Have you ever torn open the wrapping on a promising Christmas reward, solely to search out when you’ve taken it out and assembled its items that it’s not likely what you’d hoped for in any respect? That it’s shoddily made, or not fairly what it claimed to be, or just much less enjoyable than you’d anticipated?
Tommy Wirkola’s Violent Night is, blessedly, not that reward. It’s one which delivers precisely what it guarantees on the field. It doesn’t essentially ship a lot extra than it guarantees on the field, however then it doesn’t have to. For these to whom the thought of a home-invasion comedy-thriller starring David Harbour as a sledgehammer-wielding Kris Kringle holds self-evident enchantment, this one appears destined to turn into an alt-holiday basic.
Violent Night
The Bottom Line
A blood-soaked vacation charmer.
Release date: Friday, Dec. 2
Cast: David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Leah Brady, Beverly D’Angelo, Edi Patterson, Cam Gigandet
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Cast: Pat Casey, Josh Miller
Rated R,
1 hour 41 minutes
Pat Casey and Josh Miller’s script proclaims its gleefully tasteless model of humor straight away. The first time we meet this model of Santa, he’s slumped over a bar in Bristol, blearily complaining about his job and decrying how materialistic youngsters have turn into nowadays. Still, as soon as he lastly will get off the barstool and up onto the roof, the sight of him hovering away together with his reindeer makes for a magical second for the bartender who occurs to witness the entire thing … till he barfs over the slide of his sleigh, and throughout her face. This is the type of Christmas story we’re in for, and that is Violent Night letting you understand you’ll be able to take it or go away it.
From there, Santa goes about his rounds with one thing lower than the naked minimal effort, stewing with resentment at the same time as he stuffs his face with the cookies left for him by all of the world’s good youngsters. But the night time takes an sudden flip together with his cease by the Lightstone compound, house to a ruthless businesswoman (Beverly D’Angelo) whose grownup youngsters are liable to Succession-esque squabbles for her favor. (Or maybe that must be The Righteous Gemstones-esque, given the daughter is a Judy Gemstone kind performed by Judy Gemstone herself, Edi Patterson; Alex Hassell performs the son.)
The actual menace this Christmas Eve, nonetheless, is one coming from outdoors the clan: A gaggle of armed mercenaries has taken hostage the entire household, which incorporates an eye-wateringly obnoxious influencer (Alexander Elliott) already battling sexual harassment lawsuits on the ripe previous age of 13 — but in addition Trudy (Leah Brady), a kindly and intelligent 7-year-old who’s earned a spot on Santa’s “nice” listing.
And so Santa, unable to show away from Trudy’s whispered pleas for assist, finds himself battling his approach solo by a constructing crawling with baddies. Meanwhile, Trudy, who’s managed to sneak away to the attic, units about improvising traps to guard herself. In different phrases, Violent Night turns into a riff on each Die Hard and Home Alone, however taken to their hard-R logical extremes beneath Wirkola’s over-the-top gory course. Santa doesn’t dispatch his enemies swiftly or cleanly however smashes their faces with ornaments and chops off their heads with ice skates, in brutal fistfights choreographed by Jonathan “Jojo” Eusebio (John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum); Trudy takes Kevin McAllister’s already painful-looking booby traps and turns them into full-on blood-soaked affairs.
Violent Night does present extra restraint on the narrative entrance, clocking in at a comparatively trim 101 minutes. There’s a motive this Santa appears so battle-ready, and a motive the lead villain (“Mr. Scrooge,” performed by John Leguizamo) appears to have it out for the vacation. But the film is aware of we’re not likely right here to get slowed down within the weeds of Scrooge’s psychology or new Santa lore, and so it presents simply sufficient element so as to add some shading to those characters as they attempt to beat one another to a pulp. Nor does it hassle explaining the magic that makes Santa who he’s; as Santa himself wearily explains to 1 befuddled human grownup after one other, he doesn’t actually know the way his Christmas magic works both, solely that it does.
Yet so highly effective is that this mysterious Yuletide spirit that its spell in the end reaches Violent Night itself. Santa could also be a bitterly self-loathing man who by no means appears extra alive than when he’s stabbing a dude’s eye with a sweet cane, however Harbour additionally brings a touching sincerity to his interactions with Trudy. And in between the graphic violence and twisted jokes, the movie truly manages to serve up all of the hallmarks of a basic Christmas film: the reminder that the day is about greater than materials items, the redemptive energy of a kid’s perception in Santa, the significance of household togetherness in a grasping and egocentric world.
The distinction is that in this film, when a bit of lady’s face lights as much as see certainly one of Santa’s signature accoutrements, its not his sack of toys or his reindeer she’s delighted by, however a sledgehammer he’s affectionately named Skullcrusher. And that the road “Santa Claus is coming to town” is uttered not as a cry of celebration, however in a growl as a hilarious menace.
To name Violent Night heartwarming may be a bridge too far. This is, in spite of everything, nonetheless a movie that appears to have been principally constructed across the query of “How many Christmas-themed props can we turn into weapons?” (The reply: most of them, apparently! Try very laborious not to consider that the subsequent time some eggnog-drunk relative is making an attempt your final nerve over the past slice of glazed ham.) But for individuals who choose their gingerbread soaked in booze and their tinsel splattered with gore, Violent Night may be precisely what the season requires.
