Horror Movie Review: 12 Deaths of Christmas (2017)

12 Deaths of Christmas, also known as Mother Krampus is a horrible told & horribly acted Christmas horror movie. The plot is based around the German urban legend of Frau Perchta. A Christmas witch who is said to take a child each night over the 12 days of Christmas.

Opening with a lengthy voice over explaining an incident of missing kids in 1921 & again in 1992, their bodies were found later in the local woods. A group of angry townspeople blamed a local woman so administered mob justice & hung her. Before she died the woman cursed the town, promising that Frau Perchta would avenge her death.

25 years later & children start going missing again. This makes the locals believe that the curse is coming true. All of this is completely unknown to Vanessa (Claire-Maria Fox) & her young daughter, Amy (Faye Goodwin) as they arrive in the town to spend Christmas with Vanessa’s dad, Alfie (Tony Manders).

Vanessa is struggling to deal with recently splitting up with Amy’s father & hopes the time away will do them both some good. While all Amy wants for Christmas is for her parents to get back together.

These are the least of the families worries though as Frau Perchta makes her arrival in town kidnapping kids & killing adults. It’s not long before Amy becomes her next target & it seems as though Alfie might know more about the witch then he is letting on!

Where do you start with this utter rubbish? The plot is mismatched rip-off of many other horrors & doesn’t seem to know what kind of movie it wants to be. The plot is so contrived that several times we get overly lengthy explanations about what happened in the past & what it means now. It makes it incredibly boring to watch.

Frau Perchta is a confusing villain. She’s a witch that is slightly disfigured & has supernatural abilities. She can literally pull a heart from a chest without even touching the person yet for much of the movie she will use weapons & even try to choke a person with her hands! Her character has no rules making her a horrible villain. For example; she is in the town because of the curse, yet a pair of youngsters call her by saying her name 3 times in the mirror!

Later it is established that Christmas lights hurt her in some way. Yet moments later she is using them herself to strangle a character!

Every time the movie sets up a rule, it destroys it moments later. The amount of continuity errors is embarrassing. This isn’t something that I would normally bring up but they’re so in abundance here that it’s impossible to ignore. One of the worst sees a character bury an axe in a door only for that same door to not have an axe hole moments later! It’s glaringly obvious in a movie that is already incredibly shoddy.

The worst thing though, the absolute worst thing about the movie is the acting. No-one puts in decent performances here, most absolutely stinking up the screen. Awkward dialogue, terrible reactions to events, moments where it is clear they are just waiting for their cue…you’ll end up hoping that Frau Perchta kills everyone quickly.

The finale of the movie throws in a last-minute twist that is laughably bad in just how nonsensical it is. It’s the kind of twist that just makes you say out loud ‘wait, what?’

Some decent gory moments can’t save this dumpster fire of a movie.

It’s boring, its plot is a mess, the acting is terrible & it just comes across so confused. Stay away from 12 Deaths of Christmas/Mother Krampus.