Silent Night

Slasher Trash with Panache?

Review: JA Kerswell

Starting as a remake of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984), this Santa slasher goes its own route—with decidedly middling results. Entirely watchable and sporadically rousing, SILENT NIGHT’s uneven tone and refusal to really push the envelope means that—unlike the original—it never really makes the most of its potential to ruin Christmas in the best way possible.
 
The town of Cryer, Wisconsin, is famous for its festive parade, but this Christmas Eve, a series of murders overshadows the celebrations. Deputy Sheriff Aubrey (Jaime King) is called into work after her colleague Jordan (Brandan Fehr) fails to report for duty. She is still reeling from the death of her husband the previous Christmas, but her boss, Sheriff Cooper (Malcolm McDowell), tells her there is no one else to cover. When Aubrey is sent to investigate reports of a smell coming from a house, she discovers the bodies of Jordan and the woman he has been having an affair with.
 
Although she presumes it is an isolated case, someone dressed as Santa Claus and wearing a translucent mask has a naughty list and is killing townsfolk who he decides have been misbehaving that year. As the bodies start to pile up, Aubrey and Cooper realise that they are hunting a serial killer dressed as Santa after they recover a video camera from a murder scene. However, given that it is Christmas Eve and half of Cryer is dressed as Old St Nick, how will they find the culprit before he makes mincemeat out of more victims … 

SILENT NIGHT should be a doozy. It has a Santa with a flamethrower and even a scene where a topless model is fed into a woodchipper. It has all the elements of a great bah-humbug, black comedy Yuletide slasher. And it does have its moments. However, the film’s biggest problem is its tone. Occasionally, it reaches for John Waters’esque level of dark humour—such as the little girl being tasered by the Killer Santa because she is an ungrateful little brat who tells her mother, “Fuck church!” The trouble is, it never really sticks the lane. The film would have benefitted from either upping the misanthropic festive comedy or muting it almost entirely.
 
Jaime King is typically great in the role of the mourning deputy but appears to be acting in an entirely different film than most of the rest of the cast. Her character is conflicted, serious and a little maudlin. This is in sharp contrast to Malcolm McDowell’s thoroughly unconvincing turn as the wisecracking, ass-whipping sheriff—with the actor occasionally looking shocked with himself as he mouths his dialogue (although he was presumably a glutton for punishment after previously going two rounds with the WWE Michael Myers in the two Rob Zombie HALLOWEENs). Worse, although the film sets itself up as a masked whodunnit—and I won’t spoil the killer’s identity—the reveal feels a lot like a cheat. They might as well have revealed Betsy Palmer's Mrs Voorhees under the mask! On the plus side, SILENT NIGHT looks excellent, with crisp, blue-hued cinematography nicely evoking the season. It also has a good level of grue—with more than a splattering of the red stuff staining the snow. And, any film that features Jaime King and the killer Santa duelling with axes in a burning police station can’t be all bad. I just wish it was … more.
 
Jay Stone in the Ottawa Citizen gave SILENT NIGHT a poor review, calling it a: “A sort of tongue-in-cheek homage to bad slasher films.” And said it: “ … tries to have it both ways: a pointless horror movie with no chills that wants to delight us with the way it skewers the tropes and pushes the disgusting factor.” However, The Los Angeles Times opined: “Director Steven C. Miller, working off Jayson Rothwell’s pedestrian script, keeps the action apace, gleefully letting the blood spurt and limbs fly. Happy holidays.”
 
Director Steven C. Miller was a self-avowed fan of the original—and watched it every year with his brothers growing up. He was such a fan that he actively pursued doing a remake once he started working in the industry when he got to LA. Coincidentally, The Weinstein Company were developing a remake of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT as far back as 2009—undoubtedly inspired by their success with the SCREAM series and the remake bandwagon that had scored big office with the 3D update of MY BLOODY VALENTINE (2009) (which also starred Jaime King). Producer Richard Saperstein left the Weinsteins and took the project with him. Miller came aboard and reworked the script (which was allegedly inspired by the notorious real-life Corvina massacre from 2008) to include references to the original and its 1987 sequel. 
 
The film was shot in just 17 days in Manitoba, Canada, in May 2012 on a budget of around $5 million. Despite being on a limited release in time for Christmas 2012, it belly-flopped hard at the box office—which essentially nixed Miller’s plans for his mooted Part 2.
 
Perhaps SILENT NIGHT would have benefited from being a straight remake—or, more likely, jettisoning the connection entirely. However, if you keep your expectations in check, there is still some fun to be had, and no film with a psycho Santa with a flamethrower is ever truly off the Christmas card list.  

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