Truly Dreadful Film

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Overrated

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Storywise "Sint" is kind of a rip-off of the killer Santa classic "Silent Night, Deadly Night", but the comparisons end there. While the latter is only still around because it's laughably bad, this one has actual redeeming features like a dark, moody atmosphere and a little bit of humour at exactly the right times. Writer/Director Dick Maas loves to toy with our expectations and every guess you'll make about the story developments will probably be wrong. For instance, you think tremendous hottie Caro Lenssen will serve as the Laurie Strode of this story and the finale will be her fighting off the unstoppable villain, but in fact she barely comes into play in the rest of the story (unfortunately...). Our final girls are an old drunk and a sex-crazed teenage boy, that's pretty creative to say the least. The production values of this movie are also surprisingly high. For a movie that "only" cost four million to make, the effects look pretty amazing. The killings are just relentlessly gory, Dick Maas definitely burned the candle on both ends to disgust his audience. "Sint" is one of those rare horror comedies that manage to be both scary and funny, most can't even get one of the two right. A thrilling ride.

You are not always getting what the title is literally suggesting as you know. So "Saint" has to be taken lightly in that regard (but I'm guessing you know that from the trailer and/or the synopsis here). And seeing the genre of the movie, you can guess where this one is heading, so don't hold that against it.Still quite a few movies have gone that way in recent times (Rare Exports being a superior one) and you'be forgiven if you only wanted to see one of those movies (which as you can tell should be the other movie). But if you don't mind that and like to watch movies in general, you will be entertained with this one too. It really is more than decent and quite funny too.

What I was expecting when I went into this movie was exactly what I got. Bad stuff vs. good stuff: There are somethings that are essential to the plot that are never explained, problems which could have been overcome with relative ease, so that was a bummer. Also, there are three main plots, and one of them, if it wasn't there I wouldn't miss it. Lastly, it is a short movie. This wouldn't be a point of criticism if it wasn't for the fact that it does tend to stretch itself out, like it was looking for feature length. The good stuff? It still is a lot of fun, being both original as well as something else compared to other St. Nicholas movies, the acting is good with most characters, the dialog is pretty solid, it's funny when it wants to be and scary when it needs to be. If you are into the St. Nocholas myth, you can't miss this one.

Writer-director Dick Maas needs to find another line of work, Saint is just awful in every possible respect. I don't know where to begin. The story is ridiculous, the acting is horrendous, and this looks like something from low budget Hollywood. I usually find foreign films to be deeper and much more interesting than American ones; not this time.What starts out in 1492 with St. Nicholas on a horse rampaging through a village with his evil henchmen and later continues in modern day Amsterdam has no structure or reason whatsoever. Every December fifth with a full moon causes old St. Nick and his merry-men to kill with sword and axes while dropping down chimneys.Mr. Maas has no idea how to create horror, satire, or drama with any style at all. A review on IMDb mentions the rumor of a sequel; this can't be true. No one in their right mind would agree to follow up this mess.Stay away from this non scary, unfunny waste of time at all costs.