While slightly critical of "Christmas Cruelty!'s" editing, Sean Leonard of Horror News still praised it as "a movie that is brutal and pulls no punches" and went on to write, "There is something special about the talent here, both in the fact that they made such a great movie for so little, but also that they made a movie that, while somewhat conforming to certain horror and slasher tropes, managed to still bring its fair share of originality to an often saturated market." "Peek-A-Boo Magazine's" Didier Becu awarded the film a score of 60/100 and concluded that, aside from a few technical limitations, it was "a brilliant ode to the slasher genre by two filmmakers with passion." UK Horror Scene's Steven Hickey similarly referred to "Christmas Cruelty!" as "a sick and sadistic Grindhouse flick for those who want horror to horrify" while Severed Cinema's Richard Taylor called it "an entertaining, but hard to watch film" that warranted a grade of 4/5. Katherine Webb of Screen Rant described the film as "disturbing" and "basically two hours of holly, jolly torture porn" and concluded, "In no way is "Christmas Cruelty" for the faint of heart, but it's about as gory as you can get for the holidays, and it certainly lives up to its name."