Man, I have been watching some absolute garbage movies lately. Under ConTroll tried way too hard for such a lackluster “sequel,” the Blood Freak remake was cheap on every level, and Joker’s Poltergeist took the real life tragedy of the Aurora theater shooting and turned it into a lame horror movie. In fact, A Karate Christmas Miracle is from the same wrier as Joker’s Poltergeist and reused footage from that horror flick. While I knew this would be yet another bad film, I at least assumed it’d be more coherent than Poltergeist. Oh, how wrong I was.

There’s, like, three movies happening all at once–two relatively normal movies inextricably tied to the batshit insane plot. The first is about a little boy who wants to get his black belt in karate by Christmas so his [presumed] dead dad will come home. This is where the title comes from, obviously. The other is about the mom finding out she really didn’t know her [presumably] dead husband as much as she thought she did, learning he helped out in the community a lot. But then we have the third plot, involving psychic visions, talking to dead strangers in Heaven over the phone, and North Sentinel Island.

So the dad/husband in the story–who by sheer coincidence is played by Mr. Ken del Vecchio, the same writer who cowrote Joker’s Poltergeist–went missing last year on Christmas. He went to a horror movie birthday screening at a theater to talk about… gun rights? And there were clowns? And one of them kidnapped him? There had to be a more coherent way to include footage from Joker’s Poltergeist, or just… don’t include footage from a completely unrelated movie. The son is having nightmares about the theater incident, learning more than the police ever told the family. This is how reused footage of Eric Roberts gets unceremoniously shoved in. The son even has a dream phone conversation with the dead theater owner, who is supposedly in Heaven but really is just chilling by a pool. While that’s going on, the mom tracks down a psychic-turned-law-professor to find more evidence of where her husband is, learning he was such a great guy. Just the best. Did I mention he cowrote this? At one point the psychic professor is having an online class for the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, an island with indigenous people who decided if you come to their island, they’ll murder you. Like, in real life some idiot thought illegally visiting the island to spread the word of God was a great idea, and he got killed. So the Sentinelese not only have internet, but they’re taking online law courses. Sure Jan. Then on Christmas day the son breaks a board with one punch, and the dad just… walks into the house through the sliding glass door. No explanation where he’d been for the last year. Just happy reunion and then credits. Amazing.

I feel like it’s kind of implied by the insane plot summary, but the acting is bad. The law professor rambles on about Christmas-themed hypothetical legal situations long enough that it starts to feel like padding. Every other line the mom says is basically, “How do you know that?” I think it was played for laughs when she was drunk and asking how the babysitter knew she’d been to a bar, but I can’t imagine anyone laughing. And the child actor is a bad child actor. Fuck, I can only assume he got the role because he’s someone’s real life son. Oh, he’s Ken del Vecchio’s son? Well that tracks.

So Joker’s Poltergeist was awful, and A Karate Christmas Miracle was awful in new and inventive ways. But wait! There’s more! Ken del Vecchio also wrote (and co-starred in, of course) A Wrestling Christmas Miracle, starring his son again! Presumably not the same character, since he has a different name, but if the trend continues, I expect this film to reach a new low in how baffling it is. Can’t fucking wait!

I’ll watch a good movie at some point, I swear…

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