Film Review: Mad Santa (short film) (2019)

REVIEW:

More short films, kiddies! Today we have MAD SANTA, written and directed by Bruce Blain.

Being a mall santa is hard work. Its a cut throat industry and its hard to get your foot in the door. All these people who hire mall santas are just so…picky.

Our hero (played by Bruce Blain) doesn’t take well to being locked out of the opportunity to bring joy to kids. So he takes the mall manager and her staff hostage and decides to make them miserable.

There is so much to unpack just in the first few minutes. The film hits the ground running and drops us right in the middle of the action with no explaination as to what’s going on. I’m ok with that, to be honest. As time rolls by, yet another layer of “WTF” is exposed.

Not a lot of gore or FX but what we get is totally acceptable. Just enough to make clear what the stakes are for our victims. There is one particularly inventive kill, but I won’t spoil anything for you. You’ll have to see for yourself.

A little trivia on the cast. Mr. Blain may be recognized by viewers from his other work on shows like Riverdale, Supernatural, and Once Upon A Time. I also want to call out Carrie Anne Fleming whom I recognized from the series iZombie. I found that most of the cast have worked together in some capacity on a number of shows, going back to the X Files.

So perhaps this is a vanity project, or simply a lark they embarked upon. Either way, I loved it.