★★ (2 out of 4)
“Silent Night, Deadly Night” is the spawn of the cult 1984 horror cheapie of the same name about a serial-killing Santa Claus. It’s since been carved up into four remakes, not including a 2012 reboot. When is enough enough? The quick answer is not bloody ever! And what with “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” making the box office season bright with its homicidal animatronics, franchise milking is clearly a game that never goes out of style.
That said, this return to the well is not as bad as it could be. Though still a far distance from tolerable, the new “SNDN” gets in a few gory punches before repetition and lazy screenwriting lay it low. For newbies, writer-director Mike P. Nelson pops in a prologue in which eight-year-old Billy Chapman watches a dude in a Santa suit murder his parents, just like Bruce Wayne did in “Batman.” Trauma sells!
Do Hollywood suits think we want nothing more from a Christmas movie than to feed on the dead carcass of an undeserving horror franchise? The scary part is they may be right.
Jump ahead two decades and Billy, now in Santa drag himself and played (reasonably well, actually) by Rohan Campbell of “Halloween Ends,” is serial-killing his merry way around the motel circuit, killing advent calendar style in the days before Christmas. That proverbial voice in his head picks the targets with the caveat to “kill the naughty or else the nice will die.” Sounds reasonable if you’re effing nuts.
Eventually Billy winds up in a small town right out of Frank Capra’s holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And it’s right here in Hackett, Wisconsin, that Billy finds true love and stops eviscerating people. I’m lying, of course. Who’d watch that movie? Billy still does his savage, slasher thing. But he does have hot sex with Pam (Ruby Modine), a local rageaholic who works at a right-out-of-Dickens Christmas shop run by her daddy. No wonder Billy signs on as a clerk.
It’ all very comfy cozy, for about five minutes. That’s when our ringmaster Nelson throws in every grisly cliché in the slasher handbook. Campbell even does his Michael Myers routine. Or is he doing Dexter or Ghostface or Hannibal Lecter or Ryan Murphy’s latest fave, Ed Gein? There’s even another maniac in town called “The Snatcher.” What are the odds.
Strangest of all is how much Nelson wants us to root for his killer. Every townie Billy dispatches is harboring Nazi tendencies or kinky, violent secrets that put them in the deserves-to-die column. Though much blood splatters, none of it is actually scary in the ways that will sneak into our baddest dreams and stay there.
What’s left in “Silent Night, Deadly Night” is pure desperation. Do Hollywood suits really think we want nothing more from a Christmas movie than to feed on the dead carcass of an undeserving horror franchise? The scary part is they may be right.