Santa Jaws (2018)

directed by Misty Talley

USA

88 minutes

3 stars out of 5

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Santa Jaws cold-opens with a dream sequence that I wish had set the tone for the rest of the film. Yes, the Christmas humor is goofy, but it's a clearly deliberate goofiness that everyone involved appears to be enjoying. But then the protagonist wakes up, and - ugh, we're going to be dealing with an angsty teenage boy for this entire movie?

That being said, though, I want to emphasize that Reid Miller absolutely kills it in the lead role. I think this movie would have been far worse had there been some other kid playing Cody. The material he's given to work with is frequently clichéd and the actors he plays off of - including most of the adults - kind of phone it in sometimes. But Miller 100% believes everything he's saying, and it makes me believe him too. There's a delicate balance here where the peripheral characters who exist mostly as comic relief and/or to get shark-murdered are allowed to be a little hammier, but the protagonist, around whom everything revolves, could not risk being even a little bit unserious. Miller nails that. I've never heard of anything else he's been in, but if he eventually moves beyond bad shark movies, he could really have a future - ditto for the director, who appears to, thus far, have worked exclusively in bad shark movies.

I say as if I'm somebody who knows anything whatsoever about acting.

Anyway, this is a killer Christmas shark movie. You already know what to expect when you sit down to watch it. The aforementioned seriousness with which it treats its premise is a big plus; it is silly to us, but feels dead serious to its characters. And there's a lot more going on here than in your typical shark movie or your typical Christmas slasher: the main character is gifted a magic pen that brings everything he draws to life, and when he uses it to ink a drawing of the villain in his comic book Santa Jaws, the demonic shark becomes real and immediately begins picking off his entire circle of family and friends. (The shark gained its powers by eating Santa Claus. It is attracted to Christmas items and Christmas music and likewise can only be injured by Christmas-y things, such as a crossbow with garland wrapped around it.)

The parts where the film drags are the parts where a lot of slasher films drag: the spread of the threat beyond the protagonist and into the larger world. It's just always really boring to go through the motions of having one person try to make everybody around them believe they're in danger - the cycle of "what are you talking about, don't be silly!", getting brutally killed, everyone finally believing the danger is real, everyone arming themselves, so on and so forth. There's not much avoiding that in a lot of cases, but sometimes a movie can find creative ways to make it feel like less of a chore, and Santa Jaws doesn't quite do that, despite all of its originality in other areas.

But you can tell that there's talent across the board even though the premise is silly, so the film is fun to watch and doesn't have too many amateurish pacing issues. The location also feels authentic (the comic shop looked like a real comic shop) and it's tasteful enough with its sub-par CGI gore that when there is a shark kill it feels genuinely funny as opposed to immersion-breaking.

I'm starting to realize that I really don't like watching Christmas movies, but things like this make me realize that there are a few out there that mess with the formula enough to be fun. While it never gets ridiculous enough to make for good "you and your friends pretending to be Joel and the bots" fodder - which works in its favor, the balance of seriousness and humor is the best thing about this - it's definitely recommended if you've seen everything else and are tired of Santa-themed slashers. You kind of have to not think about it very hard, though: how hard is it to not get killed by a shark? Just stay away from the marina and it'll probably eventually starve to death or just get bored and look for less wily prey.