Reviews
Silent Night, Deadly Night
Forget about Elf, Home Alone, or even The Muppets Christmas Carol, because there’s a new festive movie in town to get you in the holiday spirit. After all, a serial killer dressed as Santa is perfect for Christmas time with the family, right? Well, if that sounds like fun to you, that’s exactly what Silent Night, Deadly Night has to offer, and honestly, it might just be the best Christmas movie released this year.
I do have a little confession. I’ve never actually seen the original Silent Night, Deadly Night move, and going into this, I purposely avoided all marketing and plot details so I could go in completely blind. Truth be told, I was actually expecting something closer to the Terrifier franchise, which I’ve never really enjoyed, so my expectations going in couldn’t have been lower. Maybe that helped, but even so, I was genuinely surprised by how much fun I had with this remake.
This new version is written and directed by Mike P. Nelson and, from what I learned after watching it, follows the basic story of the 1984 film. We follow Billy Chapman (Rohan Campbell), who on the surface seems like a normal guy. But after seeing his parents brutally murdered by someone dressed as Santa, he’s been stuck with a voice in his head ever since. The best way I can describe it is similar to the Venom and Eddie dynamic, where only Billy can hear and talk to it. I wasn’t expecting that at all, but it adds a really entertaining back-and-forth throughout the film.
Every December, Billy is forced to kill one person per day, and he keeps a disgusting sort of advent calendar where he marks each day with a fingerprint’s worth of their blood. By the time we meet him, it’s obvious he’s been doing this for years. Looking for his next victim, he ends up in a tiny, slightly backward town and gets a job at a Christmas shop run by Mr. Sims (David Lawrence Brown). Things get complicated when he starts falling for Sims’ daughter Pamela (Ruby Modine), who has her own problems, including a stalker ex-boyfriend, Max (David Tomlinson).
What isn’t obvious at first, but soon becomes very clear, is that Billy’s victims aren’t random. The voice inside his head sees what people have done and picks the worst of the worst. Once you realise that, the kills become a lot more satisfying. They’re still gruesome, but knowing that these people deserve a bit of karmic payback makes it all hit differently.
There’s one scene in particular that I think will go down as one of the most memorable of the year. Billy ends up at a Nazi Christmas gathering, and the room is covered in swastikas with people shouting Sieg Heil. It’s obviously distasteful, and understandably some people might find it too much, but once Billy starts tearing through the room and taking out every last one of them, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that scene in Inglourious Basterds where the Nazis meet a similar fate. It’s only about five minutes long, but it’s probably what this movie will be remembered for.
As Christmas gets closer and Billy realises Pamela will eventually discover who he really is, things ramp up. After skipping two required kills and dealing with the consequences, he uses Christmas Day as the moment to tell her everything. And the best part is that Pamela isn’t exactly perfect either. She’s got her own inner fire and anger issues, so she handles his revelation in a way that is both surprising and kind of perfect for where the movie is heading. The finale is frantic, chaotic, and extremely satisfying, and it wasn’t as predictable as these kinds of films often are.
One thing this movie deserves a lot of credit for is actually having a solid and engaging storyline. That’s usually where films like this lose me. The Terrifier movies don’t really have much of a narrative I’ve found, and that’s probably why I can’t get into them as much as I’d really like. So naturally, I was worried Silent Night, Deadly Night would be the same, but the story here is surprisingly strong, and that makes everything else work so much better.
When a movie ends by teasing a follow-up, I can sometimes leave the cinema with a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth, but in this case, if the kills and the story stay at this level, I’d be more than happy to watch another. And who knows, maybe this could actually turn into a horror franchise people revisit every Christmas. Based on this outing, I genuinely think there’s a chance.
