Silent Night, Deadly Night

This reminded me a bit of “Violent Night” (2022) as it rather challenges the typical image of the avuncular Santa Claus. This one, here, is much more focussed on the folks who have been naughty, and with his advent calendar counting down with it's own sort of macabre biometric souvenirs, he has only four days left to complete his latest annual search for some nasties. “Billy” (Rohan Campbell) is the man whom we know dons the suit and who is egged on by a violent devil on his shoulder to keep motivated, but when they arrive in a small town preparing for the festivities, he meets “Pamela” (Ruby Modine) and, well let’s just say he becomes distracted. The thing is, though, if he doesn’t visit vengeance on someone suitable then someone else will die - and they may well not be so deserving. He has to focus. Now this town isn’t without it’s candidates, not least a group of Neo-Nazis having a barn dance, but unlike some other super-heroes, poor old “Billy” feels it when he is punched, shot or stabbed, so he has his work cut out to fulfil his task and keep “Pammy” out of it! This must have been made on a fairly tight budget because there are a few (dozen) continuity errors, the dialogue is fairly basic and the plot has been stretched out just a bit too much to justify this as feature length, but that said - it’s an enjoyable romp that I can imagine Charles Dickens could have imagined as “Billy” visits some terminal Christmas gifts on the ghastly. On that front, Campbell delivers fine as do the “Venom”-style voices in is head that aren’t anywhere as indiscriminately brutal as we might expect. I suspect that there will be a sequel along next year: it has something of the gift that keeps giving to it, and I did quite enjoy it.

Premise, meet execution
This premise shows a lot of promise, and could easily have been squandered, and almost is, but this movie picks up in its third act and becomes heartfelt and drives well into its conclusion. The casting is good, the direction solid, the effects where they need to be. This is a great remake of a movie most would have forgotten.