You Better Watch Out (film)

You Better Watch Out is a Black Comedy Thriller/Horror film released on December 16, 2021. The film is based on the legends of Krampus, who is known as Santa Claus' evil half. The film was directed and written by Gary J. Brown and friends. The film follows a small group of people who accidentally reawaken Krampus, who goes on to hunt them down, not stopping until all of them are dead.

Plot
Single father of two kids Andrew Jones is driving to his ex-wife's home for Christmas. Once they finally make it there, he is greeted by his best friend from College, John Loeb. It's revealed that John was invited by Andrew's ex-wife, named Alexis Stone, to help with a prank she wants to pull off on both Andrew's kids and John's daughter. Meanwhile, Andrew's kids, Tobias and Rebeca, meet John's daughter, Mai, revealing that Tobias is quite rude, as he insults both his own sister and Mai. Their conversation ends very fast due to Tobias' actions. After this, Tobias and Mai are greeted by Alexis, their mother, who offers them to help make cookies. Tobias turns the offer down, but Rebeca is visibly excited by the offer.

Later, Rebeca is helping make cookies just like Alexis promised while the rest sit in the living room in awkward silence, staring at Alexis' mother, Sandra, who has both eyes closed and is slumped over in her chair. Tobias and John end up getting into a debate on whether or not Sandra is dead, so to prove she isn't John begins throwing peanuts at her until she wakes up. Once she finally does, she is quite clearly surprised at the fact Andrew is here. Andrew reminds Sandra that he's been coming here every Christmas since the divorce, only for Sandra to reveal she thought Andrew was dead, and, in fact, wished he was. Before Andrew can respond, Alexis and Rebeca walk in, with Alexis telling Andrew to not say anything bad or Krampus could get him. The kids don't know what she's talking about, so Sandra begins explaining the legend of Krampus to the kids, ending it by telling everyone to "be good for goodness sake" or he'd come for them.

Just then, all the lights go out and the window flies open as a figure in red begins crawling in, pointing at them and laughing. This terrifies Mai and Rebeca, but just upsets Tobias, who quickly pieces everything together and grabs "Krampus", pulling him inside and taking his hood off, revealing it to be John, who begins eating the cookies. All of the adults in the room burst into laughter, revealing that this was the prank Andrew and John were talking about. After this, John walks off to smoke, still laughing. Andrew follows him, revealing that everything John is wearing belongs to Andrew and he doesn't want it to smell like ash.

Rebeca asks if anything they said about Krampus is true, with Tobias claiming there is no Krampus since there is no Santa Claus. This upsets Rebeca quite a bit, as she still believes in Santa and doesn't want him to skip their house. This leads to another argument where Tobias keeps stating that Santa Claus isn't real. This ends in Rebeca running out of the room, covering her ears and screaming. No one in the living room is happy with what Tobias has done, not even his own mother, so Tobias runs outside to sulk. He sits outside the door in the snow but becomes increasingly angrier until he lets out a scream to get it all out. His scream echoes through the night as the Carol of Bells plays over a zoom through the snow, stopping on a large snow pile. The pile is revealed to be a person, who gets up and cracks their neck.

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Cast

 * Oscar Isaac as Andrew Jones
 * James Corden as John Loeb
 * Keira Knightley as Alexis Stone
 * Jane Lynch as Sandra Stone
 * Tom Holland as Tobias Jones
 * Eliza Faria as Rebeca Jones
 * Dove Cameron as Mai Loeb
 * Andy Serkis as Krampus

Production
The creator of the film, Gary J. Brown, always wanted to create a Christmas horror story, and he thought the best way to do so was to tell a Krampus story. It was quite hard to create a story about him and not have it come off as a knock-off of the 2015 Krampus film, though in the end, he believes he did a relatively good job. Brown did most of the writing for it, as he had some experience writing horror stories in the past during his free time. The film has very little CGI, with most of the action scenes being one continuous shot. This was done to mimic the first Evil Dead film, which was also a horror comedy, as in that film all the actors' fear and emotion seemed more real due the fact there were so many scenes filmed as one shot. Due to the lack of CGI and stunt men, a few actors actually got hurt, with one actor getting a bruise onset due to a stunt. According to Andy Serkis, Krampus' actor, during one scene he had to actually stand on top of a roof covered in fake snow in the middle of the night, which he describes as "terrifying".

Reception
The film received mostly positive reviews from critics, with most praising Andy Serkis' performance as Krampus. One critic was quoted as saying "the film doesn't take itself very seriously, and I think that was probably the best way to go considering the insane plot." Another called it "goofy, gory fun." However, there were obviously quite a few negative reviews, with the most common critique being that the plot of the film is far too ridiculous to get in to.