The very corporeal ghost of Saint Nikolas and his gang of "Black Peters" sail into Amsterdam during the holiday season to commit random murders and abduct a load of children to haul back to Spain. Spain? I don't know, that's what it said. An obsessed cop and a standard young movie male do a remarkably poor job stopping them.

Are young twentysomething people really as shallow and obnoxious as portrayed in movies? I have no idea, as even back when I was a young person myself I was out of the young people loop. I hope these aren't the astronauts of tomorrow. It's made all the worse here by the fact that I watched this on Netflix where it's dubbed, and the only thing worse than having to listen to jackass dialogue is hearing it translated into English and mouthed by third string actors who sound like they're doing a toothpaste commercial.

So yeah this movie and I got off to a bad start and the orgy of violence that might have saved it never quite materialised. There are a few bloody kills though and the night shots of Amsterdam decked out for the holidays had a certain old world charm. The bad guy isn't Santa, but a more Euro looking creation that resembles an insane old man in a bishop's outfit who prefers the 5th of December to Christmas 'cause I guess they have Saint Nikolas day or something in continental Europe. The Black Peters are apparently an actual quaint Dutch tradition as well, wherein they celebrate their ah, colonial diversity by appearing in blackface and afro wigs. Movie has expanded my cultural horizons.

Weird ending. Unless I'm missing something the protagonists blew up a whole shipload of still-alive children. I kept dreading the "we must rescue the children before the explosives go off!" action sequence that surely must follow, but the youngsters' plaintiff cries were utterly disregarded and I guess something like three hundred of them were exploded and sent to the briny deep. Saint Nikolas and his gang weren't even on board, although the explosion seemed to suddenly make them need to wander off and stop killing folks. So the city is sort of saved I guess. 'Cept for those kids.