Silent Night, Deadly Night will be released in theaters on December 12.
More Christmas movies should start with bloody vomit, in my opinion. My hopes for this Santa-based childhood trauma story weren't high, knowing it was a remake of the uninspiring 1984 original, but as soon as a Nazi hockey mom got a one-way ticket to hell in the shape of an axe, my heart grew like the Grinch's.
Billy (Rohan Campbell, who recently starred in The Monkey) lost his parents at Christmas, but gained a little voice in his head called Charlie that bosses him around like a murderous middle manager. It's established that Billy is unhinged from the very beginning - he's got an axe, a Santa suit collection and an advent calendar system that even Ed Gein might consider a bit much - but despite my initial resistance, he grew on me like maggots in an open wound. Honestly, if he liked being called Daddy and had a thing for spanking, he'd basically be a hero in a dark romance novel.
By the second act I was rooting for his relationship with a true-crime junkie, explosively tempered love interest Pam (Ruby Modine), began to see Charlie as a kind of built-in Alexa for murder, and found the death toll of various town naughty types satisfying in a coal in their stockings type of way. It's laid on a little thick sometimes, with conversations about "doing a bad thing is different than being a bad person" and having Billy play Go Fish with a cute kid, but hey, it's Christmas, and if you can't get a little bit sentimental during tinsel time, when can you?
Throw in an urban legend, some missing children, and an absolute a-hole of an ex-boyfriend, and there's maybe a little bit too much going on in terms of the plot, but it all comes together in the end in a messy sort of way. I was even pleasantly surprised by some of the explanations in the third act, which helped stitch up a few plot holes that had been making my brain itch. I laughed out loud with a sort of sinister joy at the ending, all of which helped it to feel like more than just another slasher movie with some baubles hanging off of it. Some people are going to hate it, but once you have Santa slaughtering Nazis, you're past the point of worrying about being divisive.
Director Mike P. Nelson is responsible for another reboot, the 2012 version of Wrong Turn (fun fact, that starred Ruby Modine's dad Matthew Modine), and if he remakes anything else, I'm there with popcorn. It might not be a shot for shot remake of the 1983 version, but it's faithful to the ideas while still having a bit of fun. And honestly, it's better for skipping the whole Catholic motif of the 1984 version. Who needs the judgement of God when Santa is the one deciding whether or not you get a BMX under the tree?
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