we watch heads being crushed, split open and blown off in practical gory goodness. It's not quite "Terrifier level" of gore, but it's still pretty decent in its own right and at this point I'll take anything over some cheesy CG blood. 

As far as the killer Santa goes, it’s clearly just an actor in a suit (Abraham Benrubi) pretending to be a robot, but that changes towards the end when the more robotic side is finally revealed to the viewers, making things a bit more interesting. As much as I liked robot Santa before, I found him a lot cooler and more menacing by the end.