“Ho ho ho, you son of a fish!”

“See you in jingle hell!”

Ok, so it’s not Ahab Van Helsing Nosferatu Carcharodon, but what is?

Let’s start with the story (hang with us, ok?).

So Santa Jaws is a comic book character made up by a couple of kids - Cody, played by Reid Miller - Jaeger, and Steve (Hawn Tran - Watchmen).

Originally a garden variety Great White Shark, she is transformed when the hat of Evil Santa (Creek Wilson - Preacher) falls into the water and gets snagged to SJ’s fin. Wearing the Terrible Toque, she grows to twice her normal size, gains an evil intelligence, and sets out to destroy all things Christmas.

Still with us?

Ok, so Cody receives a mysterious gift from his grandfather - a magical pen that brings whatever he draws into existence. Angry because he is grounded, he uses the pen to finish a sketch of Santa Jaws and voila, the town of suddenly being stalked by Cody and Steve’s toothy creation.

We won’t Spoil too much, but shenanigans follow and Santa Jaws eats pretty much everyone Cody knows until…ummm….magic makes it better.

So what’s the deal on this one?

This is a low budget flick (they are a little cagey on what it cost, but it looks like about $3 million), but a pretty high quality production. The acting is solid. Tran has some great lines and Scott Allen Perry - Found Footage 3D - is pretty funny as a dodgy comic book store owner. Ritchie Montgomery (Monster’s Ball) is also good as Papa Joe (Cody’s grandfather) and Haviland Stillwell (Cody’s social media influencer aunt) is fun to watch,

The special effects are…limited…but not too bad. In many ways, they are about as good as the original Jaws, which shows how far that has come.

And the story is ok.

Whether you like it will probably depend on what you are expecting.

The movie, despite the subject, doesn’t have too much gore and most of that is pretty comic booky. The language is pretty clean too and the closest it gets to racy is Stillwell in a fairly conservative two-piece bikini. It has a few jump scares, but they are usually telegraphed.

What all that means is that this is actually a pretty safe film for family viewing. Now, I wouldn’t play it with young children in the room - especially ones who could be traumatized by candy cane impalements - but for tweens and older it is probably ok.

Getting back to what to expect:

You will likely be disappointed if you tune into Santa Jaws expecting a typical low budget goreathon. The best way we can describe it is as a (slightly) edgy episode of Goosebumps. It has scares, but nothing too bad and the good guys win in the end.

You can catch it in all its fishy glory HERE.

Two out of Five Candy Cane Sharks.

🦈🦈

What did you think of Santa Jaws? Leave a comment or drop us a line (and follow us!) on Twitter.

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