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| Red Christmas | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | Craig Anderson |
| Written by | Craig Anderson |
| Produced by | Craig Anderson Belinda King Bryan Moses Dee Wallace |
| Starring | Dee Wallace Geoff Morrell David Collins |
| Cinematography | Douglas James Burgdorff |
| Music by | Helen Grimley |
Production company | Red Christmas |
| Distributed by | Umbrella Entertainment Artsploitation Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 82 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
Red Christmas is a 2016 Australianhorror film written, directed, and produced by Craig Anderson.[1]
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A family gathers together to celebrate Christmas. Amidst the celebrations, a mysterious, cloaked stranger, "Cletus" arrives at the house and is taken in as a guest. He reads a letter he wrote to the family and after he discusses the topic ofabortion, he is forced to leave the home and is told that if he decided to return, he would be killed.
It is eventually revealed that 20 years ago, the matriarch of the family, Diane (Dee Wallace), travelled north to have an abortion. During the procedure, a religious fanatic bombed the clinic and took Diane's planned to be aborted child which is revealed to be Cletus. Cletus has now returned to the family home to violently exact revenge on her entire family.
During the night, Cletus kills Hope with an ax, and proceeds to strangle Joe in a car. Cletus smashes Scott's head. A police officer eventually arrives after being called earlier, unfortunately Cletus murders him almost immediately. Later on, Cletus forces Peter's head into a blender. Diane accidentally shoots Jerry. Ginny gives birth to the baby. Cletus stabs Suzy with an umbrella. Cletus stabs Ginny in the back and gently rests her newborn baby onto a table. Diane stabs Cletus with an anchor chained around her neck, then leaps out the window of the second-floor room, hanging herself and ripping out Cletus' insides, leaving Ginny's newborn baby as the sole survivor of the night.
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 47% based on19 reviews, with aweighted average rating of 5.41/10.[2]OnMetacritic, which assigns a rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 52 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[3]
Eddie Cockrell fromVariety called it, "An energetic, candy-colored romp through genre tropes that manages to take its subject matter seriously while poking fun at itself at the same time."[4]Noel Murray fromLos Angeles Times wrote in his review on the film, "Red Christmas doesn't have any specific political point of view; it's fraught with contradictions, and should make anyone squeamish. Mostly, it's a tightly constructed, unapologetically nasty little thriller, given depth and weight by Wallace's interpretation of a sweet woman suffering for her past."[5] John DeFore called the film "Gory and offensive, but lacking in the scare department.". DeFore criticized the film's pacing, and lack of humor.[6]
Craig Anderson also made a 100-minute making of documentary, Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare.
