Violent Night – Film Review

An elite team of mercenaries breaks into a family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone hostage inside. However, they aren’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint.

We all love to watch a good old-fashioned, wholesome Christmas movie this time of the year, don’t we? It’s always such a delightful, festive treat to get a big glass of eggnog, a cozy blanket with the fireplace turned on, and watch a feel-good Christmas movie like Christmas Vacation or Home Alone.

But what about the time in which you want to watch a Christmas movie and a horror movie all wrapped into one? Sadly, we don’t have too many options there. One of the only available options is Silent Night, Deadly Night and its sequels which are, unfortunately, all awful.

Of course, there’s Black Christmas, but honestly, that’s really it. Well, not anymore. Tommy Wirkola‘s Violent Night is a welcomed dosage of merry bloodiness, topped with some genuinely surprising emotional beats, and some of the most impressive horror movie kills in ages.

This is exactly the type of movie I wanted it to be and so much more. Right from the opening scene alone, yule be able to tell exactly what kind of movie Violent Night is going to be. If the initial few set-up scenes have you hooked, then chances are you’re going to have an absolute blast with this one.

The set-up for the film is essentially Die Hard meets Home Alone mixed with the insane bloodshed violence of the Saw franchise. And since I love all three of those inspirations, I absolutely loved Violent Night; a film that never once holds back from being off-the-wall crazy.

A large part as to why this movie works as well as it does is due to David Harbour‘s incredible lead performance in the role of Santa Claus. This isn’t the Jolly Saint Nick that we’re all used to. Not even close. Here, Harbour portrays Santa as a drunken man who is getting increasingly tired of Christmas over the years because of just how materialistic the children are getting.

There’s a chilling opening monologue with Harbour in which he says that he hopes this year will be the last Christmas, simply because of how worn out he is. Harbour already portrays a similarly rugged, “I’ve seen some things throughout my years” type of character on the hit series Stranger Things, so I imagine it must’ve been easy for him to go into this role.

But the great thing is that, despite how fed up and vulgar Santa Claus is in this movie, we still love him because deep down inside, he still has that festive cheer and he’s still a good person that’s trying to save the day by helping out this family that’s being held hostage.

All of the action sequences here are also fantastic. They’re so incredibly violent and so well choreographed that they reminded me a lot of the John Wick franchise. There’s a couple of scenes in which Santa equips a sledgehammer and goes on a complete rampage that may be one of the best action sequences in years. My whole theatre loved it and it’s not hard to see why.

Sadly, the dialogue in this movie can be legitimately terrible at times. A lot of the characters will say some lines that feel so out of place that it will physically make you cringe. That, and a lot of the characters themselves don’t really get fleshed out well at all. Most of them are rich and that’s the extent of their character. Overall, though, this movie is wonderful.

Violent Night is an uproariously funny and gleefully bloody dose of seasons beatings, led by David Harbour in an excellently unhinged performance.