There was a bizarre moral outrage back in November 1984 when seasonal slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night dared to put an axe in the hands of Santa. Despite being, you know, not a real person he was once treated with enough reverence to cause parent-led protests, a ban of all advertising and then of the film itself. It provided a sharp edge to an otherwise blunt and unremarkable post-Halloween knockoff and might help to explain why it managed to eke out four junky sequels and a 2012 remake.
We’re now at the inevitable second remake stage but the 2025 redo arrives after the gimmick of Killer Santa has now become a subgenre in itself. He’s cropped up in Christmas Bloody Christmas, Christmas Evil, Santa’s Slay, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Deadly Games and last year’s Terrifier 3 and the makers of this December’s take are more than aware that seeing Santa with a weapon isn’t enough to shock today’s horror fans.
The lengths to which writer-director Mike P Nelson then goes to in order to refresh and reinvigorate the formula can, in brief moments, be something to respect, a film-maker unwilling to churn out yet another slice-and-dice rehash (he previously tried to approach his Wrong Turn remake with a similar ambition). But there’s almost too much on his mind here, at least for one film to tackle, and so a straightforward slasher soon becomes a vaguely political, sometimes supernatural and strangely sentimental cross between TV shows like Dexter and You and films like Venom, Mr Brooks and Bill Paxton’s lesser-known 2001 effort Frailty, a Christmas cocktail that could have done with fewer ingredients.
One thing the film does stick with is the protagonist, poor little Billy Chapman, understandably traumatised at a young age after seeing his parents get brutally murdered by a criminal dressed as Santa. This time he’s played by Rohan Campbell, an actor best known for his role in another misbegotten franchise rejigger Halloween Ends, and this time, we’re made to feel even sorrier for him. While yes, once again his adult response to his childhood trauma is murdering people while also dressed as Santa (not good!), his methods and motivation are a bit more – or one might say too – complicated. Every Christmas, Billy has an Advent calendar that demands a new kill every day, insisted upon by a gravelly voice in his head who acts as a supporting character throughout. After he’s drawn to a new town, he becomes fixated on a local woman who seems to share his propensity for violence, while also finding out about an unsolved mystery involving a spate of child disappearances. Oh, and there is also a local Nazi cult to deal with …
While Nelson’s desire to keep remixing the formula does keep those of us familiar with the original guessing, it often feels like change for the sake of change, aimed at surprising a niche audience who actually remember a deeply forgettable film. Those who arrive fresh to it will probably find his ideas a little too regifted to impress all that much. What might have seemed edgy a couple of decades ago (what if a fucked-up killer finds someone who is also fucked up?) has now become the familiar stuff of a cable series and Nelson just can’t seem to decide how seriously we’re supposed to be taking any of this. He is either desperately trying to satiate the bloodthirsty Midnight Movie crowd with mushy gore, mass-slaughtering Nazis or pulverising heads, or he’s trying to add pathos to a character who really doesn’t deserve it, climaxing with an oddly pitched finale aimed less at making us vomit and more at making us cry. What none of the tonal shifts and story tweaks can do is distract us from his boringly flat direction, failing to justify why something so drab and cheap-looking would warrant the surprisingly wide theatrical release it’s receiving this weekend.
Since the film it’s based on wasn’t all that good to begin with, there is nothing sacrilegious about yet another remake but there’s also no real point to it either. No one will be compelled to protest this time – they will be too indifferent to care.
Silent Night, Deadly Night is out in cinemas on 12 December
