Billy Chapman (Rohan Campbell), haunted by a Santa-suited vigilante killer, is compelled every year to slaughter an evildoer for each window on an Advent calendar. Taking a seasonal job in a Christmas novelty store, he thinks of settling down\u2026 but the ghost points out evils requiring punishment with an axe.<\/p>\n
The 1984 Silent Night, Deadly Night \u2014 once banned in the UK \u2014 is a middling slasher, falling several red noses short of the classic holiday-horror status of Black Christmas, Christmas Evil or the episode of Tales From The Crypt where a psycho Father Christmas strangles Joan Collins. Nevertheless, Silent Night, Deadly Night became a franchise \u2014 four sequels, a 2012 semi-remake (Silent Night) and a stockingful of imitations.<\/p>\n
A fresh take on the very basic SNDN set-up.<\/p>\n
A rule of thumb in grindhouse horror is that you\u2019re on firmer ground remaking iffy originals than butchering classics. Writer-director Mike P. Nelson, who\u2019s already been down this route with a Wrong Turn requel<\/a>, manages an impressive party piece in a fresh take on the very basic SNDN set-up. As in the old film, protagonist Billy is unhinged as a kid when maniac Santa kills his parents. Grown-up Billy (Rohan Campbell) is compelled to don the red suit, white beard, hat and boots of Good Old Saint Nick to slay (or sleigh) victims in Christmas-related ways. The bit everyone remembers from the first film involves antlers \u2014 this gets a new spin here.<\/p>\n Campbell is affecting as the haunted murderer, oddly earnest and agonised as he goes through his Yule ritual of brutally killing someone then pressing a bloody fingerprint into his Advent calendar. Romance emerges when Billy connects with Pamela (Ruby Modine), a Christmas-store manager with rage issues, and Modine does wonders as a non-stereotype horror heroine. It develops via tipped-in ideas from Unbreakable<\/a> and Dexter that semi-possessed Billy could really be doing Santa\u2019s work. Some people on the naughty list deserve what\u2019s coming down the chimney, and Nelson\u2019s direction ramps up as Billy crashes a white power Christmas party and the message \u201cKill Nazis\u201d flashes on the screen. A sub-plot about this small town\u2019s other bogeyman (\u2018the Snatcher\u2019) leads to a satisfying, possibly franchise-founding finale.<\/p>\n Just the right recipe for a seasonal horror cocktail \u2014 gruesome kills, proper suspense, sly wit, likeable leads and a dose of just deserts for very, very bad boys and girls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Billy Chapman (Rohan Campbell), haunted by a Santa-suited vigilante killer, is compelled every year to slaughter an evildoer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-312735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}