Christmas at the Kringles Fails as Comedy and Horror — SkimNews
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- Christmas at the Kringles is judged “deeply cynical about the Yuletide season” but “completely unfunny,” failing the review’s central test of making holiday cheer work as both comedy and horror.
- Ron Livingston plays workaholic stock trader Mark Severson, who moves with wife Julie and son Bobby to a small town a week before Christmas to keep the family from falling apart.
- Thomas Lennon plays Nick Kringle, who invites the Seversons to Christmas Eve dinner and wins over Mark’s skepticism; two months later Mark is even more absorbed in work, disappointing Julie, who had hoped for a proper Valentine’s Day celebration.
- Donald Faison plays neighbor Daryl, who warns Mark that the Kringles are dangerous; when mall Santa Rob Riggle fails to appear, Mark and Daryl enter the house to rescue Julie and Bobby.
- Kevin Lewis opens the film with a Santa-suit murder chase and deploys disjointed editing and Edgar Wright-like quick-cut montages, but the reviewer says the style adds neither meaning nor entertainment.
- Zack Imbrogno’s script leaves key questions unresolved: whether the Kringles’ three children are their own, why worried neighbors have no recourse from police despite apparent repeated disappearances, and why a “Christmas gimp” lives in the house; the review calls the explanation “dumb” and incoherent.
- Rachel Bilson gives Julie more nuance than the review assigns to her one-dimensional longing for community, and Donald Faison adds “effective (and funny) incredulity” to the final siege—the review’s clearest concessions amid its broader dismissal.
Why it matters: For prospective viewers, the review’s verdict is that the holiday premise and seven-name comedy ensemble do not deliver either laughs or menace; the few praised performances are isolated rather than enough to change the judgment of the movie as a whole.
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