SECRET SANTA ** Canada 2015 Dir: Mike McMurran 78 mins
SECRET SANTA is a Canadian slasher that tries to bring a little blood to the festivities of Christmas. The plot is one we have seen countless times, a group of friends are studying for their final exams but when things get to hard they throw a party. Liquor, sex and comedy are the aim of the party but that is until the killer comes to ruin the night.
Dwayne is the most entertaining character of the whole film due to his (possible) hallucinations from lack of sleep, but everybody else is unlikable and stay alive for far to long. Though the film is a mere 78 minutes long, it becomes a slog to finish watching due to a lack of anything really happening at the mid point of the film. This is director Mike McMurran’s feature film directorial debut, and his love of low budget slasher films of the 1980’s is hard to falter with the look of the film at the beginning.
The unfortunate part is that even though the film starts off looking like a second generation bootleg copy of a VHS, the whole aesthetic is quickly lost when a character brings out an iPhone and brings us fully back into the 21st century. The film was made on a rough budget of $6000 so it is definitely a low budget entry into the Christmas horror scene. Some of the sfx give nods back to slasher films of yesteryear and look fairly decent. If you want to see a new slasher with lots of blood, you should check this out, but mostly the film will be a disappointment.
Review by Peter ‘Witchfinder‘ Hopkins
