‘Jack Frost’ VOD Review (Amazon Prime)

Stars: Sarah T. Cohen, Nicola Wright, Stephen Staley, Kate Sandison, Rochard Kovacs, Amanda Vixx, Kelly Rian Sanson, Lauren Staerck, Keith Eyles, Sylvia Clegg | Written by Craig McLearie | Directed by Liana Failla

Jack Frost opens with a prologue that sees Lesley take on Jack Frost and win… time running out for the frosty one to get back his dismembered hand – an appendage that will make him whole once more and allow him to walk the earth again after, as we’re told in the introduction, he was dismembered by Santa back in a time when myths and legends were all too real and his body parts scattered across the globe, taken care of by the descendants of the big red one… A brief jump forward 50 years to the present day and Lesley is now a curmudgeonly Grandma who doesn’t celebrate Christmas for fear of Jack Frost returning. Only this year her family want to do just that, celebrate the holiday season, in order to help a visiting family friend who hasn’t celebrated Christmas in some time. Unfortunately for them, they really should have – like in a lot of fairytales – listened to Grandma!

If there’s one thing you can say about Jagged Edge Productions (yes, this is another in a long line of Scott Jeffrey-produced genre films), they certainly know how to craft backstories for their villains. And that’s definitely the case for Jack Frost, which takes the titular mischievous seasonal “villain” and ramps up his evil nature to an even more depraved level. Unfortunately the film itself can’t live up to the premise, with writer Craig McLearie making this less of a supernatural horror and more of a stalker and slash terror tale a la the recently released Krampus: The Return. In fact, the antagonists of both films (and even the antagonist of the recent Louisa Warren-directed Tooth Fairy: Queen of Pain) could be swapped and it wouldn’t be a detriment to any of the movies. That’s how similar the core plot of these films are. It’s almost like they’re being written to order for distributors who just want the same thing over and over and over!

Luckily for director Liana Failla, making her feature debut after working as an assistant director on the Jagged Edge produced sequel Dragon Fury 2 (also penned by Craig McLearie), Jack Frost features two of Proportion/Jagged Edge Productions better regular talents – namely Sarah T. Cohen and Nicola Wright – to offset some of the more formulaic aspects of the film. And it’s the former of the two, Sarah T. Cohen, who really holds the film together – very much in the same way she did in the not-too-dissimilar Cupid (only she’s not the bitch this time around) – managing to look and feel like she’s acting on another level to the film’s script. Wright’s performance is very much the same, though she also seems to be having fun revelling in the inherent madness of the story, really going for the more over-the-top characteristics of the scream queen trope.

Watching Jack Frost it really feels like there was an obvious decision to try and create a new horror franchise villain in the titular character, who – like the classic 80s slasher icons – not only appears on screen to an accompanying rock soundtrack but also throws out plenty of quips and one-liners. It also feels as if the filmmakers are trying to make Jack more of the protagonist rather than the film’s antagonist, in much the same way Freddy became the lead of his series rather than the scream queens who fought him. In fact, if there’s one overarching feeling I get from Jack Frost, mainly due to everything I just mentioned, is that Jack Frost is/was intended to be a throwback to the fun-filled, gory, crowd-pleasing slasher movies of the 80s. Only on a MUCH lower budget! However, it’s the budgetary constraints that stop this one from being just that…

That being said, there are some flourishes when it comes to the kills in Jack Frost. One character, Sophie, being dragged into the dark by Christmas lights (and later found strung up with them), and Lesley’s friend in the prologue being strangled by Christmas lights. I honestly don’t know what it is but that imagery – the happiness of Christmas lights combined with the sadness of death – feels really impactful. It worked well in Jagged Edge Production’s other Christmas horror, Krampus: The Return, and it works even better here. And who knew that you could make snow a harbinger of evil? Jack Frost does just that.

And that’s the thing. Even with a meagre budget Jack Frost manages to deliver some great, and more importantly new, ideas for a Christmas horror and there’s some stunning imagery thrown in the mix too but seemingly focusing on trying to make this iteration of Jack Frost into “Christmas Kreuger” takes away from all that. Plus blatantly ripping off THAT sleeping bag death scene from the Friday the 13th series doesn’t help either! Still, after all that, I actually rather enjoyed this seasonal slasher; much more than the company’s similarly-themed Krampus: The Return and would gladly check out another installment – especially if they could bring in even more gore a la the third film in the “other” Scott Jeffrey co-produced fairytale fear franchise, Tooth Fairy.

*** 3/5

Jack Frost is available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime now.