Verdict
Summary
Overall, I kind of had a good time with this wacky movie, and it deserves to sit on the same shelf as the superior original film.
Plot:
A serial killer dressed in a Santa suit visits a small town, where everything changes for him.
Review:
When he’s a boy, Billy witnesses the murder of his family while on the road: A man named Charlie (Mark Acheson) dressed in a Santa Claus suit shoots his mom and dad dead, and suddenly Billy is an orphan. Years later, Billy (Rohan Campbell) is a drifter, going from town to town with a Santa suit and an old book of names that he crosses off his list. It’s coming up on Christmas Eve, and Billy takes shelter in a small, quaint town where he manages to get a day job stocking shelves at a little gift shop, where he quickly finds himself attracted to the store owner’s daughter Pamela (played by Ruby Modine), who has some anger issues, but nothing compared to what Billy deals with. Billy doesn’t just hear voices, no, he has the very spirit of the man who killed his family living inside of him, giving him not just “company” in his head, but a guiding compass to evil. Whenever Billy and the spirit of Charlie sense evil, they write the name in his book of lists and don the Santa suit and get to work with killing. Billy / Charlie isn’t just a serial killer; he’s a vanquisher of evil, making him some sort of twisted vigilante, but because he absolutely must kill a certain amount of people before Christmas, his job becomes really complicated because he finds that he’s attracted to Pamela, who has ties to some very evil people in town …
Based, in part, on the 1984 cult movie, which had four sequels and a remake in 2012, this “reimagining” of Silent Night, Deadly Night takes a unique twist by internalizing the whole concept of Billy’s body count and why he does what he does, which somehow works and ends up being the real reason to watch this one. It takes a pretty big chance and (mostly) succeeds, making it a unique holiday slasher film, but it also steps wrong a few times, turning it into a messy and over the top slaughterhouse of a movie that requires some serious suspensions of disbelief. The scene where Billy walks into a white supremacy Christmas party made me slap my head in frustration because he goes on to slaughter the entire party, which must have been a huge percentage of the small town he’s staying in, and that matter isn’t properly addressed later on. But overall, I kind of had a good time with this wacky movie, and it deserves to sit on the same shelf as the superior original film. From director and co-writer Mike P. Nelson.
Cineverse has just released a two-disc 4K Ultra HD / Blu-ray combo pack of Silent Night, Deadly Night, and it comes with a trailer and a bonus feature entitled “Silent Night, Deadly Night: Unwrapping a New Legacy.”
