Nothing brings people together like the holidays, right? What about a vampire Santa Clause that is being hunted and swoon after, that sounds like a much more fun festive feast right? Well at least hoping to Ilja Rautsi, Red Snow is exactly that, a vampire Santa ready to plague Christmas with his blood lust and chaos ensues. There is a lot going on in Red Snow that feels like it was lifted from the early 2000s more than the mid 2020s but alas, there is some fun to be had but few and far between the Ho Ho Ho’s unfortunately.
Red Snow focuses on vampire (specifically Twilight and Edward Cullen) obsessed teen, Johanna (Anni Likkanen) is not handling the holidays overly too well. Her mom is galivanting somewhere, while her dad (Kari Hietalahti) is off flaunting his new fiancée (Marja-Liisa Nguyen) and is oblivious to the fact that Johanna is struggling through the holiday season. Meanwhile, there is also her oblivious brother (Otava Rossi) and Christmas festivities is at sweet Grandma’s (Eeva Litmanen) house and this is the recipe for a rather unpleasant Christmas affair.
While Grandma is the only person who really acknowledges Johanna and indulges her fetish for vampires, her dad wants to get into the Christmas spirit so he invited over a Santa – to make the holiday more cheery. However, the man who shows up as Santa (Hannu-Pekka Bjorkman) certainly doesn’t look the Santa Clause you want to spend your holidays with, and demands to be invited in – instantly cluing the audience into that this timeless tale of mythical beings is more than the family originally bargained for.
Thankfully instead of just having a vampire Santa wreck havoc on an unsuspecting family with a daughter akin to vampires themselves, writer/director Ilja Rautsi has decided to give us his own version of Van Helsing with a vampire hunter (Tommi Korpela) and his nurse (Krista Kosonen) to give the audience something a little more lively than just aimless blood splatter.
As entertaining and exciting as the premise may sound, it sort of ends there. A plethora of just underbaked ideas along with sort of throwing everything against the wall from Rautsi makes Red Snow sort of a hodgepodge mixed bag of results. There is some fun concepts and ideas throughout, but nothing stands out, nothings really fleshed out, and nothing breathes. The ‘twist’ can be seen coming a mile away and the more obvious inclination from Johanna to be interested in the vampire Santa is odd and weird, despite her fascination it seems to be on the attractive sparkly kind and not a blanket fascination so her arc feels out of place.
The overall cast here is also not great, as no one stands out. Anni Likkanen tries to do the best with what she is given but the character traits just don’t add up to be anything memorable unfortunately. There is just nothing to really sink her teeth into, for the role to be able to stand tall. While Kari Hietalathi is a stereotyped bad dad, Marja-Liisa Nguyen is so severely underutilized she could almost be removed from the movie itself. Then you have our titular character, in Hannu-Pekka Bjorkman whose having fun, but doesn’t provide the holiday spirit needed or the vampire lore to back up either sides of his character. Overall the performances fall flat leaving Red Snow more of a yellow snow cone more than a vampire Christmas romper.
