I had heard there was a remake of cult classic eighties Christmas horror; Silent Night, Deadly Night, but I can't say I had been in any rush to check it out. I did enjoy the original, even if it was a bit of a strange movie, and the anti-hero protagonist was a bit of an oddball. It turns out that rather than a straight remake, this new Mike P. Nelson (Wrong Turn) directed and co-written version of Silent Night, Deadly Night is a reimagining. Would this be garbage, or is garbage day to be found elsewhere?
As a young child, Billy witnessed his parents be viciously murdered by a maniac wearing a Santa outfit (Mark Acheson - 1922), who ends up killed in the process. Now grown up, the young man (Rohan Campbell - Halloween Ends) has some troubling quirks. Whenever Billy wears a Santa outfit he gets an intense urge to kill, and he also has a voice in his head (also Acheson) that constantly tells him to punish bad people. This is no twisted trauma born of his experience as a child, instead it is something more supernatural. The voice is able to accurately identify evil people just by Billy looking at them. Each Christmas period, Billy is compelled to kill one person every day over advent, with the voice stating this will prevent innocents being killed in their place. Always on the move, Billy arrives in a new town where he gets a job at a toy store. It is here he falls for his colleague, and daughter of the store owner; Pamela (Ruby Modine - Happy Death Day 2U, Happy Death Day). His feelings for the girl have him pondering if maybe he could somehow give up his bloody life crusade, but may be powerless for that to happen.
I have to admit, even after hearing this reimagining was a pretty good horror I was still sceptical. The changes made here were really all for the better, at least at making the anti-hero protagonist less weird, and with motivations slightly more understandable. There was scope for the voice in Billy's head to be misleading the boy, tricking him into killing innocents, but time and time again that is shown not to be the case. Delphine (Sharon Bajer - Orphan: First Kill) is a case in point. It seems she is just a typical 'Karen' rather than anything more sinister, then later revealed she is the cartoonishly evil leader of a group of Nazis! That part made for a fun mid-film massacre sequence that was over the top and deliriously entertaining. Some touches to the style of the movie channelled Quinten Tarantino, with title cards introducing each new target of Billy's, leading to a small montage of red tinted images of the villain in close up. I liked how relatively normal Billy was. I may have detested Halloween Ends, and the character Campbell played in it, but it wasn't his fault that film was so badly written, here, he fits an almost identical role much better. Modine was also great as Pamela, a character with a violent streak towards injustice that had her as almost a counterpart to Billy, she had a great scene at an ice rink.
By having the victims of Billy be genuinely bad people, and with the voice in his head so sincere and fatherly, he became an anti-hero I was rooting for. This diverges from the original, introducing a subplot about missing children that later becomes more important.
There are many many kills and all featured lovely looking practical effects. You get decapitations, severed limbs, axes embedded in heads, and even a disembowelment. Many of the iconic kills from the original are replicated here, albeit in different context, and mostly in the form of a montage sequence showing Billy's past kills. I did love the practical effects, even if occasionally the victim being attacked did have the look of a dummy to them.
I was very pleased with Silent Night, Deadly Night, and wasn't prepared for how much I was into this by the time the end credits roll. It isn't a film that takes itself too seriously, or abides by real life rules too much (how on Earth was Billy getting away with all these ill-prepared murders over the years without being caught?). Still, by the end, I was almost leaping off my chair in excitement at what was going on, even if it were hardly surprising. In this reimagining there is no younger brother, there is no mindless rampage, and the inclusion of the supernatural made this feel like a different film. Sure, you might need to switch your brain off somewhat, but this was a surprisingly entertaining Christmas slasher. Silent Night, Deadly Night is currently streaming on Netflix.
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