Santa Jaws (

2018

) ½

I think that this site should prove that I am not impossible to please. Indeed, I would go so far as to consider myself a very forgiving critic especially when it comes to B-horror movies. Give me some neat gore effects, some hot chicks taking their clothes off for no reason, and a familiar plot and I'm more than happy to score your movie with a 4/10 and call it a day. Hell, a film can succeed in my eyes by being completely incompetent and utterly unashamed of the fact, like R.O.T.O.R. (1987) or Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Even total dogshit like The Love Witch (2016) and The Lost Missile (1958) can bring something to the table in the form of some impressive art design and an interesting premise respectively. As a result, I tend to keep my lowest score for films that utterly fail to entertain on even the most basic level, that have no interesting original ideas, and that show a persistent level of incompetence that is not so bad that it loops back around to being an object of amusement. It's a dubious distinction to fail so completely that you even fail at failing, and if ever there was a movie that earns a half-star rating it's Santa Jaws.

You don't watch Santa Jaws, you endure it.

The story follows an annoying teenager with a stupid haircut named Cody whose hobby is drawing comics with his friend Steve. Their latest work is a comic about a shark that eats an evil Santa Claus and is transformed into Santa Jaws, a giant shark that wears a Santa hat over her fin and whose eyes glow like Rudolph's nose. When he's not drawing comics, Cody spends his days leering awkwardly at his neighbor Jena and hanging around the comic shop with Steve and the shop's obnoxious owner.

For Christmas, Cody's grandfather gives him a magic pen that causes whatever he draws to come to life, so in a fit of teenage angst, he doodles Santa Jaws. Personally, if I were him I would have drawn something that he could use like a pile of cash or a decent barber, as a giant killer shark doesn't make his life much better. In short order, Santa Jaws appears and begins to devour Cody's family and friends one by one, starting with his grandfather.

In one of the stranger moments in the movie Cody tries to warn his family about this menace, telling them that the shark ate grandpa. Cody must have gotten quite the reputation for tall tales off-camera because his mom refuses to even take five minutes to check if Grandpa is still in the house. I understand that sometimes characters need to act like idiots to advance the plot, but you have to be a bit more subtle about this, Santa Jaws. Indeed, there's a whole lot of stupidity going around later in the movie as well, as whenever someone tries to call the cops they always start by saying that they're “being attacked by a shark possessed by Santa Claus” instead of just saying “we're being attacked by a shark” and leaving out the bit about the spirit of evil Christmas. The authorities will help you in the event of a shark attack, but as soon as you start talking about it being a Christmas shark they're going to assume it's a prank call.

There are ways that a piece of shit movie can redeem itself, and become mildly entertaining. The easiest is to be so incompetent that it becomes amusing to imagine the filmmaker's original vision and compare it with the low-quality crap onscreen. The kind of incompetence where you can spot boom mics in the shot, see unprofessional actors give confusing and poorly directed performances, and see sets that would not be out of place at a church nativity play. Santa Jaws is not this level of incompetence. The director, Misty Talley, has a small body of shark-themed schlock, mostly made for TV. She had access to a crew that was at least the equivalent of an average sci-fi (or are they still syfy) made for TV movie. As a result, the film has the uninspired, but nonetheless functional air of a project made by disinterested professionals in exchange for a paycheck. Whereas the so bad it's good film is the domain of the deranged lunatics with a passionate vision they have little chance of actually transferring to the screen. Even the CGI, which while extremely fake-looking, is still just bland and unremarkable.

Of course, even a bad movie can be spiced up with a little bit of gratuitous gore and tasteful nudity. Too bad that Santa Jaws seems to have been originally intended as a TV movie, so there is very little in the way of anything the network censors would find objectionable. The deaths are mostly bloodless affairs, with the most shocking being a scene where Santa Jaws uses his newly acquired unicorn horn to skewer a character. As for the cheesecake, the most we get is one woman in a bikini for five minutes. Great news for anyone who considers a Macy's catalog to be the height of tawdry erotica.

The only other way that Santa Jaws could hope to succeed would be to deliver an unexpectedly emotional story with solid characters we can understand and sympathize with. Too bad these characters are all either boring non-entities or obnoxious buffoons. A horror movie can make do with such an assortment for supporting cast, as they exist to be killed off horrible and if you're going for a light-hearted tone. However, even in that case you still need some kind of emotional anchor, usually, the sole survivor/final girl and Santa Jaws simply doesn't have that. Indeed, the film removes the less annoying characters first, until all we're left with is Cody being a whiny little shit.

There is no reason to watch this film. If you want to watch a low-effort Christmas-themed horror movie you have dozens of better options. Turn back now, while you still can. It's not too late to rent Christmas Evil (1980).