Christmas Evil

Brandon Maggart—and yes, that does sound like “Maggot”—plays Harry Stadling, looking like a washed-out, middle-aged Greg Brady, who happened to observe his mother being orally serviced by Santa Claus near the tree as a boy. Call it the trigger point for what becomes a life of determining who’s naughty and nice, for Harry decides that this Santa Claus gig aligns well with his ability to accurately assess if you suck, figuratively or literally.

He keeps a voluminous tome in which he writes notes in elegant, large-form cursive about who deserves presents that year. Nothing excites him more than the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the arrival of the jolly old elf in his resplendent red suit. Okay, Harry uses field glasses to look into the window of the little girl’s bedroom across the street, but she is very well-behaved and an inspiration to his work, unlike the boy with the smut mag who practices “negative body hygiene,” and we all know what that means to Old Testament–style Santas and Janus-faced priests alike. Unhand yourself, boy!

The film’s psychological aspect stems from Harry’s loneliness. He isn’t evil in that he’s kindhearted. He wants to do well and for people to be well—which is more than most of us, regardless of whatever we tell ourselves and the people we think are paying attention to us on our social media pages. We’re a race of self-obsessed breast-beaters; Harry seeks to be a guardian angel of Christmas, though it’s hard to picture him and Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life at the same lodge function.

Harry is picked on, demeaned, laughed at. Unlike Hermey the elf from 1964’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Harry is a stickler for a well-made toy. Toys that last, unlike happiness, which often seems like it doesn’t. Killing isn’t his motivation; it’s more like situations arise and killing occurs. But we won’t count it as a Christmas sin should you cry out, “Take that!” with the gusto of Santa urging on his reindeer when Harry shows some obnoxious, fake-as-a-metal-Christmas-tree rich people what’s what outside of a church while clad in his Santa attire, with his sleigh—that is, his van, where he sometimes sleeps—in position to spirit him away once again.

Then there’s the psychology of the film’s sibling dynamic between Harry and his brother Philip (Jeffrey DeMunn). The latter regards Harry as a lost cause. As do we. This isn’t cruelty—Philip doesn’t share this view with his brother and instead treats him as someone he loves who he, in turn, would love to see flourish, and whose own home is always welcome to his brother, regardless of how strange and difficult he is. You know it can’t be easy for Philip, but his devotion remains intact.

Almost everyone has felt like a lost cause at some point or other, and we all know loneliness. Rarely is a slasher relatable, but Christmas Evil has some overlap with the life of each person who watches it. In a slasher, we expect the doers of the naughty deeds to eventually be offed themselves, or else stalk off to slay again, be it in a future entry or in our imaginations. Harry gets the ending he has coming, though, which itself is sprinkled with some Christmas magic, as if the real Santa sat down with a higher-up of the universe and pleaded Harry’s case. Either way, he receives the gift he deserves. 🩸