Stalking SantaOne of my favourite film genres would be the documentary genre, and I am also quite partial to one of its subgenres, the mockumentary. However, for a mockumentary to fool or entertain the audience, they need to be done right. Some that have been done right over the years include Forgotten Silver, This is Spinal Tap, and more recently Borat. Then there are the ones that don’t work. Stalking Santa fits into this category. The film follows Lloyd Darrow a self-proclaimed scientist or ‘Santologist,’ who has dedicated his life to proving that Santa Claus exists. There are scenes that show Lloyd Darrow out doing experiments and research, and then there is footage of his family and home life which reveals that his job is affecting his personal life as his family struggle with the ramifications of his unfruitful job. We see how his wife has to work two jobs, and how his son gets bullied at school. The film utilises all the typical documentary conventions, such as, archival footage, interviews, statistics, facts and still photos, all of which are used to help strengthen the case that Santa is real. One of the better gags in the film is seen early on. A still photo of an Egyptian deity in hieroglyph form appears to be wearing a red Santa’s hat. This and other ancient artefacts linked to Santa are shown in order to prove that Santa has been around for a long time. These absurd artefacts are all presented using a famous narrator; the voice of William Shatner. The celebrity voice-over is a popular convention used in documentaries, and used well recently in March of the Penguins, in this film, Morgan Freeman’s voice-over was cleverly utilized, but not even the celebrity voice-over provided by Shatner, in Stalking Santa, could save this film. Stalking Santa’s jokes lack the subtlety and wit of Peter Jackson’s Forgotten Silver. When Forgotten Silver screened on TV in New Zealand, some people were actually fooled, and led to believe that what they saw was true. Stalking Santa’s material is so preposterous and unconvincingly acted, that it proves to be not funny, not deceptive, and not very entertaining. There were two gags where I thought I would laugh, but the gag just wasn’t pulled off with the right comedic timing, and therefore did not even illicit a smile from me. This entry into the mockumentary sub-genre did not appeal to me at all. If I were to think of a possible target audience for this film it may be 6-12 year olds and their parents, who find themselves trapped in their house on Christmas day bored out of their minds.
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