SANTASTEIN (2023)

New streaming on Tubi and Screambox from Imaginex Movies!
Directed/Written by Manuel Camilion, Benjamin Edelman.
Check out the trailer here!!

When Max was a kid, he accidentally killed Santa Claus and buried him in his backyard. Christmas has been all but forgotten ever since. But since that fateful day, Max has been working on a way to reanimate the dead. Now sixteen, Max (Jared Korotkin) and his lab partner Paige (Ophelia Rivera) thinks he may have stumbled upon the means to bring life to the dead. Having saved Santa’s brain, Max steals a corpse and transfers the brain into the newly dead body. But this new Santastein (Michael Vitovich) doesn’t really remember who he was and goes on a rampage across the small town. Now Max must find Santastein before the cops gun him down to teach him the true meaning of Christmas.

SANTASTEIN is a low budget gem of a movie that isn’t afraid to have some fun mixing the legend of Santa Claus with that of Frankenstein and, dammit if I didn’t have some fun watching it. Now, SANTATSEIN is no perfect movie, but the mixing of the fun concepts, the low fi take on Max’s reanimation process, and the violent and gory rampage Santastein goes on makes for a breezy and harmless, yet altogether fresh take on holiday horror. I’ve seen Santa Werewolves, Santa Serial Killers, and monstrous Santas of all kinds. But SANTASTEIN combines the stories of two iconic characters pretty seamlessly.

The acting is not the best, but I’ve definitely seen worse. The sound is quite rough as well, another symptom of low budget-itis. But the attempts at humor work most of the time. I like the added detail that the longer Santastein is in his body, the more he is able to spread the power of Christmas. So though Santastein might not be able to control his powers, he inadvertently causes it to snow at Christmastime in this small town that seems to not have seen snow ever. This leads to one fun scene of a moronic teen testing if his tongue will actually get stuck when he licks a metal pole. Of course the scene ends gorily.

I also like the fact that the filmmakers took the time to develop a few subplots involving characters that Santa might consider naughty, like the nerdy girl who wants desperately to be popular, no matter how many backs she has to stab. Or the group of bullies who have tormented Max all through high school. You don’t get this amount of character in a lot of low budget horror, so I appreciate it. The actors playing Max and Paige (Jared Korotkin and Ophelia Rivera, respectively) do a decent job as leads, playing it straight in this ridiculous situation. And Michael Vitovich is powerful and threatening as the lumbering Santastein, even when he’s doling out some holiday themed carnage.

There are little winks and nods to Mary Shelley’s classic as well as Santastein runs into a little girl playing in the woods and Max’s lab basically being made out of basic hardware materials and cardboard, though still capably able to reanimate. It’s all done with a tongue firmly planted in cheek and though it gets gory and quite brutal at times, there is a sweetness to the dim-witted way Max is trying in his own bent way, to bring Christmas back and atone for his past sin of killing Santa in the first place.

SANTASTEIN isn’t an epic film by a long shot. But it achieves a lot on a small budget while successfully blending two iconic fictional characters in creative ways. There’s a lot of imagination in this little film and having endured some truly wretched holiday horrors, this one is worth unwrapping.