‘Christmas at the Kringles’ Trailer Sets Oct. 30 Release

Briarcliff Entertainment has released the teaser trailer for Christmas at the Kringles, and the holiday horror comedy opens wide in theaters on October 30.

That is the day before Halloween, and roughly eight weeks before the holiday the film is named after. Briarcliff is not confused. Krampus and Violent Night both opened in December and both worked, but the Halloween corridor is where horror comedy money actually sits, and a Santa with a chainsaw sells better next to the costume aisle than next to the nativity.

What the Teaser Puts Under the Tree

The teaser runs on tonal whiplash rather than scares, which is the correct instinct for a first look at this kind of movie. Holiday decorations, then blood on the holiday decorations. Dread Central picked out the trailer’s clearest thesis statement, delivered by Thomas Lennon, who announces that he is “a crazy man with a chainsaw.” Rue Morgue, covering the same drop, noted the campaign is selling the movie as more of a Halloween title than a Christmas one.

The Neighbors Are the Problem

The official synopsis puts the Severson family in a new suburban neighborhood next door to the Kringles, who celebrate Christmas year-round. What reads as eccentric curdles once the parents notice how attached their son has become to the family next door. The confrontation reveals what the Kringles are actually after, which is hypnotizing and indoctrinating the newcomers, and the father ends up running a rescue mission alongside what the synopsis calls a “rogue, badass Santa.”

It is Disturbia with garland, and the premise is sturdier than the title suggests.

This Cast Has Christmas History

The best piece of casting here is Beverly D’Angelo, who has been playing Ellen Griswold since National Lampoon’s Vacation in 1983 and spent Christmas Vacation holding a house together while it came apart around her. Putting her inside a movie about a Christmas-obsessed family with a body count is a joke that lands before a single frame of her performance does.

Ron Livingston leads as the father, and genre audiences know him as Roger Perron, the dad in The Conjuring whose family bought the wrong farmhouse. He is twice now the man who moved into the wrong house. Rachel Bilson, Rob Riggle, Arden Myrin, Donald Faison and David Wain fill out the block, and Lennon is the chainsaw.

Where Kevin Lewis Comes From

Director Kevin Lewis made Willy’s Wonderland in 2021, the one where Nicolas Cage beats animatronic mascots to death in a defunct family restaurant and never speaks a line. That film understood something most horror comedies do not, which is that the joke works better when the movie plays the violence completely straight. A house of relentlessly cheerful Christmas people is the same problem in a different sweater.

The screenplay is by Zack Imbrogno, who wrote Slayers. Briarcliff closed domestic rights and set the wide release back in May, per Deadline.

Christmas at the Kringles hits theaters October 30, dropping into an already crowded October. Everything else staking out a date is in our complete horror release calendar.