What… the ever-loving… candy-coated… holly-jolly fuck… happened here?
To get this out of the way up front, I tried sitting through the original Silent Night, Deadly Night. I couldn’t do it. I made it through I Spit On Your Grave, yet even that movie (and I use the term indiscreetly) wasn’t so aggressively trashy, worthless, useless, exploitative, and outright miserable to sit through as the first twenty minutes of the original Silent Night, Deadly Night.
I thought I could comfortably go through the rest of my life ignoring the trash franchise that somehow inexplicably spawned from this trash movie. Yet here we are, in December of 20-goddamn-25, with a remake of the original film. And my response was a kind of morbid and bewildered curiosity. How could this possibly have happened?
Well, the film comes to us from Cineverse, the studio that brought us Terrifier 3 and the Toxic Avenger remake earlier this year. That answers a few questions right off the bat. I might further add that the film was written/directed by Mike P. Nelson (not that one, God I wish), an alumnus of the Wrong Turn and V/H/S franchises. Again, that explains so much.
Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025) starts in much the same place as the original did: With young Billy Campbell (here played as a kid by Logan Sawyer and an adult by Rohan Campbell) suffering the worst Christmas ever. His grandpa dies a slow and painful death, moments before his parents get murdered by a psycho in a Santa Claus outfit. And all these deaths happen right in front of poor young Billy on Christmas Eve. But at least there’s no gratuitous rape this time, so that’s an immediate point for the remake.
Cut to about twenty years later, and Billy is now a full-fledged serial killer. Every day in December leading up to Christmas Eve, Billy puts on a Santa costume and brutally kills someone. Even better, he’s following the instructions of “Charlie” (Mark Acheson), a mysterious voice in Billy’s head.
The plot kicks off when Billy hitchhikes his way to the sleepy town of Hackett and gets into a meet-cute with Pam (Ruby Modine). Billy bullshits his way into a job at the antique store run by Pam and her father (the store named for Pam’s late mother, no less), so he can keep on working his way into Pam’s good graces. At the same time, he has to keep on killing people on the down-low.
To be sure, this film was made and marketed as a braindead slasher flick. We get no shortage of gore effects and one-dimensional assholes in need of killing. The highlight comes at the midway point, when Billy singlehandedly massacres an entire Christmas party of Nazis.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Show me a bunch of Nazis getting slaughtered and I’m a happy moviegoer. That said, when I’m watching one blood-soaked guy in a Santa costume fighting to the death with 50 other blood-soaked guys in Santa costumes, that confusion takes away from the enjoyment. I might further add that if our protagonist can singlehandedly slaughter an entire room full of Nazis and come out alive, it takes away from any reasonable pretense that our protagonist can be seriously hurt.
What’s potentially worse, the action in the climax doesn’t live up to its own expectations, much less that set piece in the middle. I’m specifically referring to the Snatcher, a kidnapper thought to be somewhere in town; and Max (David Tomlinson), Pam’s asshole ex-boyfriend. Both of these characters are heavily established as the big bads of the movie. But when our leads finally confront them in the climax, the showdown is sadly underwhelming. The filmmakers were presumably leaning on suspense and character drama to make up for the lack of budget. Yes, that was absolutely the right call to make, but it’s not enough.
Speaking of the character drama, that’s actually where this movie excels. I know, I was surprised too.
First of all, as a matter of principle, Billy never uses a gun. It’s somehow kind of endearing when a homicidal maniac has a line they won’t cross. Secondly, it bears remembering that Billy never asked to be a serial killer. He didn’t ask for the voice in his head, and he didn’t ask to be an eight-year-old witness to his entire family getting brutally slain. And now that he’s finally got a taste of a stable, happy, better life, he genuinely wants to change and be worthy of it. And anyone who makes a sincere and well-intentioned effort at reforming can’t be all bad.
Which brings us to Pam. Here we have a young woman whose mother died young, and it left her with a massive chip on her shoulder. It’s quite surprising how much she and Billy have in common. Really, the only difference is that Pam has somehow found a way to live and work with her psychosis, so she can more or less reasonably function in society. They’re both lonely, violent, traumatized people, both in desperate need of a kindred spirit to give company and assure them that they’re not beyond saving. That’s poignant. It’s interesting. It works.
Hell, even Charlie turns out to be more layered than first impressions would suggest. As the plot unfolds, we see that this is something more than mere homicidal schizophrenia. Whomever or whatever this voice is, he sincerely wants what’s best for Billy, and he’s capable of surprising warmth. And while Charlie is definitely a bloodthirsty killer without social graces, he’s demonstrably capable of treating Billy and others in the fullest spirit of Christmas.
There’s one particular scene in which Charlie shows Billy how to be Santa. Not a killer in a Santa costume, but Santa Claus. In that one scene, Charlie helps Billy overcome a lifetime of pain and trauma and bloodshed — most of which, Charlie himself was directly responsible for in some way — so that Billy can learn how to be a mythic friend and role model and provider to children. It’s a marvelous scene.
Which brings us to the big reveal. As you may have guessed, there’s more to Charlie and Billy and their years-long murder spree than first impressions suggest. And the more we learn about what’s really going on, the more problems we run into. This will be rough to discuss without getting into spoilers, but I’ll do the best I can.
Simply put, what we’ve got here is a morality twist that positions Billy as a vigilante anti-hero. That’s certainly an unexpected spin on the original film, and the slasher genre in general. Moreover, the greater conceit of the film plays directly into the “naughty or nice” concept, exploring the complicated shades of grey in between.
On the other hand, that kind of moral ambiguity doesn’t always play well with the kind of straightforward two-dimensional bloodthirsty fun this genre was built on. More importantly, this reveal has a supernatural element that noticeably clashes with the otherwise grounded tone of the remake and the original film. I might add that precisely because the homicidal mania has a supernatural cause with no defined origin, it’s presented as infallible and unimpeachable. This in turn flies in the face of the basic notion that people can change and morality isn’t always binary.
Hell, the central underlying justification for the existence of this remake was the notion that Billy and Pam could grow. They could change. Right up until the movie throws that potential away altogether. In an entertaining manner, sure, but mishandling the heart and soul of the film in such a way is a huge drawback nonetheless.
Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025) is a near miss, which is a great deal better than I had expected. The filmmakers had some genuinely good ideas for how to update the source material for a modern audience, and I honestly respect the attempt at a redemption story in the Christmas spirit. Unfortunately, the movie tries to deliver nuance and heart while also delivering straightforward kills, and the filmmakers can’t quite find a way to balance that out.
This is hardly must-see cinema, and I can’t speak for the franchise faithful. (Though of course I noticed the “garbage day” shoutout, that was cute.) Even if you’re in the mood for darker and more violent holiday fare, I’d recommend Anna and the Apocalypse or Violent Night over this. Even so, while I know it sounds like faint praise to say that this is a more thoughtful and enjoyable improvement over the original, it’s nonetheless true and worth recognizing.
Any horror fans curious enough to check this out on home video will likely get a good time out of it.