Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025)

Well. That wasn't remotely what I was expecting. And, just so we're on the same page, that's a very good thing.

I should probably get used to this subgenre (or in this case movies marketed within the subgenre) surprising me, particularly since I kind of predicted the turn said subgenre was due to take a few years ago. But, yeah, based on the initial teaser, I was ready to write this off as an overly-nostalgic homage to a horror film that I have... let's go with "mixed feelings" about. That's being generous, by the way - I didn't enjoy the 1984 film at all, though I see the appeal. There's some smart stuff going on in that movie if you can look past the misogynistic exploitation, the slow pacing, and the nihilistic cloud hanging over the whole thing.

I certainly preferred the original to the 2012 remake, which basically turned up the volume on everything distasteful about the original while dumbing down the premise and themes to the point there was nothing left other than the gore and exploitation. On the other hand, I really liked the unofficial 2022 remake, Christmas Bloody Christmas, which took the story in a different but intelligent direction while simultaneously delivering perhaps the most beautifully stylized slasher-Santa installment since 3615 code Père Noël. For context, I'd say this one surprised, delighted, and amused me on a level on par with Christmas Bloody Christmas... for entirely different reasons.

We'll get to those reasons in a moment, but first... you know the drill. This is a good movie, so if you're adverse to spoilers and like horror, consider holding off on reading further until you've had a chance to check this out.

Now that that's out of the way....

This one's fascinating in the ways it chooses to reference and deviate from its source material. Visually, this is very much harkening back to the original film. Likewise, this includes kills directly referencing moments in that movie (probably some of its sequels, too - I still need to watch those). I said before the teaser made me think this was just recycled nostalgia. But fortunately the movie's recreation of the original's look doesn't extend to the characters, premise, plot, or depiction of women. Or the genre.

Oh, right: this isn't a horror movie.

Well, okay, I'm overstepping a bit. It's a horror movie to the extent it uses the visual language of that genre. And there's a case to be made that horror is nebulous to the point you really can't pin down when that label does and does not apply beyond whether a movie chooses to embrace it (true to a lesser extent of other genres, but the borders of horror are particularly fuzzy these days). I'm not saying this rather gruesome, violent, surreal film doesn't have a right to call itself horror; only that I think there's a more accurate, straightforward genre that fits it better.

This is a superhero movie. Specifically, this is a Punisher movie. There's a sequence in the middle of this that's the most Punisher sequence I've ever seen on film, in fact. Numerous official Punisher movies and shows have attempted to capture the feel of a Garth Ennis comic, and this outdoes them all.

But this isn't just a Punisher movie. This owes a debt to the 1995 Tales from the Crypt movie, Demon Knight, which also exists somewhere on the horror-to-superhero spectrum. There's also a surprising amount of Christmas Evil mixed in, though this could simply be a case of similar premises converging.

That premise revolves around the idea of Santa Claus as a sort of moral scale, punishing those who are bad while rewarding the good (with admittedly more attention paid to the punishment side of that arrangement). This was of course also a big part of the 1984 film (this references that whenever the naughty/nice dichotomy comes up), and it's been a fairly constant idea within the slasher-Santa subgenre as a whole. But because this iteration of Billy (played by Rohan Campbell) is actually targeting evil people exclusively, it winds up much more closely resembling Christmas Evil, whether or not that was a direct influence.

This also winds up echoing Christmas Evil in its inclusion of the supernatural. In both films, the protagonist is ultimately a sort of Santa Claus avatar. Arguably, that subtext is virtually universal in the subgenre, but these two take it a few steps further. In the 1984 film, for example, we're not supposed to be rooting for Billy (though... that dynamic of audience engagement tends to get complicated in slashers). Here, the character's dark mission is ultimately a moral one (or at least as moral as possible). He's inherited a sort of Christmas curse obligating him to kill a bad person every day. Failure to meet this quota will result in the life of an innocent taken instead. That's an interesting wrinkle in the naughty/nice formula. Here, the murder is at once punishment and gift. I don't believe I've seen that before.

We see him go off book, so to speak, a couple times. He misses a few days of killing, justifying his inaction in understandable ways. The aforementioned "Punisher sequence" takes an opposite approach. When his guide advises him to isolate and kill one person in a large gathering of Nazis, Billy instead opts to murder them all.

I have no notes.

The guide (voiced by Mark Acheson), incidentally, is another wrinkle. The spirit of the last killer Santa, who Billy witnessed kill his own parents (though it turns out there was a reason they were on the list), is always with him, advising him and leading him to his targets. Because of this, Billy has supernatural knowledge of others' sins (so we better throw Unbreakable into the mix of superhero influences), as well as an extra set of eyes looking out for him.

A lifetime of doing this, coupled with supernatural assistance, makes Billy formidable... but not invulnerable. Which is where the movie's last major character comes into play. Pamela (Ruby Modine) is a love interest for Billy. She's fascinated by true crime, and she has a pathological sense of right and wrong which compels her to punish those who are cruel. A large portion of the movie is spent developing her relationship with Billy, who eventually confides in her about his curse.

Granted, by then her father's been killed by a different killer in a Santa mask. Billy and Pamela track that killer (killers, actually) down, uncovering a ring of cops moonlighting as child traffickers. Billy kills one of them, but the other - coincidentally Pamela's ex - shoots Billy. As he's dying, his power and spirit pass to Pamela, who brutally slaughters the guilty man. The ending reveals Billy's in her head now, and that she's the next to inherit the mission, which she accepts gleefully.

I'll admit there are obvious problematic aspects to turning this (or any) style of movie into what amounts to a revenge-power fantasy celebrating the taking of human life. And, yes, I acknowledge my enjoyment of this is likely tied to the fact it aligns with my politics, and with the decision to have white supremacists and corrupt police as the antagonists (the movie even implies support of gun control). If your politics are diametrically opposed, I imagine you'll have a far less favorable reaction. But the world being what it is... I couldn't help but smile as Billy wiped out a room full of Nazis.

Since a disproportionate amount of this review has been focused on discussing this movie in the context of others, I'll end with one more worth considering. At the start I alluded to predicting slasher-Santa movies might head in this direction. I was referring to my review of the movie, Violent Night, which purports to be a riff on Die Hard but actually wound up closer to this genre. Slasher-Santas have long been larger than life, and - even when ostensibly being the villains - have always been the draw for audiences. By flipping them from monster to (super)hero, both Violent Night and this incarnation of Silent Night, Deadly Night attempt to remove the ethical issues surrounding viewers cheering on the killer and enjoying the kills.

The difference, in my opinion, is this is aware of what it's doing, while Violent Night doesn't seem to be. Violent Night is fun enough for what it is, but in my opinion this is a smarter, more entertaining picture. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone without at least some tolerance for gore and violence, but those who appreciate this sort of weird, dark fantasy are likely to enjoy it quite a bit.

I certainly did, and I really wasn't expecting to.