A Christmas horror that’s not as much fun as you want it to be

Small children harbouring potentially dangerous creatures is an on-screen tradition that stretches back decades.

We saw it in E.T. in the ’80s and we’ve seen it more recently in Stranger Things — but have we ever seen it done with a festive twist, where the creature in question is a tiny baby elf?

This was my thought going into Netflix’s new Scandinavian Christmas horror Elves, a short series about a family heading to a remote island to spend the holidays among nature, only to get a lot more than they bargained for when they hit something mysterious with their car.

On paper, this one sounded like a lot of fun to me. Silly, but fun, as the best Christmas horror can be. And at times it was. But after six 25-minute episodes I was left feeling like I’d watched something that hangs awkwardly between movie and TV show (too long for the first, not detailed enough for the second), and which wasn’t anywhere near as entertaining as I’d hoped it would be.

Credit: Netflix

Certainly there’s nothing wrong with the setup. A family cut-off on a weird island; a mysterious forest hidden behind a giant fence; strangely foreboding locals — all of these are usually ingredients I wouldn’t be able to get enough of. The cast is strong too, with the younger actors Sonja Steen, Milo Campanale, and Vivelill Søgaard Holm putting in solid performances, and The Killing‘s Ann Eleonora Jørgensen giving an intimidating turn as one of the island’s in-the-know residents. There are also some genuinely entertaining sequences (the first glimpse of what the island is hiding behind its fence, for instance) and there’s nothing really wrong with the dialogue or the way the show’s shot.

So where does it go wrong?

Well, one problem is that it’s hard to care about the characters. There’s not enough depth to them. Aside from the strange situation they find themselves in, none of them have much going on below the surface, and the lack of any underlying tension between them really reduces the show’s overall sense of peril. Sure, baby of the family Josefine (Steen) has some classic friction with her mother (Lila Nobel) about not being treated enough like an adult, while her brother (Campanale) sparks up a tricky romance with a local girl (Holm) — but these minor arcs aren’t really enough to sustain our interest.

Credit: Henrik Ohsten / Netflix

Characterisation isn’t the only area where the show feels underdeveloped, either. The idea of strange creatures being kept behind a fence is a fun one, but that’s all it really is — an idea. We don’t get much background about the creatures themselves, or how they ended up there, which feels like a missed opportunity for some extra lore.

All-in-all, Elves feels a little undercooked. It’s not a bad show, but it’s not really a complete show either. Like the slightly on-the-nose metaphor for man’s interference with nature that’s at its heart, it’s too obvious where things are going — and the journey there isn’t exciting enough.

Elves is now streaming on Netflix.