Disc Reviews

Silent Night Review

• 12th Nov 2013

As inevitable as the festive season, so can also be guaranteed a festive Christmas slasher film – almost as inevitable as anything released on Halloween. Last year saw the re-release of a little known 1980 film called Christmas Evil. This year Santa Claus comes back as another predatory slasher bogeyman in Silent Night. If the title or the story may seem familiar, that’s because it is an almost direct glammed up remake of the 1984 cult classic Silent Night, Deadly Night which ended up being followed by several sequels. Benefitting from better camerawork and film processing rather than the washed out blurry images of the 1980s slashers, Silent Night is able to show off the splatter in finer detail. What this film lacks that its predecessor has is a decent enough back story until the final few minutes of the film; it’s always good to have this back story – not so much for any sympathy for the evil stalker so much as it gives at least some kind of character rather than just a shapeless killer. In Silent Night, Deadly Night it was the rape and murder of the killer’s mother one Christmas Eve by a man dressed as Santa Claus followed by years of torment in orphanage’s before the killer boy grows up not only hating Christmas but also trying to suppress his madness. No such background other than [here’s the spoiler alert] a cuckolded husband at a Christmas party who channels his rage through a flame thrower.

Throughout the film there are some particularly grisly murders including disembowelments as well as similar deaths to the original such as a disembowelment of one of a nubile victim on a pair of antlers. Some of the killings though including victims ripped open from crotch to stomach are ridiculously over the top with another scene of a semi naked victim chased through the snowy grotto of Christmas trees for sale only to inevitably end up in a wood chipper in one of the better moments in the film. One real let down is Malcolm MacDowell who seems to be hamming up his arrogant mid-western town sheriff role to the enth degree – a real let down.

Never the less, seeing its UK premiere on DVD this is a particularly tiring addition to a now truly well flogged sub-genre to the horror film in the guise of the slasher film; it’s about as tiring as zombie apocalypse horror films. But this film comes on the back of a few decades of festive slashers ranging from the aforementioned Christmas Evil, the four Silent Night, Deadly Night films, Santa Claws (1996), Don’t Open till Christmas (1984), The Christmas Season Massacre (2001), the Dutch horror Saint (2010), Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972) as well as Gremlins (1984) and the original and best of all being the underrated Black Christmas (1974) (which was also re-made in 2007). That’s without mentioning the New Year horror pics. What’s next? Christmas Party Slumber Massacre or I Know Who Came Down Your Chimney.

Chris Hick