Werewolf Santa, 2023.
Directed by Airell Anthony Hayles.
Starring Katherine Rodden, Emily Booth, Mark Arnold, Cian Lorcan, Charlie Preston, and Joe Bob Briggs.
SYNOPSIS:
A YouTuber with a failing monster show investigates a werewolf attack in her sleepy hometown on Christmas Eve.
“A werewolf can only be killed by someone who loves him, and who doesn’t love Father Christmas?” says one character in filmmaker Airell Anthony Hayles’ seasonal comedy horror, and that one line pretty much sets the tone for what is a smart and inventive low-budget B-movie.
Lucy (Katherine Rodden) is a YouTuber with a channel called Monster Hunters that seems to be suffering from a lack of monsters. Lucy and her ‘companion’ (he’s not her boyfriend but they’re more than friends) Dustin (Charlie Preston) go to Lucy’s hometown of Hastings to stay with Lucy’s mother Carol (Emily Booth) for Christmas, but when out filming in a dark and foggy park one night they capture a werewolf attack on a man dressed as Santa, who was having a quiet pee in the bushes.
Now that Santa is a werewolf, the population of Hastings starts to go down as Lucy, Dustin, their conspiracy nut friend Rupert (Cian Lorcan), Carol and Lucy’s estranged father Charlie (Teen Wolf’s Mark Arnold in an inspired piece of casting), who also happens to be the chief constable of the area, set about trying to put a stop to all the lycanthropic shenanigans in time for Christmas.
Short and sweet with a running time of only 71 minutes, Werewolf Santa is obviously taking a lot of inspiration from Shaun of the Dead with its silly humour and deadbeat characters trying to do something good, and like that movie these deadbeat characters are so much fun to follow as Carol and Charlie bicker, Dustin reveals he may not be as cool as he thinks everyone thinks he is, and Rupert is the perfect encapsulation of whatever nonsense in trending on social media at any given time.
Everyone’s comic timing is on point and most – not quite all – of the gags hit their mark, so as long as you’re up for some knowing silliness – after all, the movie is called Werewolf Santa – then 71 minutes is just the right amount of time to spend tittering at a werewolf attack in a dogging area and other set pieces of juvenile humour.
But where Werewolf Santa reaches beyond the normal ‘extended comedy sketch’-style that these low-budget movies are normally stuck in is that Airell Anthony Hayles overcomes the budgetary limitations by using comic book panels to set scenes or shift the action along when they clearly don’t have the budget or script to do so. There is even an appearance by legendary horror host Joe Bob Briggs, who reads T’was the Night Before Christmas over an animated sequence at the beginning of the movie; it serves no other purpose than to set a Christmassy mood, but it is a nice touch that goes a long way.
Overall, Werewolf Santa probably won’t become required Christmas viewing but it is an amusing and entertaining diversion from the regular seasonal slashers and ghost stories. The found footage-style presentation is extremely well shot, so much so that you forget it is being filmed that way (and nobody gets knocked down and dragged off into the darkness by an unseen force, so bonus points for that), and it helps that nobody lingers on the werewolf for too long because what budget they had didn’t go on werewolf make-up. But if you’re up for dumb laughs (in the best possible way) then Airell Anthony Hayles has you covered this year, and probably for the next couple as Zombie Santa and Vampire Santa are already in post-production.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
