Christmas at the Kringles Review: Kevin Lewis' Wild Ride

The Severson family - Mark (Livingston), Julie (Bilson), and their impressionable young son - pack up their lives and land in a picture-perfect suburban neighborhood that looks like it was lifted from a catalog. Their next-door neighbors, the Kringles, are a different story entirely. Led by the unnervingly cheerful Carol (Arden Myrin) and the too-jolly Nick (Thomas Lennon), the family celebrates Christmas 365 days a year: lights in July, carols in September, and a decorations budget that could fund a small municipality. The Seversons initially shrug it off as eccentricity.

Then their son starts spending more and more time next door. He comes home humming unfamiliar carols, talking about "the workshop," and generally acting like he's been recruited into a cult with excellent cookie recipes. Mark and Julie's mild discomfort curdles into suspicion, and their investigation reveals that the Kringles might not be human at all - or at least not the kind of humans who celebrate Christmas for normal reasons. Beverly D'Angelo lurks in the periphery as Mama K, a matriarch whose presence suggests the family tree has some very strange roots, while Donald Faison and David Wain pop up as neighbors with their own secrets. The screenplay, wisely, keeps the exact nature of the Kringles ambiguous for as long as possible, letting dread and laughs build in equal measure before the third act detonates into full-blown action-horror chaos.

The smartest thing "Christmas at the Kringles" does is cast actors who can sell absurdity with a straight face. Livingston has spent decades perfecting the art of the bewildered everyman, and he's the perfect audience surrogate as a dad slowly realizing his neighbor might be a yuletide deity with a body count. Bilson matches him beat for beat, bringing warmth and a welcome sharpness to a role that could have been a generic worried mom. But the film belongs to Arden Myrin and Thomas Lennon, who play the Kringles with the manic sincerity of people who genuinely believe every day is December 25 - and who become terrifying the moment that sincerity cracks.

Rob Riggle's Drunk Santa is the film's secret weapon, a recurring gag that gets funnier with each appearance, though your mileage will vary depending on your tolerance for grown men in Santa suits falling over. The practical effects are scrappy and inventive; Lewis clearly prefers tangible puppetry and goopy prosthetics to CGI, which gives the horror beats a tactile, handmade quality that suits the material.

That said, the movie has real problems. The first act drags, spending too long on suburban setup before the weirdness kicks in. The script struggles to balance its three genres - action, horror, and comedy - and there are stretches where it satisfies none of them. Some jokes land with a thud, and the third act's escalation from creepy to explosive feels abrupt rather than earned. The TMDb rating of 6.1 feels about right: audiences are split between those charmed by its scruffy ambition and those frustrated by its uneven execution. It's a cult film in waiting rather than a mainstream crowd-pleaser.

Pros

• Arden Myrin and Thomas Lennon deliver delightfully unhinged performances
• Ron Livingston and Rachel Bilson ground the absurdity with committed, likeable turns
• Practical effects give the horror elements a gruesome, handmade charm
• It swings for something genuinely weird instead of playing it safe

Cons

• A sluggish first act takes too long to get to the good stuff
• Tone wobbles between genres, satisfying none consistently
• Third-act escalation feels rushed and underdeveloped
• Some gags, particularly the broader comedic bits, wear thin fast

"Christmas at the Kringles" is a lump of coal wrapped in pretty paper - but it's the kind of coal that explodes. It's messy, it's uneven, and it wastes a good twenty minutes of setup, yet there's something irresistible about a movie this committed to its own strange vision. Myrin and Lennon are worth the ticket alone, and Lewis's grimy practical effects give the whole thing a scrappy underdog energy that's hard to resist. It's not a classic, and it won't dethrone "Die Hard" as the ultimate alternative Christmas movie, but for horror-comedy fans looking for something offbeat this October, the Kringles are worth a visit. Just don't let your kids go next door.