Silent Night (2012)

Such a frustrating disappointment

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A small American town pays host one Christmas to a maniac dressed as Santa Claus. Rather like Salem's Lot, this town is frequented by often very flawed characters who one by one, succumb to terrifically staged, grisly fates.My feeling at the beginning was that Sheriff James Cooper, played by the mighty Malcolm McDowell, who often seemed to magically turn up at the scene of the various crime, was somehow linked to the malevolent Claus. To cast McDowell as a mere Sheriff seemed unlikely to me. Maybe I was right?Deputy Aubrey Bradimore (Jaime King) is the unfortunate who is seconded to the spree. Anytime any of the townsfolk are 'naughty' - and there are plenty who are - it seems Father Christmas isn't far behind. You can hear his heavy breathing behind his improvised, bearded mask.The running time is made up of sinners hiding behind a veneer of respectability, suspected by none except Santa. This makes him a kind of red-hatted avenging spirit. The premise and outrageous killings are over-the-top and often quite silly, and yet this remake of the 1984 'Silent Night, Deadly Night' weaves in several plot moments from the real-life 2008 Covina massacre.Director Steven C. Miller and writer Jayson Rothwell ensure that events are staged in a very television-drama style, and as such, the minor indiscretions of the characters have a soap-opera feel about them. For the ongoing fascination for a truly Bad Santa, this is enjoyable, but a fairly standard slasher.

Santa is an axe wielding mass murderer! In Silent Night he is anyway, a slick, excessively gory remake of an obscure 80's slasher called Silent Night, Deadly Night, which I've still yet to see. This new version is a heavy handed, knowingly silly affair, as a small town Sheriff's department races to find a heinous killer who dresses like the red guy and has been wantonly slaughtering townsfolk all morning. A timid deputy (Sin City's Jaime King) is the front runner to head him off at the pass, joined by the cantankerous, mouthy Sheriff, played by a hammy Malcolm McDowell with attitude to spare. The murders are so over the top it seems like the filmmakers wanted to outdo each and every slasher film out there, an impossible task, but they throw Paint at the wall furiously anyway. Electrocution by Christmas lights, high powered flamethrower, a souped up stun gun used to skewer an annoying 14 year old chick, but my favourite has to be the naked stripper fed through a giant wood chipper in a scene that would have Fargo covering it's eyes. That's the kind of flick it is, sleazed out to the max, tongue firmly in it's cheek and never too serious. Problem is, a few of the actors (I'm looking at you,priest dude) take it way too far into camp territory and ruin whole sequences with their wannabe satirical blathering. McDowell gets the tone right though, and is a right treat as the world's most sarcastic lawman. Donal Logue also fares well as a bad tempered grinch of a mall Santa who eventually tangles with the murderer in a fiery police station set piece. Maybe I was just tired, but when the origin of the killer is finally revealed, which I waited for the whole time, it seemed like kind of a confusing letdown, a bit less of a surprise than it should have been. Worth it for the kills and a couple entertaining performances, but ultimately not much.

A good description of this film would be that it is a combination of the earlier Silent Night, Deadly Night, and latter Krampus. The antagonist is similar in demeanour to the Krampus (though far more vicious); and there's that one part where a Grandfather awakens from a catatonic state, bearing a warning- like is also seen in Krampus. While many of the kills are reflections of those seen in Silent Night, Deadly Night (ie strangulation with Christmas lights and the impalement of a scantily clad teenager upon a trophy head). There's not much of a plot here, though. Just a whole lotta killing carried out by a sociopath in a Santa suit on Christmas Eve.The kills, however, are vicious as hell...and extremely gory. With the special effects having been done quite well- as in, they are rather realistic.Some examples include: woodchippering a half-naked chick, whose already had her leg cut off, while alive; axing a dude's head in half (while the camera doesn't (seem to) cut away); lots of scythe related stabbings and slicings; and one violent bludgeoning, with a set of "ho, ho, ho" brass knuckles.By the time it's over, it is pretty obvious that this was all a vain attempt to create a franchise in the image of Silent Night, Deadly Night. But there is simply not enough story to keep you intrigued. And what elements of a storyline are there; are dropped at the most inopportune times, and developed so poorly, that they are almost entirely irrelevant to the overall story.Poor storytelling, but lots of gore. They clearly expect to make a sequel...so at the very least, there's lots of room for improvement.4.5 out of 10.

For a Christmas slasher, SILENT NIGHT isn't up to scratch. I've not seen the original SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, but I have seen the likes of DON'T OPEN TILL Christmas and that memorable segment from TALES FROM THE CRYPT and both were much, much better. Director Steven C. Miller seems to vary broadly when it comes to the films he makes, for every trashy flick like UNDER THE BED he makes something superior like THE AGGRESSION SCALE. However, this is one of his worst.The story is about a killer Santa Claus who goes around bumping off various victims while a local sheriff department attempt to track him down. There's little more plot to it than that, although attempts to raise the whole 'whodunit' aspect of the film fall flat because you never care who's responsible. The deaths are gory but somehow feel fake and overblown; it may be that the victims are all random and rather despicable in themselves, so it all goes over your head a bit.Jaime King gives a tired performance as the protagonist of the piece and you get the sense that her heart wasn't really in it, and you can't really blame her for it. Malcolm McDowell is better, but is given little to work with other than play it gruff. The ending is as cheesy and over the top as you'd expect.