Directed By Mike P. Nelson

Starring – Rohan Campbell, Ruby Modine, David Lawrence Brown

The Plot – A child witnesses his parents’ murder by a man in a Santa suit. Years later, as an adult, Billy (Campbell) dons a Santa costume himself and embarks on a violent quest for retribution against those responsible for the traumatic event from his childhood.

Rated R for adult language, brutal violence and gore

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 🎅🏼🪓🩸 | Official Trailer | In Theaters December 12

POSITIVES

Stemming from a franchise with admittedly more misses than hits to its individual installments, the idea of a “Silent Night Deadly Night” reimagining was initially met with some internal hesitation, especially in such a politically correct cinematic landscape that has since outgrown cheesy slashers of the 80’s, but Nelson’s experience utilizing a minimized budget on “VHS 85” and the criminally underrated “Wrong Turn” remake, somehow garners the most bang for the movie’s sparsity of bucks, making this an entertainingly engaging reconfiguring that breathes new life into an ages old franchise, while passionately paying homage to the many movies that came before it. The movie begins very similar to the original film, in which a little boy is heavily traumatized by a man in a Santa suit murdering his parents, but the paralleled similarities stop there, as Nelson and fellow screenwriters Michael Hickey and Paul Caimi take the film and their vision of Billy in some refreshingly daring directions that not only refuses to rest on the laurels of somebody else’s creativity, but also offers scintillating stirs to the pot with the kind of psychological introspection that makes the character’s condition feel effortlessly attainable, featuring some colorfully entrancing editing techniques and seamless transitions that breed much of the necessary self-awareness in tone that a movie this crazily deranged needs to satisfy the maniacal morbidity of its horror hounds. While the depiction of neurodivergent captivity isn’t anything even closely empowering or even thoroughly dissecting, it is a massive leap forward from the often offensive depictions of mental illness typically found in most horror movies, and considering the script takes ample opportunity to flesh out the surviving humanity from within Billy, that never felt presently prominent in the series’ past films, it doesn’t sacrifice the empathetic victimizing of his bleakly disparaging situation, grounding a killer so compellingly with the kind of valuable humanity and unexpected morality that ironically drive his unadulterated blood lust. On top of this, the integrity of the narrative is also enhanced by the romantic dynamic of Billy and co-worker Pam (Played by Modine) crafting an irresistibly cute and charming sensitivity to a movie often marred by an onslaught of aggressive violence. While the two don’t immediately garner the necessary chemistry to invest in their evolving arc, they are two characters uniquely bonded by the kind of trauma’s that make them feel anything but typical, and with Pam acting out her own unresolved issues on those who hurt her or her family, the movie takes redeeming value in the imperfections of their respective outlining designs, where each of them find comfort and salvaging grace in the other, without wholeheartedly deviating away from this being a horror movie, first and foremost. To that degree, the movie doesn’t revel in the exploitative emphasis of its gore, similar to something like “Terrifier 3”, but it is elevated with the occasional gruesome grandeur of practically manufactured effects, which mar and contort the human anatomy in unforgiving relentlessness that sparked a fire in this cold heart, all the while producing some exceptional sound schemes that coherently illustrate the extent of devastation whenever the production is momentarily limited by a rumored 1.5 million dollar production. While some will find disappointment in a movie that doesn’t continuously elevate the magnitude of the brutal visuals, the sparsity does lead to attention-grabbing resounding impacts, when it actually doesn’t look away from the devastation, leveling audience interpretation with more than a few meaningful kills that illustrate the extent of Billy’s ruthlessness as a traumatic survivor. The movie’s production values also spend ample time fleshing out the unmistakable appeal of its Christmas enveloping, particularly with classic soundtrack choices and luminating decor that breathe a natural essence of the holiday season. On the latter, the many backdrops are graced by Christmas lights of vintage design, inscribing a timeless essence to the integrity of the imagery that blends especially well with the grittiness of the presentation, and when capped off with the carefully picked tracks mirroring a caustic irony lyrically to events transpiring visually, brings out the darkly devastating side of the holiday splendor, but one that is never questioned for the authenticity factor of it joining an overstuffed folder of seasonal installments. Lastly, the responsibility of the movie’s effectiveness falls distinctly on the shoulders of Rohan Campbell and Ruby Modine’s shoulders, with each of them effortlessly manifesting the emotional duality of their characters, which make them such unpredictable wild cards at all times. Campbell specifically appraises a quiet intensity to Billy that bares the weight of his traumatic experiences, when his suppressed inner child openly embraces the vulnerability of an outsider’s touch, and Modine, while riding the waves of emotional instability of her own character’s distancing design, captivates with the lethal concoction of unbridled rage and overcoming anxiety, appraising not only a perfect equal for Billy’s madness of mayhem, but surprisingly also one of my favorite couples of the entire cinematic year.

