A Cold Season looks to dampen your holiday spirits with some ho-ho-HORROR
We always hear debate this time of year. Is it too early for stores to start putting out Christmas merch? Well, Wicked Horror is doing its part to fan the flames of dissent, as we’re taking an exclusive sneak preview look at A Cold Season. Yep, we’re reviewing a Christmas horror movie … before October has even started.
Now, A Cold Season won’t be hitting VOD services in a few months. But we got an advance copy of the movie from its main actor — who also has about 20 other behind the camera roles for the movie. Let this be a lesson to indie filmmakers everywhere: persistence pays off, as does free stuff and emails with a lot of words bolded and italicized for dramatic effect.
The movie is directed by a guy named Christian Jude Grillo. All I can say is that this guy is a REAL filmmaker. During the ending credits, I’m pretty sure I saw his name pop up at least 40 times. He wrote the movie, he did the cinematography for the movie, he edited it, he did the soundtrack, he has a brief cameo role in it, heck, he probably went out and got Dunkin’ coffee for everybody while he was at it. Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino might be great directors, but they’re not all-encompassing filmmakers the way Grillo is. This guy had a vision and by golly, he made it happen. And there’s something distinctly American about that — or at least, something distinctly Pennsylvanian. Hey, the Giant Eagle grocery store popping up in the background was a dead giveaway.
Let’s circle back to the central actor of the film for a bit. He’s a guy named Andrew Hunsicker. In addition to starring in the film, he’s apparently the publicity department for the movie, too. I get screener requests all the time and they’re almost always from a third party vendor or distributor. I think this might be the first time I’ve ever gotten a copy directly from the people who produced the film. It reminds me of when I was working in the northern suburbs of Atlanta as a beat reporter and some guy who ran a buffet rang me up out of the blue and said I ought to do a story about him. Then he literally went table to table getting his customers to tell me how boss his fusion Indian/Chinese entrees were. Needless to say, that dude got his story. And the food was indeed awesome.
So all that to say, if this whole acting thing doesn’t pan out, Andrew would probably run a hella good buffet restaurant some day.
Now, as for A Cold Season itself, well, your opinion on it is going to vary depending on what kind of movie you’re expecting heading into it.
OK, so it’s a film set during Christmas (Christmas 2026, to be exact — with no signs of Grand Theft Auto VI anywhere.) And it is a film involving a sociopath in a Santa Claus costume. But the people who made the movie are adamant that their film isn’t a “killer Santa” movie in the same vein as Silent Night, Deadly Night or Christmas Evil or, uh, Silent Night, Deadly Night II. Instead, they want to reiterate that it’s a psychological horror movie, a movie about a seemingly normal person who slowly goes nutzoid. Or maybe the guy’s been nutzoid for a long time and he’s really good at covering it up. Or maybe it’s one of those movies like American Psycho where you don’t know if what’s happening onscreen is “really” happening or if it’s just an illusion in the central character’s mind.
So yeah, it’s that kind of movie.
There are some unorthodox choices in this movie. The first thirty minutes, in particular, are pretty staid. As in, you really can’t even tell it’s a horror movie, since it’s mostly this silver fox driving around in the snow while elevator Muzak plays in the background. Then he flips on the TV and we learn about a mysterious kidnapping and … well, I think you can figure out the rest, can’t you?
You know things are going to go sideways sooner or later, and when they do, it’s pretty entertaining stuff. Like, what do you THINK is going to happen when a cop pulls over a drunk driving Santa armed with a crowbar? It’s a predictable movie in some respects, but “predictable” isn’t a synonym for “bad.”
A Cold Season is a movie that keeps you guessing. Like, you wonder if maybe the deranged psycho in the movie actually has some decency and won’t kill the nice middle-aged lady who always needs a ride to the supermarket. The movie actually does have quite a few thematic similarities with the Silent Night, Deadly Night reboot from last year — although to say which specific ones kinda’ spoils the surprise for you.
All I can say is that if you’re looking for an upbeat ending … this movie doesn’t have one.
Alright, so maybe A Cold Season isn’t Citizen Kane, or something objectively better than Citizen Kane, like Hamburger: The Motion Picture. But it’s solid stuff from people who obviously had WAY more passion for the film than budgetary options. Yeah, it can be uneven and rough around the edges, but so are most Ramones and Iggy Pop albums. It’s those imperfections that make the music, man.
There’s going to be a lot of cheap and chintzy and schlocky Christmas movies coming out later this year. A Cold Season is basically the anti-Hallmark holiday movie; unless, of course, they’ve made any Hallmark holiday movies where a whole bunch of people get wasted with a sawed-off shotgun straight out of the first Doom game, anyway.
If you hate Christmas, you’ll probably like A Cold Season. And even if you don’t like it, you might at least relate to it more than you’d prefer to publicly acknowledge. A Cold Season, for whatever faults and flaws you want to point out, never plays it safe. And for that aspect of the film alone, it has my respect.
GIVE IT A WATCH IF YOU LIKE: Falling Down, You’d Better Watch Out, the seasonal beverage selection at Dunkin’
DIRECTOR: Christian Jude Grillo
WRITER: Christian Jude Grillo
STARRING: Andrew Hunsicker, Julie Chaplin, Paul Monte, Jr., Elijah Santoro
STUDIO: Intruder Films
DISTRIBUTOR: MVD Entertainment Group
LANGUAGE: English
RUNTIME: 80 minutes
RELEASE DATE: Nov. 10, 2026 (VOD)
