When I was slasher searching on Tubi in October I was surprised how many wrestling-themed horror movies I was coming across. And now I went looking for Christmas horror on Shudder and the first one I watched turned out to have a pro wrestler character in it. I guess the whole world is wrestling now anyway. We can’t escape it. At least it’s fun in movies.

THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT is a Canadian movie from 2023, and once I started watching it I understood why its plot description (“A lone man with the Christmas Spirit trapped in his head must kidnap a teenage girl on order to save Christmas”) was so vague. Its strength is that it’s odd and doesn’t really follow any of the usual formulas.

It begins at some unspecified date – ’90s or early 2000s judging from the graphics on the wrestling video game being played by young Cole (Jordan Kronis, 3 episodes of Chucky). His mom (Samantha Espie, ANGELS AND ORNAMENTS, THE CHRISTMAS CURE, INN LOVE BY CHRISTMAS, CHRISTMAS ON THE ALPACA FARM) is on his ass about helping his sister Carol put up the Christmas lights. He seems like maybe he intends to get to it eventually, but he’s still playing the game when the poor girl slips off the roof, tangled in the lights, and is strangled to death. After failing to rescue her through the window Cole backs into – what the fuck? – his favorite wrestler, the masked and caped El Rojo Grande (Nicolas Grimes, “Sasquatch,” Reacher season 1 episode 3). But only he can see him.

Twenty years later Cole (Zion Forrest Lee, ABRAXAS, GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE) is a grown, bushy-bearded loner, and there’s El Rojo Grande sitting at the table nagging him at breakfast. As he explains it, he’s an ancient embodiment of the true meaning of Christmas, trapped here by Cole’s guilt until Cole performs a sacrifice to free him. But Cole is not the murdering type, so he treats El Rojo as an annoying voice in his head and tells him to shut up.

Here’s where it’s unusual. It follows this traumatized, mentally ill person as the spirit convinces him to kidnap a teenage girl named Maggie (Matia Jackett, CRIMSON PEAK) who reminds him of his sister, but he still doesn’t seem all the way gone like, say, Billy in SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT. We’re rooting for Cole to not do it, and that does seem like a possibility, because the thought of this nice guy doing this sick crime seems much darker than the tone of the movie, which after all has an imaginary luchador scouting a victim for him on Instagram.

Maggie is, I guess, a social media star or whatever, whose life is ruined when she livestreams herself surprising her parents by coming home for winter break but catches her mom (Jacklyn Francis, GILDA RADNER: IT’S ALWAYS SOMETHING) in the act of cheating on her dad (Brad Austin, HABITAT). When she notices Cole dressed as Santa and following her in a creepy, empty van she asks if he’s trying to kidnap her, and takes his word for it when he swears he’s not. But it gives her the idea to stage a video with him chasing after her and tying her up in his van, to scare her mom. Oh yeah, sure, I guess I can do that.

Lee is really good, managing to give this psycho a funny and likable side, but I’d say the MVP has to be Jackett as Maggie, because she really pulls off this delicate balance of comically stupid naivete (excitedly “acting out” the scenario without understanding that she’s really being abducted) without going too broad or losing sympathy. She has her wrists duct-taped to a pole in the back of his van and makes a video saying, “Um, so, hey guys, I’ve been kidnapped by a Santa,” but she’s still able to make the transition to serious final girl. That’s quite a feat.

The other players on the board are a trio of teenage boys, Nick (Alexander Nunez, WISH UPON), Buddha (Tavaree Daniel-Simms, CHRISTMAS IN TOYLAND) and Carlos (Enzo Campa), who have a sidewalk altercation with Cole and intend to retaliate against him, before even knowing he kidnapped Maggie (who they met at the mall). Also there are two bickering police officers, Ray (Christian Potenza, THE TUXEDO) and Theo (Chris Handfield, CROSSWORD MYSTERIES: ABRACADAVER), who are focused on Nick, Buddha and Carlos even though there’s a kidnapping Santa right there under their nose.

I think this has a pretty good quirky-but-meant-to-be-taken-seriously tonal balance, except that the cops tip it a little too far into comedy. Not because they’re mostly comical characters, but because after Cole gets the drop on them and handcuffs them in the back of their police cruiser Nick and friends find them, give each other mischievous looks, then steal the vehicle with the officers still inside. To me it was too much to act like this is just a silly prank they can get away with, especially since there’s already been an acknowledgment of how police treat young men of color.

Maybe a bigger problem for me is that I don’t quite get the basic concept. Why would “the true meaning of Christmas” make you do evil shit, and how does it “save Christmas”? If I understand the ending correctly I see a partial answer, but it feels more to me like they had most of a premise that they weren’t able to quite make sense out of. They wanted the imaginary wrestler telling him what to do, they wanted Christmas horror, they didn’t quite get them to connect.

But it’s an okay movie. Interesting enough that I’m glad I watched it. This is the third feature by writer/director Bennet De Brabandere – he also did ANKLE BITERS a.k.a. CHERRYPICKER (2020) and SALVATION (2022), both featuring and co-written by CHRISTMAS SPIRIT star Zion Forrest Lee.

Christmas-y-ness index: Snow, Nativity scene, Christmas lights, Santa costume, Christmas music, winter break, heavily decorated shopping mall, yard decorations