NEGATIVES

While “Silent Night Deadly Night” is a more than worthy addition to a frequently underwhelming franchise, it isn’t without flaws, particularly in the depths of an aforementioned screenplay, which makes some delicate decisions with its creativity that doesn’t always pay off in the most endearing of methods. For starters, the film leans very heavily in its comedic underlining, often embracing a self-awareness factor that churns the cheesiness of its material, but it’s met so frequently ineffective with these piercing bouts of silence that keep the interactions at bay without anything remotely resembling charm or intoxicating writing, leaving the memorability of this movie considerably inferior to the best and worst moments of the franchise, even including A sequence involving the slaughtering of Nazi’s, which hits on a therapeutic level, even if not a cleverly concocted one. Beyond the weakness of the movie’s comedy, I also found some of its tropes unflattering in the grander scheme of the movie’s execution, glaringly those pertaining to Billy’s victims, who all feel like they were borrowed from a Rob Zombie movie. I make this assessment because they’re all so over the top evil and irredeemable that they never feel like living, breathing characters, and instead an obvious desperation to cater to the audience’s need to justify Billy’s slayings, with such a one-dimensional abrasiveness that I wish tempted the movie’s morality a bit more. Instead, they’re all just the kinds of characters who are unnaturally distracting to the scenes they’re called upon, and as to where most movies only contain one of these types of characters, who are often extinguished near the third act climax of these movies, here they make up the overwhelming majority of those who come into direct contact with Billy, leaving little in the way of tragedy or even accidental stakes to what was lost in the proverbial fire. Finally, the movie makes the choice of sampling properties like “Dexter”, “Mr. Brooks”, or even “Venom”, in which it utilizes vocal narration of a previous victim (Read by Mark Acheson) to act as a conscience to Billy’s executive actions, and while the metaphorical meaning of such an inclusion certainly makes these deaths feel meaningful to the withering morality of their killer, the narration comes across as too cutesy and on-the-nose to compliment a movie this darkly demented, resulting in some painful tonal shifts that rob so many defining moments of their authenticity. This bothered me enough in an action comedy like “Venom” because it’s read by Tom Hardy with the most ridiculous vocal tones, but here it feels all the more compromising with Acheson often acting as a reaction of the audience, instead of an entity that derives from Billy’s own unsuppressed urges, featuring these quirkily zany responses that practically look directly at the audience beyond, instead of properly gauging the stakes of the dangerous circumstances, and it’s one unique touch to the movie’s creativity that I wish they would’ve left on the cutting room floor, especially considering it has been sampled so frequently for murderers in these kinds of movies.

OVERALL
“Silent Night Deadly Night” slays as a superior successor in nearly every conceivable way to its 84′ original, bringing enough carnage candy to horror hounds seeking slashing splendor to rot their teeth, but also a darker and stranger surrealness that illustrates the inescapable captivity of mental illness being the tie that binds one of the year’s most entrancing love stories. While the script is weighed down by its sampling of occasionally tired tropes and flatlined humor that sacrifices some of the fun factor of the movie’s ferociousness, the psychological bond exuded in the romantic dynamic between Rohan Campbell and Ruby Modine nestle us with the right kind of seasonal warmth for Christmas cheer, with cinematic thrills aplenty in an air-tight 90-minutes of ruthless re-imagining.

My Grade: 7.1 or B-