You might think you’ve seen some shoddy YouTube content in your time, but in Werewolf Santa, Lucy (Katherine Rodden) has them all beat with her very dreadful channel, Monster Hunters. You’d maybe forgive the unimaginative name if it actually delivered the promised content, but what we’re shown is that she only ever gets drunk and sometimes high while failing to meet actual monsters. She also spends the entire time wearing a T-shirt that reads “f**k off”. I’m sure most YouTubers feel this way about most YouTube commenters, but it’s fairly unfortunate here, because my feeling is exactly the same, towards Monster Hunters as well as towards Werewolf Santa itself.
After a lazily un-rewritten recitation of the classic poem “A Visit from Father Christmas”, better known as “’twas the Night Before Christmas” by horror host/superfan Joe Bob Briggs, we’re eased into the story: having previously fucked off to the States to not see Bigfoot and Loch Ness to not see Nessie, Lucy has fucked off back to Hastings – notable as one of Idler magazine’s top Crap Towns – to see her parents, who are played by very moderately famous actors: Teen Wolf‘s Mark Arnold, and Emily Booth, mainstay of British horror B-movies. Mother and daughter look to be roughly the same age, but being fair that’s probably just a reflection of how well Booth has aged. We’ve barely got time to get bored of the family drama before Lucy stumbles upon the Werewolf Santa promised by the title. Don’t expect anything as awesome-looking as the werewolf on the poster, though. We’re looking at something that resembles The Grinch more closely than The Wolf Man. Either due to awareness of the shortcomings in effects and costuming, or simple lack of budget, most of the action is conveyed through comic-book-style panels and captions which suggest the whole thing was put together in Microsoft PowerPoint. They make the panels in Repo! The Genetic Opera look positively stylish.
In any case, after Lucy threatens her hapless cameraman with an act of quasi-incestuous revenge porn, the two take off in pursuit of the werewolf, Lucy’s family in tow and, because the picture is desperate for filler despite its 70-minute runtime, they soon run into some doggers in a skin-crawling comedy scene that, thankfully, marks roughly the midway point of the movie. Things actually begin to pick up from here, culminating in a reasonably exciting showdown in a ghost train; not a new idea, but one that’s executed pretty competently especially considering the conspicuous absence of production values. There are certainly worse Christmas films out there, and God knows there are worse horror films, but you ought to do right by yourself, your family, your ugly Christmas jumper and your warm eggnog by watching or rewatching the classic Gremlins, the overlooked Rare Exports, or the surprisingly good Krampus.