Secret Santa (2015) User Reviews

Christmas Cut Backs

[shawnblackman · 5/10 · 7 January 2017]

A throwback to the 80's slashers complete with dirty, gritty prints to give it that grindhouse feel but set in today's time. A sadistic Santa is sending people gifts that will eventually kill them. If you get a cleaver that will be your fate. He stays true to his word. We see this with a girl who had just opened her gift and receives a hair dryer. Moments later she is in the tub so when the killer goes to throw the hair dryer in the water the plug doesn't reach. He just proceeds to beat her to death with the thing.

It stays true to the fell of the low budget slasher but it does take over 50 minutes to get going. Not too gory but you get the 80's effects with the dismemberments etc. They even throw in a few twists along the way.

Cheesy But Somewhat Amusing

[gwnightscream · 4/10 · 14 December 2020]

This 2015 horror comedy features a group of college friends stalked by a masked killer who decides to bring his own deadly gifts to their Secret Santa party. This is a cheesy but somewhat amusing flick with some cute girls, shoddy editing and gory make-up effects paying homage to low-budget 70's & 80's horror/slasher flicks. Also, most of the characters are a bit dumb like the bald guy who reminds me of Jon Cryer. You could probably give this one a try if you're a fan of the genre.

The last twenty minutes or so are fun.

[BA_Harrison · 4/10 · 9 December 2020]

Shot on video with a godawful grainy 'grindhouse' filter effect (Quentin Tarantino has a lot to answer for), comedy slasher Secret Santa delivers some fairly decent gore effects, the majority of which occur in the final twenty minutes, meaning that there's the best part of an hour of 'character development' to get through first - not great when most of the characters in question are so tedious, the script lamentably dumb, and the acting unbearable.

The worst offender is, without a doubt, Geoff Almond as hopped-up loser Dwayne, who is as irritating as he is bald, but there are plenty of other obnoxious types guaranteed to rankle, including smarmy professor Ramsey (Tony Nash) who is diddling his student Olivia (Nicole Kawalez), promiscuous blonde Carissa (Keegan Chambers), and two-timing Bryan (Brent Baird), who cheated on his girlfriend Nicole (Annette Wozniak), the only likeable character in the whole film (even if she is a web cam model).

Nicole is, not surprisingly, the film's 'final girl', all of her friends bumped off before the end of the film by a masked killer who has been sending them Secret Santa gifts that reveal how they will be killed: a meat cleaver, an electric knife, gardening shears (for a spot of graphic penis pruning!), and a hairdryer (which leads to the funniest moment in the film, when the cable proves too short for the killer to throw it into the victim's bath). The bloody and well executed gore (head smashed in, decapitations, chainsawed legs) in the final act, and the occasional spot of gratuitous female nudity (although, rather strangely, no boobage), make it just about worth persevering until the end.

4.5/10, rounded down to 4 for the aged/distressed look, which is completely unconvincing and totally unnecessary.

YMMV depending on how much you enjoy low budget digital horror.

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 9 December 2018]

Yes, there are two movies called Secret Santa. This one is from 2016, the other is from 2017. This kind of leads to confusion when you're trying to get more info on a movie, but that's the kind of investigative journalism that I guess you've come to expect from this site. Also, I wrote this review at 6 AM on a Monday when I should really be sleeping, but that's definitely the kind of thing you expect from this site.

A group of college kids are in the midst of finals whole a slasher is taking them out one by one. They also decide to have a holiday party complete with a Secret Santa gift exchange, just so the title makes sense. It takes nearly an hour to get to the actual point of this film: the secret Santa gifts point to how the killer will off each person.

The filmmakers shot this on video, but added in film grains and pops to give it a 1970's patina. Obviously, it owes a lot to the original Black Christmas. There's some interesting gore - the film starts with a power drill kill and a torn out eyeball, so there's that. There's also a pretty grizzly knife to the head effect and a black gloved killer, so obviously, that was all it took to get me to make it through this film.

I guess if you watch one holiday themed horror film this year where the killer is fought off with a giant black rubber phallus, you should choose this one.

Indie Yuletide horrors

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 31 December 2017]

SECRET SANTA is another in the overcrowded market of indie horrors with a Yuletide setting. This one suffers from typically underwhelming writing and bad acting but the rest isn't too bad as genre standards go. It's one of those wannabe grindhouse productions with fake print damage, but the 1980s era-looking film stock makes it look pretty good. I also appreciate that the music is nice and creepy and provides a neat backdrop for the otherwise overly familiar action.

EXTREMELY AWFUL MOVIE!!!!

[geraldleejones-20639 · 1/10 · 2 January 2024]

OMG!!! This was one of the worst movies I have ever seen!!! There is no plot whatsoever, it is like a train of consciousness nightmare that just goes on and on. For being billed as a comedy, it sorely lacks any humorous moments. The lighthearted moments are severely lame and the single good gag scene is so poorly delivered that it elicits a groan rather than a chuckle!

I realize that its total budget was $6000.00 Canadian dollars (about $7.36 in U. S. dollars) but everything is soooo amateurish that it makes every moment utterly cringe worthy. To say that this is a "tribute too" 1980s slasher films is an insult to 99% of such films! I had high hopes for a fun time in watching this movie, those hopes were dashed COMPLETELY!!!!

There Are Worse Christmas Slashers Out There

[carolinephillips-47427 · 7/10 · 9 December 2019]

I'm not sure what's in the water as of late, but it seems like everyone and their mother have been churning out Christmas themed slasher movies in the past 5 years. Most of them are pretty charmless, but Secret Santa has its heart in the right place and writer/director Mike McMurran at least attempts to bring a little extra character development and a sense of humor to go along with the gore.

