Why ‘Christmas With The Kranks’ is the ultimate Christmas horror movie.
By: Harry Phillips
Tags: Horror Movies, Christmas, Capitalism, Christmas With The Kranks, Horror

Jamie Lee Curtis buckles to the concrete floor, letting out a guttural, animalistic scream. It’s the scream one would associate with someone in deep despair, the acting chops reminiscent of Donald Sutherland cradling his dead daughter at the start of ‘Don’t Look Now’. The grief is potent through the screen. Yet where you may expect to see a mangled body on the road at the receiving end of these shrill shrieks, the audience are instead shown a can of Hickory Honey Ham, crumpled by a lorry.

Needless to say, the stakes in Christmas With The Kranks are low. However, in 2020 where capitalism has been put under the critical eyeglass, it’s clear that these low stakes and trivial situations are mere gift wrap over a truly insidious undercurrent.

When we discuss movies which are transcendent in breaking genre codes and conventions, Christmas With The Kranks (2004) is an overlooked horror masterpiece. Bizarrely but understandably based on a John Grisham novel, the movie sees a family try to escape the traditional trappings of the festive holiday.

We often see a conglomeration of Horror and Christmas genres meld in movies such as ‘Black Christmas’ or ‘Better Watch Out’, where blood spittles over Christmas wreaths, and dead bodies are slumped in the reflection of silver baubles. However what makes Christmas With The Kranks all the more unnerving, is its absolute commitment to the genre of Christmas.

The setting is a snowy suburban landscape. The music is deafeningly festive. The colour scheme is harsh pangs of crimson red and mustard yellow. It wraps a noose of tinsel around your neck and tightens it until you’re gasping for air. There is absolutely no denying that this is a Christmas movie. Horror is never explicitly pursued, aside from shots played for laughs of Jamie Lee Curtis scampering around her house in fear of her satanic neighbours, or slithering down the wall in horror after her husband rejects the policeman’s annual holiday calendar.

Therein lies the genius of Christmas With The Kranks. Some Christmas-Horror amalgamations rely on a bloody axe being dragged across a cream carpet towards a Christmas tree, or the hooves of Krampus imprinted in the snow walking towards your front porch — but not away. The horror is obvious. What makes The Kranks so insidious, is the enemy is entwined with the theme. The movie self-consciously utilises its own theme to put its argument across. It’s a rebellion against genre, more specifically the Hollywood genre film: an industrialised mode of production focused on institutional supply and demand for the sole benefit of audience consumption and profit. It’s a criticism of cookie cutter movies that are made solely for profit. And therein lies its more important criticism: it’s a rebellion against capitalism. The enemy is capitalism. Invisible, but omnipresent.

In conversation with Noam Chomsky about Christmas With the Kranks, he states that the movie seems like ‘the commodification of every aspect of life that is a natural component of capitalism’. Capitalism is merely the backdrop which oozes into themes of traditionalism, consumerism, freedom, and America.

The malevolent and personified force of capitalism is established from the very beginning. Luther and Nora say goodbye to their daughter Blair for the holiday season. Already, the audience can feel the aura of capitalism loom over Nora and Luther like it’s the manifestation of Death in Final Destination. It’s already trembling at this breach of traditionalism, watching the abolition of the nuclear family unfold. To make matters worse, Luther rejects an umbrella from a man on the street whilst it’s raining, a rejection of consumerism. Rubbing salt into this wound, this umbrella is rejected from a man dressed as Father Christmas, mocking consumerist culture straight to its face. And just to twist that knife a little bit more, Luther sees an advertisement for a cruise ship holiday past the frosted window pane of a holiday agent, and thus decides to “skip Christmas”. It’s this trifecta of threat towards capitalism which preludes a truly harrowing festive frolic, that only The Wickerman could aspire to achieve in its penultimate climax.

The Kranks are loud and proud about their plan to go on a cruise ship holiday instead of celebrating Christmas. “I will NOT be celebrating Christmas this year,” Luther boastingly writes in a work email. “One year off, no Christmas whatsoever” Nora irritably tells her friends at a restaurant table. Their mouths hang agape in response to this. Shock washes over their faces and colours them pale. Bystanders from countless neighbouring tables crane their heads to stare at Nora judgmentally. It’s a malevolent detail which creates an oppressive atmosphere, and whilst it’s an innocuous detail, it does make it difficult to disagree that what we’re dealing with from the get-go is a Christmas cult.

