Ellen Datlow has an anthology of stories called The Doll Collection. The Child’s Play
movies features a killer doll possessed by the soul of a serial killer, and
that series is getting a more robot-goes-wild kind of remake. I could give more
examples of demonic toys (Demonic Toys
is also a franchise), and I could also talk about the notion of the uncanny
valley and how it relates to a fear of dolls, but in horror, there is always a
tendency to take something innocent (a child’s toy, for example) and twist it
into something frightening. So let’s hop in Krampus’s magic sleigh, travel past
the island of misfit toys with a stop at Christmasland because the Scary
Librarian is looking at some twisted toys and horrid holiday celebrations in
this month’s Screen to Screams.
Many people are familiar with the Krampus legend, which is
basically anti-Santa, about a demonic creature that whips naughty children and
then ferries them to the underworld. Michael Dougherty, the director of Trick R’ Treat, offers a nasty nugget of
humorous holiday horror in Krampus by
having the titular holiday bogeyman terrify a family who were caught without
the holiday spirit. Many might think of spending the holidays with family as a
sort of endurance test, but young Max is really not looking forward to having
his boorish uncle and his family pay a visit, especially as it adds stress to
his parents’ fracturing relationship. After a holiday blowup, he tears up a
letter to Santa, which invites Krampus to wreak havoc on everyone from his
Martha Stewart-esque mother to his gun-toting uncle. If you like holiday
horror, this movie has everything from angry Christmas cookies to toys that play
way too rough. More funny than scary at times, Krampus is a holiday movie that revels in its zaniness while
keeping at its core a relatable family who, despite their obvious differences
of opinions, come together to face the horrific nonsense that explodes around
them.
Still zany but a little darker is Charlie Manx’s version of
Christmasland. For those of you who’ve read NOS4A2
(I recently did a review about it), you remember Charlie Manx, the ruler and
creator of Christmasland, but there was a time before he had his fateful run-in
with Vic McQueen. Fans of Joe Hill’s Locke and Key graphic novel series will
enjoy his prequel story/graphic novel The Wraith: Welcome to Christmasland. The story begins with a prison break with Charlie
driving his very famous getaway car, and the escapees do indeed get away to
Charlie’s magical land and get to see some of the children-turned-monsters he
has brought there. This story has an emotional core as one of the prisoners, a
father who’d just lost his son, is one of the few among the ragtag group
Charlie takes that has a heart and that heart hurts for his lost son, who helps
him stay ahead of Charlie’s minions. One of the great things about this being a
graphic novel is actually seeing Christmasland thanks to the disturbing artwork of Gabriel Rodriguez and Charles Paul Wilson III. Prepare to see in all their sinister glory the monster-children-turned-Manx-minions
in costume and a moon with Manx’s face whose massive size alone is terrifying. The
graphic novel even presents the origin of Charlie Manx and how Christmasland
came to be, injecting a syringe full of tragedy into Manx’s character. Both stories are a great method of catharsis
after a stressful holiday, allowing you to both laugh and scream.
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