Christmas Cruelty! — Christmas Cruelty!(DVD)
Christmas Cruelty! is a film that liberally flip-flops between the deeply troubling and the humorous. As its title suggests this Norwegian film is set around the festive period, and it charts the preparations for the big day for a middle-aged, tubby and balding serial killer, and his next carefully selected victim. The film often juxtaposes its more extreme moments, with bright or laid-back music that both unsettles more profoundly, as well as giving one or two coal-black chuckles. So, if you're looking for seriously tonally unbalanced/ wonky genre film making this is certainly one of the prime modern examples. Here from Unearthed Films, those hunters of worldwide extreme film is a DVD release of the picture.
Christmas Cruelty! ( O'Hellige Jul! ) is a 2013 film, presented here in it’s original Norwegian with English subtitles. It’s co-directed by Ålesund born Per-Ingvar Tomren and Molde born Magne Steinsvoll- both of whom also play lead roles in the film. Wheelchair-bound Tomren has nine directorial credits to his name- these take in four shorts, a documentary and three feature lengths- going from violent crime ‘n’ drug taking edged Banzai Motherfucker! (2006), Headless Entanglement (2019) which is a comedy focusing on two filmmakers who decide to kidnap the minister of culture to finance their next movie, and Angst which is in pre-production- and is seemingly more of a straight brutal horror film. Aside from Christmas Cruelty!, Steinsvoll has one other director's credit to his name Killungard (2018) which is seemingly someone-else-in-the-house thriller.
Christmas Cruelty! really opens as it means to go on- as we see Serial-Santa(Tormod Lien) a tubby and balding man killing off a house full of people, while felt singer-songwriter music plays. His victims are bound and bloody, we see him anal rape a woman off camera, before going to the families shed to pick out tools of torture- plugging in a buzz saw, and going at baby in a bouncer, before we jump cut to our other lead character Eline(Eline Aasheim) a twentysomething woman who is batting away the bad chat up lines of a drunk guy in a bar.
Fairly soon we meet Eline’s two buddies- Per-Ingvar( Tomren) and Magne(Steinsvoll), as we see the three preparing Krampus costumes to go around and scare people in their local town. And at this point/ for most of the next hour, we drop into a sort of quirky comedy, as Per-Ingvar & Magne playful banter with each other, buy a Christmas tree, and get well and truly plastered after preparing a punch with all the alcohol in Per-Ingvar cardboard. At points we switch to the world of our middle-aged businessman serial killer, who very much seems to be modelled on a serial killer like Dennis Rader- firstly he compartmental his life, as he has a young daughter, wife, and job. And secondly, he researches his victims- with unfortunately his next being Eline.
In the last half-an-hour or so the film suddenly turns very nasty, when our killer turns up, dressed in a deep eye-holed Santa mask and suit at Per-Ingvar's apartment. And we get brutal hammer attacks, decapitation and chatting to the head, knife rape, relentless stabbing, and brutal ‘n’ bloody limb lopping. This is all soundtracked with a mix of easy-listening Christmas music, light and breezy singer-songwriter fare, and electric guitared takes on Christmas chorales.
All the acting is good and believable. The filmmaking itself is well crafted/ well-realized - save for a sequence with the killer at work, where we have rather awkward zooms in and outs, and odd cutting going on- I understand the reason for these elements, but their execution just felt rather cack-handed, and sloppy- but this just one sequence. The film is very music heavy, and at one or two points it becomes maybe a bit too much- but aside from these two issues, I’d say Christmas Cruelty! is an effective ride.
Extra wise on the DVD we get just two things- a music video and commentary track for director Per-Ingvar Tomren and cameraman Raymond Volle. The track is a nicely laid-back and chatty affair. They start off discussing the opening house invasion/ killings- how they brought a realistic newborn doll for the baby, and how each tool the killer picks up nods back to another film. They discuss how big chunks of the character storyline were removed at the front of the film, so it flowed better. We find out many of the bizarre/amusing stories told in the film were real. They talk about how this was a very personal film to Tomren, and it has a subtext relating back to how he’s treated as a disabled person by the Norwegian government. Later on, they talk about how much of the killer's dialogue was improvised, with them giving just a rough idea of what they wanted in a scene. They chat about how the often drastic changed locations, with the addition of visual references and nick-nacks. They mention how they wanted the struggle to look as real as possible when the killer attacked, and as a result, Tomren broke several ribs. All in all a most interesting track. The Blu-Ray has a few more things on it- such as 'How Cruelty Changed Our Lives' FeaturetteInterview with Morten Haagensen, Press Conference footage, Bloopers, Watch-a-long with Flesh Wound Horror, and 'Tradition' short film- so I’d say you’d be better picking this up, instead of the DVD.
Christmas Cruelty! is an extremely unbalancing film- in both its juxtaposition of upbeat ‘n’ bright music and onscreen content. And it’s sudden often jarring switches between quirky comedy, and shocking sexualized violence- so as a result, it’s certainly not a film for everyone, but my money it’s another distinctively shocking and original extreme film presented by the good folks at Unearthed.