William Shatneras Dangerous DanThe story
About A Christmas Horror Story
On Christmas Eve in a small Canadian town, four horror stories run side by side: teenagers filming in a school basement where a killing happened a year earlier, a family whose small boy comes back wrong after they take a tree from forbidden woods, a grasping family hunted by the Alpine Christmas demon after a figurine is smashed, and Santa fighting off a zombie outbreak among his elves. A late-night radio DJ, drinking steadily through his shift, links the tales together.
The CineClaus verdict
A portmanteau of horror shorts cut together across one Christmas Eve, and like most anthologies it is only as good as its strongest strand. The best is Santa fighting off his own infected elves, daft and gory in equal measure, and you can tell the crew had fun with it. The school-basement story barely feels seasonal and drags.
William Shatner holds the whole thing together as a radio DJ who gets steadily drunk on air. Critics liked it more than audiences did. Pair it with Krampus for a late December double bill that gets less wholesome as it goes.
The family desk
Can the kids watch?
Our take: save this for older teenagers and adults, since there is heavy gore including a beheading, a dark possession story and a monster hunting a family.
BBFC advice: Strong threat, bloody violence, gore, sex, very strong language.
Content advice & accessibility
- Where the advice comes from
- The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).
- Our age guidance
- Editorial, separate from the official 15 certificate, and never looser than it.
