Everyone who knows me knows I am a sucker for a horror film, and in fact one of my favourite Christmas films, Black Christmas (1974), is a horror film (and a bloody good one.) So, I am always on the lookout new horror films for these reviews. However, as Christmas isn’t exactly a perfect time to set horror films many of them end up being tongue in cheek and silly which is very much the case for today’s film, Jack Frost (1997).
I don’t want you to get me wrong, this film needs to be silly and tongue in cheek for it to work. After all, it is about a serial killer who is transformed into a murderous snowman after being doused in an experimental acid, and trying to make that into a serious film is going to be a difficult job for anyone. And for a good chunk of the film, I think it works pretty well. I think the fact that the film has somewhat of a budget helps with this. Of course it is still cheap, but it has enough of a budget to mean it can get a decent cast of actors, it is shot fairly well, and the evil snowman is pretty well put together. But the film also buys into the silliness of its premise and is very much a horror comedy as a result. A lot of the jokes happen to be puns which don’t really land for me, but I got a couple of decent laughs from the film, both with and at the film. A particular favourite was in a discussion between two parents, one of whose kids has been decapitated and the other whose kid is being blamed. At this point one of the parents says, ‘It can’t have been a fight, he is two foot taller than him’ and a voice in the background says, ‘Not anymore’. It isn’t in the foreground of the audio or said by anyone on screen, which for me makes it work so much better. The film does eventually run out of steam in the last half an hour, and it becomes a bit of a slog, but it has enough before this for me to be happy.
This is obviously not a masterpiece of cinema and I feel that a lot of people will get nothing from it. But I quite enjoy how silly it is, and the film buys into this, so it becomes a half decent horror comedy. I don’t think I’ll be watching it again anytime soon but it is a decent enough watch if you want a silly Christmas slasher to sink your teeth in to.
Comentarios