This is just scratching the surface. We proceed to bubbling tension in the form of snide comments. The Kranks’ neighbour Walt Scheel calls Luther a ‘jerk’ for not wanting to purchase a Christmas calendar. Duke Scanlon emotionally guilt trips Luther for not purchasing a Christmas tree. Every exchange between the neighbours and the Kranks has an aura of threat to them. There is an overarching pittance to them not conforming to the standards of the traditional Christmas holiday, which the movie itself seems to side with.

We are transformed from snide comments to military action. The neighbours begin campaigning against The Kranks for not putting up their Snowman decoration. Outside their front porch, Vic Frohmeyer bellows “we’re here for Frosty!” He rallys a few kids from the neighbourhood to chant alongside him. It’s intense. Nora tries desperately to make a subtle escape in her car, only to be chased by Vic Frohmeyer, foaming at the mouth. “We just want Frosty!” he barks - with Nora whimpering in the driver’s seat. It’s a disturbing insight into how conformity has indoctrinated this neighbourhood. They have reduced themselves to a being a society characterised by fads and ritualistic behaviour, at the expense of a plastic decoration symbolic of a holiday devoured by capitalism. Their desperation for The Kranks to erect their Frosty decoration is representative of their blind conformity, slaves to the capitalist trappings of the holiday season.

Later on, Vic Frohmeyer sets a crazed group of Christmas Carollers to sing “Jingle Bells” outside their front porch. As they repeat this jingle, their tempo speedens, the intensity of their vocals grow into beastly proportion. The intensity grows and grows until suddenly - silence. Relief is potent through the screen. Nora drops a ball of wool on the floor - you can even hear the mild thud as it hits the cream carpet. Still silent. She grabs the ball of wool, and cranes herself back into her chair. Still silent - when suddenly - she looks up to her window. Carollers are there within an inch of her window screen - singing, close enough to claw at the glass. Nora and Luther scamper to the basement, met by a Frosty decoration, who’s usual happy facial expression has distorted into a maniacal grin. “Free Frosty” is chanted at their window once again by the unhallowed neighbours. It’s hell.

It’s at the midpoint where the horror truly cascades. Their daughter Blair phones them and tells them she is actually coming home for the holidays, with her new fiancé, Enriqué. The Kranks have spent the entire movie trying to escape tradition, yet it is tradition in the form of the nuclear family which claws them back. From here we see the neighbourhood pull together to help The Kranks celebrate Christmas, and what transpires is a unique spin on the ‘good capitalist’ trope that reoccurs in an array of Christmas movies. Where this trope usually follows the guideline that the kindness of the wealthy upper class is demonstrated as an adequate enough solution to appease the damage of class inequality, The Kranks gives a somewhat more realistic spin to the theme. It shows the rich support the rich, and besmirch any evidence of poorness.

Whilst these tropes are purposely turned upside down, the tone of the movie isn’t critical of this. The disdain of poorness is made to seem reasonable through the lighthearted tone of the film. It’s the subtlety of how these genre conventions are flipped which makes for an effective scare. You’re forcibly sided with the culture of capitalism that is dedicated to encouraging the production and sale of commodities. The festive genre conventions and the hellish story itself are diametrically opposed, but it makes the audience side with the cult unknowingly. It’s the closest you could come to being indoctrinated into an actual cult without notice.

cinematic parallels?

The Kranks are merely a comedy punching bag. The movie wants you to laugh at their misfortune, the film actively embracing the fervour of the crowd and actively criticising, even demonising, the choice of the Kranks. I think back to the scene where Luther rejects an umbrella from a man dressed as Father Christmas. His rejection of an umbrella is immediately followed by a throwaway gag of him getting drenched by water bursting through a window awning. It’s subtle, but the umbrella is merely a metaphor for how capitalism takes advantage of people’s misfortune for its own benefit. His immediate punishment for going against consumerist culture makes it difficult to argue against the theory that capitalism truly operates like Death in Final Destination. With the umbrella fulfilling the necessity we have for comfort, shelter, protection and convenience, it makes it seems like a fitting metaphor for how America has monopolised necessity.

