Letters to Satan Claus (2020)

This is one of a few comedy/horror movies about a mislabeled letter to Santa invoking the Prince of Darkness instead that got on my radar after I saw the 2024 Jack Black vehicle, Dear Santa. I found myself in the minority in that I mostly liked that one, but of course I wanted to see other takes on the premise. This... actually isn't really that.

Or rather, it is on the most simplistic of levels. Both movies feature a similar inciting incident with the protagonist writing to Satan by accident, but aside from that this is much closer to the second Adult Swim Yule Log, which is to say the horror is largely being leveraged as a counterpoint to a romcom framework playing off tropes parodying Hallmark Christmas movies. To its credit, Letters to Satan Claus did it first, though Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branchin' Out did it better.

That's not to say this is awful or even bad. The pieces here are all actually pretty decent: Karen Knox understands the movie she's in and has a blast, the script features a number of clever gags, and the concept of exploring the horror of Hallmark Christmas has a great deal of potential. But even if Branchin' Out hadn't pulled it all together a bit better, there's something off about Letters to Satan Claus.

Honestly, I'm not even entirely sure what. Part of it may come down to budget. This looks and more importantly feels like television in ways that prevent it from connecting. The direction and cinematography don't quite manage to give the movie enough force. This is most obvious in the horror bits, of course, but I actually think the comedic beats are where the shortcomings do the most damage. This can't quite make the punchlines hit right, so you never really get into the experience.

The story centers on Holly Frost (born Holly Winters, but she changed her name - I do like that gag). Holly was born in the town of Ornaments, whose entire economy appears to be centered around the holiday and basically everyone has a Christmas pun for a name. As a child, she accidentally summoned the devil, who murdered and chopped up her parents, leaving their dismembered body parts in presents for Holly and her sister, Cookie, to find on Christmas morning.

Now an adult, Holly has left Ornaments and become a successful news reporter. She reluctantly accepts an assignment back in her hometown, despite hating it and Christmas. She returns and is quickly reunited with her sister, old friends, and her ex-boyfriend, Chris Pringle (Joseph Cannata), one of several love interests introduced through the movie.

Yup, this beat Branchin' Out to the string of meet-cutes gag, too. Though about half of them, along with everyone else, wind up murdered by Satan Claus before long. See, Holly (presumably not believing her childhood memories are real) gets drunk and writes an angry letter telling Satan off, but she does so in a way that effectively gives him Christmas. So he shows up and starts killing people in various Christmas-themed ways (essentially a cross between Santa's Slay and Nightmare on Elm Street). Eventually Holly realizes what's behind the disappearances, but by then she's a suspect.

So, with the help of her ex-boyfriend's teenage daughter (who... looks to be between five and ten years younger than her father - maybe that's supposed to be a joke?), she writes a letter to Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. He gives her advice to challenge the devil by taking back Christmas. Then she burns the letter she wrote to Satan as a child, defeating him. This also returns everyone he killed recently to life (so everyone but her parents).

She then quits her job to move back to Ornaments and fix her relationship with her sister. She does not, however, decide to marry her ex. Instead she makes out with a minor character and invites the town's resurrected mayor - a woman Holly was previously competitive with - to a three-way. Oh, and Holly's best friend, a gay man, discovers the guy Holly helped him ask out is secretly a European prince, and they become engaged.

There's a quick pre-credits stinger teasing a potential sequel by revealing... you know what? It doesn't make sense, and you know the drill, anyway. Besides, this wasn't popular enough to warrant a sequel, anyway.

There's a great deal to appreciate here, at least in the abstract. I like the pivot to a non-heteronormative ending, specifically challenging the simplistic assumption leads will want to get married to convenient partners with ready-made families. Holly managing to undergo a transformation into a better person without sacrificing her desires is a nice twist, as is the fact she's still drawn romantically to someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas. There's a tendency in western holiday media to center homages to A Christmas Carol as lessons about loving Christmas (which is absolutely not the point of the original text). This at least challenges that trope.

Likewise, a decent number of the jokes land well enough. Nothing here is quite as hilarious as it aims to be, but for the most part the comedy is more on the bland side than outright bad. I realize that sounds like damning with faint praise, but it's worth noting the majority of movies I've encountered in this subgenre fail to clear this bar.

Ultimately, the issue with Letters to Satan Claus is less that it's a bad movie than that it's not good enough. Horror/comedies either work or they don't tonally and stylistically, and while this comes closer to the line than I expected, it can't quite make it over.