In recent years there has been a wave of anti-Christmas Christmas movies. I’m talking about films that have used Christmas in every imaginable way other than in the traditional Christmas movie sense. I don’t mean cases where the story happens to take place on Christmas. These are instances where the Christmas holiday, Christmas characters, or Christmas themes are central to the movie.

I won’t even attempt to name them all, but I’m betting there have been more recent anti-Christmas Christmas movies than you might think. We’ve gotten full-blown Christmas slasher movies (“Terrifier 3”, “Christmas Bloody Christmas”, “Silent Night, Deadly Night”), gritty tongue-in-cheek action movies (“Fatman”, “Violent Night”, “Violent Night 2”), and black comedies (“Bad Santa”, “Dear Santa”, “Silent Night”). And there are even more on the way.

**Image Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment**

The latest is “Christmas at the Kringles”, a frustrating horror-comedy hybrid from director Kevin Lewis. The movie begins with Mark Severson (Ron Livingston), his wife Julie (Rachel Bilson), and their young son Bobby (Jack Jewkes) arriving at their new home in the suburbs. The fussy Mark is a city boy who isn’t happy with the move. But Julie thinks it’s needed, hoping the fresh start will allow them to work on their relationship.

The Seversons are immediately greeted by their eccentric neighbors that includes a potty-mouthed, hard-drinking mall Santa (Rob Riggle), and Daryl (Donald Faison), a recent divorcé who lives in his mother’s garage and plays video games all day. But those two are nothing compared to the Kringles, an oddball family of five who are year-round Christmas fanatics. Nick (Thomas Lennon) and Carol Kringle (Arden Myrin) waste no time welcoming the new family to the neighborhood by insisting the Seversons join them for Christmas Eve dinner.

The movie begins entertaining enough, with Lewis and screenwriter Zack Imbrogno landing some good laughs among the holiday season absurdity. The very idea of the Kringles is funny – Christmas obsessed suburbanites, dressed to the hilt in holiday regalia, their house covered in colored lights, their yard full of inflatables. But the gags dry up pretty fast once the Seversons are lured into the Kringles’ crazy and often nonsensical world.

It’s bad enough that the laughs evaporate. But things are made worse by the ineffective horror mechanics. They never create an ounce of tension. And no matter how much blood Lewis throws at the screen, it’s not enough to give the movie a much-needed edge. So in the absence of good comedy or carnage, we’re stuck watching supposedly intelligent people making the dumbest decisions because the plot needs them to.

In fairness to the cast, they give it their all, and most are overqualified for the material they’re given. But the movie repeatedly lets them down, specifically when we enter the Kringles’ bonkers domain. Its here that everything from the humor to the horror gets lost in a manic and muddled second half as the filmmakers throw everything at the screen to see what sticks. In their defense, I think there’s probably a fun idea in there somewhere. Sadly, it’s all but lost in the disappointing movie we get.