We’re at the finale of this horror movie now — a finale which filled me with a greater sense of dread than what I experienced during the final 30 minutes of Hereditary. Like Hereditary, we watch as a family succumb to the cult which they’ve been trying to escape for the entirety of the movie. “Christmas (baby please come home)” echoes in the background hauntingly, as a child rides his bike down a frosted lane. We have the unfounded knowledge that these main characters have met their demise. As the neighbourhood clamber together to help them celebrate their traditional Christmas party, we watch as they partake in the typical Christmas traditions. They laugh amongst friends and strangers. They kiss under mistletoe. There’s an awful scene where they all sing Christmas songs together. Everyone is happy and cheerful. It’s hell.

Marty, a character who has been claus-coded throughout the film (a wink and a nod to the common trope of Santa being a character implied to be Santa rather than explicitly be Santa), arrives at the scene. He brings an item of sinister significance, which I believe offers a summation of this hellish movie.

I reminisce to the Honey Hickory Ham scene, where Nora watches a can smash to smithereens before her very eyes. It’s made abundantly clear in the scene prior (where we watch Nora almost slide tackle another customer to obtain this canned good) that this can of Honey Hickory Ham is the last one in stock. No other can of Hickory Honey Ham is available. When I said that grief was potent through the screen when Nora watched this can get obliterated by a lorry, I was not joking. But what does the Hickory Honey Ham embody, but a branded item used to establish a corporation using iconography to become an institution within itself? And who brings back this Hickory Honey Ham from the dead? Marty. The character who is claus-coded throughout the film. With Santa being somewhat the patron saint of capitalism, it seems befitting. The can is in pristine condition, demonstrating the immortality of corporations in capitalist America. The brand was invincible. It’s a stark reminder that The Kranks were never destined to win this battle. It reminds me of the scene in Hereditary where the class discuss whether Heracles having no choice over his fate makes his narrative more tragic or less tragic. A classmate chimes in, “I think it’s more tragic, because if it’s all just inevitable then that means the characters have no hope. They never had hope”. I believe this to be an excellent summation of Christmas With The Kranks, they truly never had hope to begin with.

It’s the inevitability of The Kranks’ demise which ultimately makes this festive frolic a horror movie. Even before Marty resurrected this brand of Hickory Honey Ham from the dead, we knew The Kranks were never destined to escape this capitalist hell. From the start of the movie, we watched them both yearn for a cruise ship holiday as opposed to the traditional Christmas holiday. It was the crux of the movie, a simple fifty-fifty chance of them making it to the cruise or being trapped in a suburban nightmare. But with the cruise ship being synonymous with freedom, one must ask — if this is their interpretation of freedom, what kind of freedom does America have? I am reminded of the Richard Spencer quote: “A nation based on freedom is just another place to go shopping.”

That is Christmas With The Kranks. It’s a capitalist horror-show in golden wrapping paper with a grotesque red bow tied around it, where consumerism is rife and tradition triumphs. The horror is truly centered around how obsessed this community is with Christmas, and by extension, capitalism and tradition. I asked Gregory Frantz a series of questions regarding Christmas With The Kranks. He recently helped the Campbell Soup company trademark the word “chunky,” so seemed like a suitable candidate for this think-piece. He claims “a life overly focused on economic activity is not likely to be fulfilling,” encapsulating the true horror of The Kranks. The finale is supposed to be happy, yet it’s an illusion. It’s a facade of happiness at the expense of becoming a slave to consumerism. It is sleight of hand as you know beyond the surface of The Kranks singing and cheering in this ghoulish finale, on the undercurrent they are imprisoned, with no means of escape.

We often watch tradition triumph modernity and consumerism peak, especially around the holiday season. This movie is merely a mirror to our own society. True horror is people gunning to shout the f slur in Fairytale Of New York under the guise of “tradition”. True horror is advertising convincing us that consumption is the answer to life’s challenges under the guise of “consumerism”. True horror is people refusing to wear potential life-saving face masks to suppress transmission during the busiest period of the year under the guise of “freedom”. If ever there were to be a horror reboot which actively pursues the horror codes and conventions, Ari Aster would truly do it justice.

We’re at the final shot of the movie. We pan away from Nora and Luther looking through their window at their neighbourhood partaking in their traditional holiday party — Nora’s head resting atop Luther’s shoulder. It’s snowing. It’s cold. The camera pans out to show each house in this suburban neighbourhood, a frosty snowman on top of each one. The screen cuts to black. As expected, a comment from an online forum perfectly summarises this scare-fest, from a user called JayEssArr: It’s a suburban postmodern nightmare psych horror film trapped inside boundless consumer-capitalist apologia that could only have been dreamed up by a haunted person, if not 5 haunted people.