Family Ornaments review.
Family Ornaments solves the horror vs. Christmas sweetness problem that plagues holiday horror by leaning into the latter. The horror elements serve as an added bonus to a purposely familiar feel.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Family Ornaments
Directed by Gregory Oehler
Written by Liam Finn
Starring Alicia Blasingame, Autumn Harrison, Michael Paré, Ian Michaels, Emily Gateley, Romyn Smith and Marian Elizabeth
Family Ornaments Review
Our weeklong look at new Christmas horror comes to a close with a Tubi original that leans into the sweet…and is better for it. Family Ornaments is the movie that you should throw on when the family wants to watch a sweet family story around the fireplace. There’s plenty here for people who like things a bit darker than a Hallmark holiday movie. There’s enough Hallmark shine to trick everyone else.
Tubi, itself, categorizes Family Ornaments as a “Kids & Family, Action, Drama, Holiday” movie. Those are mostly fair assessments. It is firmly a family drama holiday story. The action designation, however, I would recommend swapping out with “horror”. This is the story of a family trapped inside of a home…fighting for their lives against living ornaments. That’s a horror plot. The execution within the film is pure horror. Family friendly horror, sure. It’s why Family Ornaments succeeds as a Christmas horror story where so many have failed before it. The commitment to delivering a family holiday story doesn’t work against its slasher movie ideas. It informs them.
A family’s first Christmas without their matriarch becomes more of a nightmare than they could have imagined. Meredith (Alicia Blasingame) just wants her family to come together for the holidays. So much, in fact, that she accidentally wishes it a magical locket ornament. It results in her estranges sister Shannon (Autumn Harrison) teleporting in from Japan. When she makes a more sinister wish out of frustration…the family finds themselves in a battle for their lives.
Meredith is joined by her husband Daniel (Ian Michaels), daughter Kate (Emily Gateley), and son Owen (Romyn Smith). They are gathered at the home of her father Pat (Michael Paré). Wanting to carry on the holiday traditions that her mother was the caretaker of…Meredith has the family design their own Christmas ornaments. It’s these ornaments that will torment them when her wish goes awry. This is when Family Ornaments turns into a horror movie.
Family members are separated throughout the house…hiding from the living ornaments they created. A bunch of separate slasher sequences happen at once. The ornaments have their own personalities. The most effective of which is Kate’s cell phone ornament. It can call up video on the screen allowing it to easily communicate. It also provides a more psychological way to attack…calling up personal videos to use against her. Owen’s soccer ball ornament is the funniest one. They’re all dangerous.
As Family Ornaments is, at heart, a family drama holiday story…they obviously discover that they need to come together to survive. The movie doesn’t make it that easy, however. Once the ornaments get you…you vanish from our reality and become a part of the ornaments themselves. Hence the title of the movie. With a broken magical locket, an inability to leave the home and dwindling numbers…things get surprisingly dire for a movie that you can trick your mother into watching this Christmas.
And that’s why Family Ornaments succeeds. When it begins you wouldn’t bat an eye if it was aired between whatever Candace Cameron Bure and Danica McKellar movies are on the schedule. It gives you that authentic family Christmas story. It also throws them into a living nightmare for people who enjoy a little darkness in their eggnog. That it manages to do both without feeling out of place makes it a rather rare thing. Not only does it fuse Christmas with horror and not feel at odds with itself…it ups the degree of difficulty by making it a family movie.
This is a gateway horror movie for the whole family. Something a bit more fun than grandma would probably throw on TV while you wait for Christmas dinner…but something that non-horror fans are likely to find themselves invested in before they know what kind of movie it is. There is a family drama and some fine comedy. The ensemble cast is great. It has that holiday look. It all feels very Christmasy. Then it sneaks in something a little more fun.
Scare Value
Family Ornaments cracked the holiday horror problem by choosing the road not taken. Instead of throwing buckets of blood into the snow and ending up with a movie without a consistent tone…it doubles down on the Hallmark feel that so many people want at this time of year. It just hides a slasher movie in the middle of it. Not a gory, jump scare fest kind of slasher movie. That wouldn’t fit. We’ve seen that awkward combination enough to know. Instead, it chooses to tie the battles and fates of its characters to its family story. Losing the people you love at Christmas…a true holiday horror.
3.5/5
Family Ornaments Link
Streaming on Tubi
