Saint

It's that time of the year again when jolly old Santa Claus appears in shopping malls across the land inviting young children to sit on his lap in exchange for a bag of sweets.  Or maybe you're less interested in contemporary consumerist Santa, preferring instead to remember just and goodly Saint Nicholas who, as legend has it, travelled the land giving gifts to poor children.

Either way Dick Maas' Dutch horror Saint will skewer any preconceptions of where you think the festive legend originated.  And for audiences here in the UK, the film is an interesting insight into how the Dutch celebrate Christmas with the legendary central figure dressed in Cardinal's robes and followed by black faced helpers called 'Black Peters'.

Saint opens on December 5th 1492 with a wicked Cardinal and his followers terrorising a group of villagers.  Homes are raided and people are killed but the villagers have had enough and decide to take their revenge.  Fast forward to the present day and a highly strung detective with a traumatic childhood is thrown off the force for his crazy obsession with the murderous spectre of Saint Nicholas whom he believes will return to terrorise the citizens of Amsterdam.

Writer and Director Maas has crafted a wonderfully twisted tale of festive horror that achieves much more than simply washing the screen with blood, as many horror films are guilty of.  Now I'm sure there are no shortage of horror fans who will decry Saint for not being gory or even scary enough but this is not a weakness, it's the film's real strength.  Maas proves himself to be a skillful storyteller, going beyond simplistic genre conventions to draw his audience into the story.  The way his characters move in and out of the plot also defies conventional slasher expectations and for most of the movie we're never quite sure exactly which characters are going to take the lead in the fight back against evil Santa.

At no point does the Saint Nicholas backstory feel like a convenient excuse for subsequent blood-letting.  The evil Cardinal is present throughout the entire film, contributing in a unique way to the makeup of each character and informing the movement of every scene.  Without throwing out any plot spoilers, Saint Nicholas' evildoing goes far deeper into Dutch society than anyone might care to imagine.

Saint had a $5 million budget which is tiny by Hollywood standards but certainly plenty to work with for a filmmaker looking to find a mainstream audience.  Maas' film certainly has a slick and stylistic appearance which will appeal to anyone more accustomed with standard Hollywood fare but critically it has the muscular content to back the style up.  So for anybody coming to Saint looking for a fun, flashy flick to provide the background to their popcorn picnic, great.  But there's also plenty going on below the surface for those who care to look.  And for non-Dutch audiences there's the joy of seeing how another culture celebrates Christmas and the horrific deeds which might just lie behind it all.