Christmas 2025 - Day 2 - Red One (2024)
On the second day of Christas, my true love gave to me...
...two creepy creatures!
So, some time has clearly passed since we saw our traditional Christmas Horror opener and it really is a tale as old of time; procrastination gets the better of me and my dreams of a dozen holiday specials seem to vanish in the haze. But, by golly, we're not going to set a new record low. We need to at least reach two entries and if we're looking for another entry, as a famous TV puppet once said; I've got a big Red One.
See, that was going to be the acommpanying message when I pimped this on Twitter but that kind of obscure reference needs pride of place.
But yes, Red One, also from the space year 2024 same as was Terrifier 3 only Red One wasn't nearly as succesful. Well, obviously it was given it's box office but relatively speaking…nah. Terrifier did a $90m box office on a $2m budget whereas Red One did $185m on a $200-250m budget. Not ideal for those involved.
And who was involved exactly? Why, The Rock of course! We're two for two so far on wrestler movies. Which can mean only one thing…The Rock recap! What's he been up to lately?
Oh-ho-ho! Is funny because he hasn't been up to anything! Yeah, he kinda cut the legs out from under the Cena heel turn a little bit by vanishing off the face of the Earth. That initial segment, all timer. But since then, opinions are very much mixed. At least it brought us Cena and Cody stinking up the place in the main event of Wrestlemania which, to be fair, stinking out the main event at Mania has been pretty much the norm for the past 10-15 years or so. At least all those baby face Roman Reigns matches didn't bring us random Travis Scott appearances though. You know, until he vanished as well. Albeit, that's more down to him falling out with the company. Quite frankly, there's only one Cactus Jack we recognise around these parts. Those J1 and J4 sneakers are pretty cool though.
They really were banking on this being a star studded affair to draw in the crowds. Aside from The Rock we have Chris Evans as the fellow protaganist, with J.K Simmons and Lucy Liu is lesser roles. Now, as much as I do like J.K Simmons, dating back to his role in Oz and of course as J. Jonah Jameson (I was throughly marking out at his cameo in Far From Home), I don't know if he's a great Santa. He's just a little too gruff and, much like most of this movie, too macho. I'm not buying him as the sentimentel type talking about love, peace and goodwill to all men.
Nor do I get this from Dwayne either in his role as Callum Drift, essentially Santa's bodyguard, who is leaving the job after becoming disinfranchised with the whole season. Seems more and more people end up on the naughty list and it's as if they just don't even care. Again, I think my perception of The Rock just overrides how this character is trying to come across because Rock just seems like a bit of a prick? Like, outwardly he tries to portray himself as this nice guy but I'm sure behind the scenes that's not always the case.
Chris Evans' character, Jack O'Malley, is a bit of an anti hero too, a hacker who sells information to the highest bidder and it just so happens that his latest job, unbeknownst to him, is helping someone track down Santa's secret North Pole complex.
Drift smell a rat and goes to check on Santa but is just seconds too late as he sees shadowy figures escape from Santa's room. Naturally he doesn't think twice about giving chase and promptly leaps from this extremely tall building. I just hope it works out better for him than when I saw him do that with Samuel L Jackson…
In order to track Santa down, the North Pole get a lead on O'Malley and promptly snatch him up for further questioning. He's a little sceptical as to all this Santa and ELF business. Not the little creatures who help Santa, but E.L.F. Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification.
And as if Rocky wasn't enough to intimidate him, they also have a bipedal Polar Bear for some reason. It's kind of interesting they have all these animals and creatures around the place as minor characters, adds to the whole world building but it also blindsides you a little at times. He just wanders back into a scene from time to time and you kinda forget they have an 8 foot tall polar bear as an incidental character.
THERE IT IS! IT'S THE BEARHUG! THIS IS GOING TO BE THE END OF THE MOVIE, HE HAS HIM IN THE BEARHUG! I CAN NO LONGER BEAR THE SUSPENSE!
So O'Malley and Drift are forced to form a superstar tag team to try and track down the culprits. This intially leads them to the guy that bought the info from O'Malley, but even he was just a pawn for someone else, the winter witch Gryla who wants to truly punish the naughty. She posseses this one dude like she's the Undertaker and he's Josh Mathews, sending a message that no one better get in her way.
And to prove she's serious she sends her evil Snowman henchmen to dispatch O'Malley and Drift. Snowman who emerge from the sea in an ice cream truck and brandish ice based glaives. Not going to lie, these guys are pretty cool, no pun intended.
Does kind of undermine them a bit when their one weakness is you ripping their carrots off their face.
Gryla's ultimate plan though is to mass produce Glaskäfigs, an all powerful snow globe that will imprison everyone on the naughty list. She got this from her ex, Krampus, it's a long story.
So, our heroes head out to find Santa's estranged brother to try and enlist his help. Unfortunately, he's too busy enjoying Krampusnacht to care. Technically, it's not actually Krampusnacht but, much like Rusev Day, every day is Krampusnacht to him.
And he enjoys the festivities by engaging in a little Powerslap. After catching O'Malley trying to steal some gold, Krampus plans to imprison them forever but they manage to escape and Drift even uses his special powers of making toys real to serve as a distraction by using a couple of Rock Em Sock Em robots to use as meat shields. That is, until the inevitable…
You knocked his block off!
When Drift checks back in with the North Pole, Mrs Claus is naturally worried sick but is keeping her mind off things by making Santa a fresh batch of Macaroons. But Drift is on to them, Santa hates Macroons. Turns out these evil doers are shape shifters and have taken over the North Pole. Just picture that scene from Terminator 2 where Arnie puts on John Connor's voice and gives his foster mother the wrong name for the dog, only this time the T-1000 doesn't have someone impaled to a wall.
Our heroes go to face Gryla only to find her disguise slip and her true 60 ft form revealed. Even Krampus shows up to help out, I do love that trope of someone reluctantly coming around to help just when it seems all hope is lost.
But it's Santa who has the last laugh when he uses his Dragon shout to summon the reindeers who promptly take turns goring Gryla until she falls into the magic snowglobes and ends up imprisoned herself. Thus, Christmas is saved forever and Drift cheerfully withdraws his resignation letter. Truly, the Christmas miracle we were all hoping for.
Overall, Red One is a perfectly decent movie but I'm not overly surprised that it was met with a fairly uniform 'meh' upon release. It feels like it's stuck in the middle of what it's trying to be; a little too cutesy to be this grown up Christmas action movie but also a little too adult to be a kid friendly festive romp. None of the characters come across as particuarly likeable, be it O'Malley on his moral redemption or Drift going through this crisis of confidence for the spirit of the season. Still, the movie does serve up enough action to keep things entertaining throughout, be it the snowmen fight or the daring escape from Krampus' lair.
And it's not really done much for Rocky's ongoing career, lot of iffy results in the last few years for him between The Smashing Machine, Black Adam, Red Notice, Jungle Cruise… He just needs to keep pumping out those Jumanji and Fast… movies I guess.















