For many people, a familiar pastime in the weeks leading up to major winter holidays is gathering with family members and watching holiday movies, be they in a theater or on television. This year, such plans will have changed for individuals not living with the people they often spend time with during the holiday season, and curfews and lock-downs have forced movie theaters to close. However, this shouldn’t stop us from enjoying holiday movies with friends and family.
During the month of December, therefore, the Falls Free Press will present “The 12 Films of Christmas,” focusing on new holiday movies for the year 2020—a year that can do with plenty of spirit. We will review each film, whether naughty or nice, and let you know where to watch it.
Unlike in years past, with Krampus, Black Christmas, and Better Watch Out, the box office hasn’t offered many new holiday horror films in 2020, even if they were only released digitally. To remedy this situation, Syfy decided to premiere two new somewhat spine-tingling Christmas films this December, including one which reminds viewers of one of the major aspects of the holidays children get excited about: toys.
Toys of Terror introduces the dilapidated Victorian mansion that was once St. Germaine’s Children’s Clinic, which houses the secret of a mother’s massacre of all the hospital’s children after her own son’s passing. Years later, the building is purchased by a house-flipping family who lives in the home during Christmas. Upon exploring its many rooms, the children find an old trunk full of antique toys. The toys—which the film tries to pass off as belonging to the late ’80s/early ’90s, when their parents were young, while many are actually just classic terrifying toys reminiscent of the 1960s and before—are dirty, and nobody questions why the random chest is still in one of the rooms when there have been workers cleaning and correcting the structure of the bottom two floors for weeks. Nevertheless, the children oddly love a strangely-painted motorcycle helmet, a rip-off of a bee-themed Glo Worm, and an ever-terrifying cymbal-clapping monkey, which their father suggests was part of a cartoon he used to watch.
Of course, the toys are alive and lead the children to the dangerous third floor, where they explain their plan to get on Santa’s sleigh since there are children at the home again to bring him back. This twisted “Land of Misfit Toys” plan is extra confusing as they continuously try to push the children closer to open windows, as well as alert them to the arrival of presents late on Christmas Eve night, then destroy the room and its gifts, never even acknowledging that the jolly man in red has obviously already come and gone.
The children aren’t the only ones pulled into the terror. The bee is often found flying into unfortunate situations, sucking the soul of adults who could stop the toys’ plans. The already disturbing monkey becomes even more terrifying upon animator’s use of campy stop-motion to make it jump out of an open fire, burning with an open mouth of fangs while attacking the family. In addition to these sights, the film considered the idea of a toy very loosely, going so far as to include a Christmas tree like something out of a Doctor Who Christmas episode, complete with a rabid angel tree-topper.
While the toys’ storyline may successfully follow the morale of caring for one’s toys—and also not opening a mysterious chest—their origin story makes the entire film confusing and the repeated appearances of the murderous mother’s son’s ghost are a frustrating red herring. Ignoring this flaw, though, Toys of Terror lives up to its name, providing plenty of terrorizing toys of destruction. For horror fans, however, this will not pass any test, sticking to a basic cable rating system of no blood, extremely minimal bad language, and very few scares, unless you are a parent whose biggest worry is a child speaking in creepy voices. None of this is to say Toys is a bad Christmas film, but simply one whose story could use an extra 30 minutes to fill out the story and give a better explanation of the plot—or at least have a more reasonable number of kills for a horror movie.
Toys of Terror is available to watch on demand on Syfy, for digital purchase on all major streaming platforms, and is available on Blu-ray & DVD January 19, 2021.
