As soon as I saw the trailer for Jack Black’s Christmas movie about Satan, I couldn’t imagine watching something that horrific and, well, stupid. Current viewers appear equally unimpressed. Dear Santa has an IMDB score of 5.3, a Rotten Tomatoes critic score at 24%, and a RT audience score of 45%.

Then former-occultists-turned-Christian started posting warnings about this film. I don’t always agree with these well-intentioned warnings against various media, so I did what I never expected to do—I watched Dear Santa.

Here’s a brief spoiler-filled plot overview: An eleven-year-old boy named Liam (Robert Timothy Smith) writes a letter to Santa and accidentally spells the name “Satan” because he has dyslexia. When Satan (Jack Black) arrives in his closet at night, he pretends to be Santa Claus for a couple days until Liam discovers the ruse. But it’s too little too late. Liam has already entered into an arrangement with Satan-Santa by making the first of three wishes. He didn’t know that making his third wish would grant the Devil the ability to take his soul and, eventually, damn him to Hell.

One of the core guiding principles to remember when analyzing stories is asking whether evil looks evil and good looks good. If you’re going to tell a story about Satan, he should be the villain the entire time without compromise. If evil is made to look good and good to look evil, something is amiss.

During the first half of Dear Santa, the film didn’t seem that bad. The biggest issue was making Satan appear humorous and just a little cruel. Yet he was still the villain entangling a sweet, vulnerable kid. In fact, much of their early interaction was realistic and reminded me of many former occultists’ testimonies. Had that trajectory continued with Satan being defeated and good winning the fight, it wouldn’t have been the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

In the second half, we’re suddenly hit with what’s really going on in this family—they lost a child. The scenes that dealt with grief were truly heartbreaking. Liam would sit alone in his room watching old videos of him and his brother playing together. Moving quickly between Jack Blackish comedy to tear-inducing grief gave me emotional whiplash.

Then in the third act, Liam gets his soul back in a quasi Deus ex machina moment—except it’s Satanas ex machina. Plot twist—Satan isn’t really Satan. The real Lucifer (Ben Stiller) was sitting on his throne in Hell the entire time. Jack Black’s Satan (a lowly demogorgon) is then fired for how he’d wrongly dealt with Liam, and the boy gets his soul back. When demogorgon-Satan returns to deliver the news to Liam, he confesses to lying, apologizes, then tells Liam that he enjoyed hanging out with him. It’s played as a heartwarming goodbye scene between a boy and his slightly naughty older friend.

Did you catch it? Evil was made to look good. This demon began as a villain, albeit a humorous one, made some mistakes, got fired, then apologized. The story suggests an evil entity like a demon can change, repent, and even display humility.

The last scene adds insult to injury with Liam’s next letter to Santa where he asks for just one thing—his younger brother Spencer back from the dead. On Christmas morning, Spencer is sitting by the tree, and Liam falls onto his neck sobbing. This moment was genuinely heartbreaking and brought tears to my eyes. The film ends with the camera scanning up the tree and landing on a Jack Black angel tree topper, who winks. The implication is that all the unforeseen gifts they’d just received—living brother included—were from demogorgon-Satan.

Does Dear Santa glorify evil? It’s safe to say that giving a demon virtue and the ability to selflessly raise people from the dead is a definite, although unexpected, glorification of evil.

But will this lead someone astray? That remains to be seen. Even without the ethical problems that arise when someone decides to make a family Christmas movie about Satan, this film was just not good. The writing was terrible, the tone and pacing uneven, and the comedy fell flat. It’s difficult to imagine many viewers could be taken in by such horrifically bad storytelling.