The Christmas Spirit (2023)

This 2023 Canadian movie is difficult to categorize. For purposes of marketing, it appears to be getting classified as some sort of horror/comedy or comedy/thriller, but - aside from a couple brief shots that feel as if they were wedged in as an excuse to connect it to the popular horror genre - this is really more a Christmas comedic fantasy. It's admittedly in the grey area between genres, but it's closer to something like The Bishop's Wife or even last year's Dear Santa than It's a Wonderful Knife. The nebulous genre isn't an issue; the fact it's not all that good, however, is.

That's also unfortunate, because the movie has a lot of potential. The premise is bonkers in the best way possible, and there are a handful of twists and concepts that are brilliantly inspired. Sadly, the pacing is off throughout, the ending is underwhelming, and whatever lore is supposed to be underlying this fails to coalesce. In addition, the movie is light on the sort of over-the-top style a premise this outlandish requires. I spent a lot of the runtime rooting for this to find a way to pull itself together, only to find myself frustrated.

The story here centers around Cole. As a boy, he witnessed his sister strangle to death on Christmas lights after he chose to stay inside playing video games rather than help her. Somehow, this resulted in the Spirit of Christmas becoming trapped in Cole's head in the form of a lucha libre wrestler only he can see and hear. The spirit insists it's Cole's guilt keeping him trapped, and he'll need to make a sacrifice in order to free them both.

Cut to twenty years later. Cole's still possessed by the spirit, who's long since lost patience. He insists he needs Cole to get rid of the guilt so he can spread the true meaning of Christmas. And his suggestion on how to do this involves kidnapping an Instagram star who looks identical to Cole's sister, reenacting her strangulation by Christmas lights, then getting her to forgive him.

The young Instagram star is Maggie, a girl whose fame comes from accidentally livestreaming discovering that her mother is having an affair. Cole, who still mostly thinks the spirit is a hallucination, reluctantly agrees to the spirit's plan, dresses as Santa, and drives to the mall in a red van. Things don't immediately go as planned - Maggie is with her friend, Gina, and there are three teenage boys who clash with Cole and become friends with Maggie and Gina. A pair of cops also become tangentially involved.

Eventually Cole finds an opportunity to interact with Maggie alone, though he has no plan on how to actually kidnap her. Maggie inadvertently solves that problem when she asks Cole to help her make some videos of him chasing her and imprisoning her in his van. As odd as this sounds, it's one of the movie's stronger sequences, as the absurdity of the whole thing starts to come through.

Soon, Cole is pulled over by the aforementioned police. He manages to overpower them and leaves them tied up and gagged with duct tape in the back of their car, where the three teenage boys find them. By this point, the teens have seen one of the video Maggie uploaded, recognize Cole from earlier, and conclude Maggie's in danger. They steal the cop car with the two police - still bound - in the back and go looking for Cole and Maggie.

Meanwhile Cole has Maggie at his garage, where he's trying to follow the Christmas Spirit's instructions to resolve the situation. When it becomes clear this will involve hurting Maggie, Cole balks and starts fighting the Christmas Spirit. Cole initially seems to win, but his victory is short-lived - the spirit is immortal, after all. Defeated, he returns to trying to reenact his sister's death. It should be noted he doesn't expect this to kill or even seriously hurt Maggie, though what he does expect isn't entirely clear.

It's a moot point, as the rest of the characters show up around this time. The teens fight Cole, who shoots one using the gun he stole earlier. The others eventually overpower him. Believing their friend is dead, they're about to kill Cole, who tells them he's ready to die.

Only their friend pulls through thanks to some intervention from the Christmas Spirit, and the teens decide to show mercy. Eventually, the Spirit is free, Cole's taken into custody, and Maggie goes home to make a video reflecting on how the true meaning of Christmas is forgiveness. She forgives her mother and convinces her father to do the same.

To be fair, the forgiveness thing isn't out of left field. To the extent the Spirit had a plan at all, it was to make a sacrifice (seemingly of the human variety) in order to be forgiven miraculously. And that's sort of what happened. Kind of.

My impression is the movie was constructed (somewhat haphazardly) around the idea of setting the past aside at the holidays. I don't recall the song Auld Lang Syne being one played during the movie, but it's similar to that. And of course this seems to be trying to tie the holidays to ritual sacrifice, though...

Okay, that part just doesn't work. Or rather, it doesn't remotely align with James Frazer's template, nor does it resemble any sort of ritual sacrifice I'm familiar with. What this actually feels like is a situation where the filmmakers had seen other Christmas movies allude to sacrifices, concluded there must be something there, then tossed it in without worrying about the background. I'm not saying that's necessarily what occurred, but it's the impression I got.

This really needed something more substantial. A twist might have helped - I certainly spent a lot of time waiting for the reveal that the Spirit demanding Cole kidnap an innocent teenager and make "a sacrifice" wasn't benevolent. Hell, I half expected the point to be that the "Spirit of Christmas" is ancient and cruel, a blood-thirsty pagan ritual predating its modern appearance. That would have at least been more interesting and satisfying than the reveal that it was actually trying to spread a message of forgiveness and ensured no one died on its watch (excluding Cole's sister at the beginning, I guess - like I said, the lore here doesn't really work).

I suspect I'd have been willing to overlook all that if it weren't for the lack of a strong visual style and the constrained tone. Movies like this need to either be extremely intelligent or delightfully weird: all this really has going for it is a fun premise. That premise, along with decent enough production values and solid performances prevent this from being a total loss, but this needs a lot more to rise to the level of being good.