Secret Santa borrows a few pages from the likes of Black Christmas and To All A Goodnight with its house filled with nubile young college girls who are about to have more than student loan and boyfriend drama to contend with as a murderer with a ski mask begins to terrorize and kill them one by one during a secret santa party.

Like most movies around this budget, the cinematography is competent but flat at times without a whole lot of style and some of the sound mixing leaves a bit to be desired, but the actors are above average for a film of this type. Special mention goes to Annette Wozniak as Nicole who gets the most interesting character to sink her teeth into. She's struggling with a cheating boyfriend (Brent Baird who looks like Finn Wittrock's long lost brother) and with her sex cam business she's set up to help pay off her student loans. There's even a fairly progressive scene where she tells her boyfriend about her sex cam work and he's pretty supportive of her. Wozniak carries most of the film herself through her insurmountable amount of charm and she's easily the high point of the film.

Besides the characters of Dewayne and Carissa (he's mostly shrill and painfully unfunny and she's too bitter and angry to ever warm up to), the rest of them are an agreeable group to spend 75 minutes with. I'm not sure if I enjoyed spending as much time with them as McMurran does, because it does take about 50 minutes to get to any major action (besides an opening kill scene). Once the film gets going, the tone begins to shift slightly into something more resembling a dark comedy. Some of it works and some of it doesn't, but you can't fault McMurran for trying something different. At least the results are usually entertaining.

There's a great gag where a hairdryer the killer is using to electrocute a victim in the bathtub with falls out of the wall socket when he tries to throw it into the water, so he has to beat his victim to death with it instead. Even funnier, the length of the killer's "why I did it" monologue is poked fun at during the climax of the film.

Some of the gore effects might have been more effective if the camera didn't linger on them as much, but that's a small complaint in the grand scheme of things, especially when most of the movie is so much fun. Secret Santa is definitely a gift worth unwrapping.

A Great Cheesy Low Budget Horror Flick That Brings out the Grindhouse Nostalgia!!!

[Pumpkin_Man · 10/10 · 17 December 2016]

I'm always looking to buy new Christmas horror flicks. I saw the trailer to this on Youtube and was very intrigued. I watched it today, and was pretty pleased with it. I loved the gore and death scenes and the scratchy film look this movie has the whole time like Grindhouse: Planet Terror. It'll really put you in mind of the so bad it's good 1980's horror slasher movies. It starts off slow, then gets better during the middle of the movie. Some college friends get together for a Christmas party. They each receive a hatchet, an electric knife, a chainsaw, and other weapons. Slowly, the masked killer uses these weapons to kill the person that opened it. The killer has the most hilarious and random reasoning for killing people I've ever seen. Hopefully, this'll become a cult classic to watch around Christmas. I highly recommend SECRET SANTA!!!

A Gift Worth Opening

[marcialyon · 7/10 · 10 February 2020]

Indie horror flicks seem to be getting churned out at such an alarming pace these days that it's hard to keep up, but I'm glad I caught Secret Santa. It at least attempts a little character development here and there, has a great lead (Annette Wozniak), and has a sense of humor to go along with all the blood and guts. It does do the rather annoying "let's add dust and scratches to make it look like an old grindhouse print" thing, which makes no sense since the film takes place in modern day and would never be confused for a film of that era, but that's a small nitpick when there was obviously a good deal of heart and enthusiasm put into this movie. Also, major props for the killer reveal. It's been a long time since I've been that surprised by a slasher movie killer reveal.

You're the Carolers!

[kyleallencole9 · 6/10 · 25 December 2023]

Christmas slasher with very little holiday cheer. A group of 4 college girls living together have a small Christmas party with a few friends, unaware a maniacal killer wearing a ski mask is on the loose. The friends plan a secret Santa gift exchange and do not realize that the killer has delivered each one of them a special present that contains heavy duty equipment like garden shears, turkey carver, power drill and some other twisted items. As the night goes on, each of the kids are brutally killed off with whatever item that was in their gift. They also have to deal with 3 sinister christmas carolers also.

This movie was surprisingly pretty good despite its low budget feel.

Not bad acting and gory murder scenes.

We get to see a death by a power drill, a turkey carver to the stomach, knife murders, a bludgeoning with a hair dryer and a castration scene with garden shears.

This little Christmas horror offering is worth checking out!

Nifty slasher item

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 23 December 2019]

A group of college students find themselves the unwanted targets of a psycho killer while holding a secret Santa party around Christmastime.

Writer/director Mike McMurran keeps the enjoyable story moving along at a constant pace, takes time to develop the characters, delivers a handy helping of graphic gore, tosses in a few cool twists, and further spices things up with an amusing sense of wacky dark humor. The solid acting by the competent cast helps a lot: Annette Wozniak as the sweet Nicole, Geoff Almond as jittery hophead Dwayne, Keegan Chambers as the snarky Carissa, Brent Baird as Nicole's horndog boyfriend Bryan, Nicole Kawalez as the ditsy Olivia, and Tony Nash as hunky professor Ramsey. Andre Becker's shivery pulsating synthesizer score hits the shuddery spot. The neat thing about this movie is how it starts out like a goofy comedy -- Nicole making extra money as a web-cam porn gal on the internet as a means of paying off her college debts is by far the best and funniest gag -- only to turn into a fairly nasty body count horror flick about halfway through. Recommended viewing for slice'n'dice fans.