Violent Night

The story goes that screenwriters Pat Casey and Josh Miller (the Sonic the Hedgehog films) became friends as kids in school detention, and bonded over their love of dreaming up silly, over the top ideas for films, which is how the genesis for Violent Night came to be.  This is fitting, as the film plays like what would happen if a major studio gave two teenage goofballs an obscene budget, and told them to do what they wanted.

Violent Night is a one-joke movie, but an energetic one, and made with a certain spirit.  It definitely could have and should have been better, but you can't blame this cast and crew, who sell the material hard and with the right angle.  The idea of a killer Santa Claus is not new, but it's mostly been relegated to cheap horror films.  Here, we get David Harbour from Stranger Things playing a Santa who has lost the Christmas spirit.  All kids want are video games and money, and fewer of them believe in him.  He may hang up his red hat for good.  That's when he inadvertently gets wrapped up in a criminal hostage situation, and has to rely on his history as a violent Viking warrior in order to save little Trudy Lightstone (Leah Brady), one of the nicest girls on his "Nice List", and among the few who still believe.

There is a strangely heartwarming essence in the relationship between Santa and Trudy.  Santa's a drunken lout who's all but given up on kids, and basically sees his Christmas run as a responsibility, rather than something he genuinely wants to do.  But, little Trudy truly believes, and their communications with one another over walkie talkie strengthens Santa's spirit, and gives him the power to fight to protect her.  Harbour makes for a great disillusioned Santa Claus, and plays the role note perfect.  Even when he picks up a massive hammer (his weapon of choice), and starts bashing the skulls of the villains who are threatening Trudy and her family, he still displays the same mix of disenchantment and gross out humor. (In one of his early scenes, he vomits on someone from his sleigh.) If the movie had been focused entirely on these two, this could have really been something.

Unfortunately, just about everyone outside of those two never make much of an impression, and that's what holds Violent Night from being a twisted Christmas Classic.  Trudy's family, the Lightstones, are a powerful and spiteful family that own one of the biggest family businesses in the world.  The matriarch (Beverly D'Angelo) is foul-mouthed and hateful, and her daughter is a money-grubbing moron (Edi Patterson) hitched to an equally moronic wannabe action star boyfriend (Cam Gigandet) and her social media influencer son (Alexander Elliot).  Trudi's parents (Alex Hassell and Alexis Louder) are nice, but bland, and their marriage difficulties that are supposed to drive their plot never quite connect.  The whole family is quite frankly boring, and never as funny or as hateful as I wanted them to be.  It's like the movie is afraid to truly be mean with these characters, and let them be the bastards they're supposed to be.

Not even the villains here, who all have holiday-themed codenames and are led by the scheming "Mr. Scrooge" (John Leguizamo), make much of an impression, so it's never as satisfying when Santa finally decides to start laying waste to them in incredibly graphic ways. (This is a very Hard-R movie.) So, while I found myself admiring the spirit and the energy of the film, it was also constantly nagging at me that this should have been much better the whole time.  One aspect of the film that is inspired is when little Trudi starts laying some Home Alone-inspired traps for the bad guys, that have been amped up with an R-rating instead of cartoon-inspired slapstick.  She uses the same weapons as little Kevin McCallister did (bowling balls, needles, Christmas ornaments) but the end result on the bad guys is more John Carpenter than John Hughes. 

Violent Night doesn't work as a whole, but I'm also not sorry I saw it.  If everything was up to the same level as David Harbour as Santa, it'd be a no-brainer for a recommendation.  Unfortunately, the film's just never as much fun when he's not on the screen, and there are big parts where the uninteresting family or bad guys take over.  The film is fun in spots, but lacks focus.  But, I'm sure if I was in the same detention as Casey and Miller were when they were dreaming this up, I'd be laughing along with them.

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