A lot of you told me Violent Night was a must-watch Christmas film. Historically, listening to your recommendations has not gone well for me (see previous reviews here), so I ignored you for as long as possible. Turns out this was an error on my part, because this was exactly what I needed after two weeks of beige pap.
Violent Night is what happens when someone looks at the entire Christmas film genre, sighs deeply, pours a whisky, and says: what if Santa Claus had absolutely fucking had it?
As the name suggests, this is not a gentle Christmas film.
This is not a film about baking, bonding, community spirit saving a failing business, or a high-powered business woman from The City falling in love with a man in a plaid shirt in a small-town diner. This is a Christmas movie where Santa impales a man on a plastic icicle within the first 20 minutes and things only escalate from there.
David Harbour – who we now all know as Lily Allen’s naughty ex-husband – plays Father Christmas as a jaded, burnt-out, world-weary immortal who has been delivering presents for centuries and is now deeply resentful about it. He drinks heavily, dislikes children and people in general, and vomits off his sleigh like a man whose job satisfaction survey has gone unanswered for several hundred years. It is possibly the most believable portrayal of seasonal burnout ever committed to screen.
We meet Santa drinking alone in a bar.
This Santa is not jolly. He is not full of joy or festive spirit. He is full of whisky, regret, and the creeping sense that humanity does not deserve nice things.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in America’s most aggressively wealthy postcode, a rich family are arriving at a huge, fuck-off mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. Jason and Linda are separated, tense, and attempting Christmas civility for the sake of their daughter Gertrude (Trudy), who is precocious in that unsettling way movie children always are. Trudy has predictably asked Santa for one thing only: that her parents get back together.
Grandma – whose massive house they’re visiting – is hosting a lavish Christmas gathering for her children and two grandchildren, Gertude and Bertrude (who is a little older and annoying AF). The family get together is immediately overrun by a group of mercenaries posing as caterers and security. They have festive code names, guns, and absolutely no chill. Everyone they encounter gets murdered with alarming enthusiasm, including the friendly security guard, which is how you know the film means business.
Santa accidentally ends up trapped inside the house after his magic stops working. His reindeer have fucked off taking his sleigh with them. He sits in a massage chair drinking whisky like a man waiting for the sweet release of death, only to be discovered by one of the baddies. This is a mistake. A very festive, very fatal mistake.
What follows is essentially a Christmas-themed Royal Rumble (where nobody gets back up).
Trudy communicates with Santa via walkie-talkie because she was told it would work and – due to Santa stealing one the dead baddies’ walkie talkies and somehow tuning into the right channel – it does! She begs him to save them all, and how can he refuse a child’s wish at Christmas?!
She hides in the attic, setting up top-quality, Home-Alone-but-make-it-lethal syle booby traps with no apparent resources or time, displaying a level of competence that suggests she will one day run a multinational corporation.
Meanwhile, Santa fights. Santa stabs. Santa impales.
They’re all on the naughty list, so it’s fine, and Santa enjoys it more than he probably should. There is a sledgehammer, which becomes his weapon of choice. There is a line about Santa eating through bad guys like a plate of cookies, which tells you everything you need to know about the tone.
This Santa is not just violent, he is historically violent. We learn through Viking flashbacks that Father Christmas was once a greedy, brutal thug who pillaged villages and smashed skulls long before he discovered reindeer-based logistics. This backstory is completely unnecessary and tells us nothing useful about how he came to be Santa, unless I missed that part.
The villains want money.
Three hundred million dollars, to be presise, which they think is in a safe and is not. There are nutcrackers used for finger torture. There is a credible threat involving balls and nobody wants to see how that plays out. Mr Scrooge, the king baddie, shoots up a Christmas tree because he hates joy and frankly deserves everything that happens to him.
Santa gets captured. His sack gets burned (not a euphemism). He escapes up a chimney, because that’s how Santa rolls, and proceeds to kill everyone to cheerful Christmas music. It is comedy violence; as a squeamish person I had overlooked this film but it really isn’t too bad. There are a few gratuitous close ups of bloody demises, but it’s generally filmed in such a way that it’s over quickly and a lot more of it is alluded to than seen.
Eventually, Mr Scrooge realises that Santa is the real Santa Claus, and he wants him dead.
He really is not a fan of Christmas.
After a drawn-our fight, Santa uses his Christmas magic to take Mr Scrooge up a chimney and he – unable to use festive magic to make it through the small opening – gets turned into a bloody hunk of meat for his sins. Santa gets shot. A lot. The shooter immediately gets his brains blown out by grandma, because Violent Night has absolutely no time for unfinished business.
In a final act of inspired lunacy, the family burn millions of dollars – which Jason had stolen from his mother and hidden in a nativity scene – to keep Santa warm. This does not work. Santa dies. Oh well.
Then they all believe, hard..
Grandma, Jason and Linda, Jason’s sister (not her partner because he got shot by the baddies, and didn’t seem worth mentioning tbh), Bertude and Trudy all believe, and they all wish, and Santa comes back to life because of Christmas magic. The reindeers arrive with the sleigh. There is a spare sack, which is lucky. Jason and Linda kiss while Trudy watches, her Christmas wish fulfilled amidst blood, corpses, and utter devastation.
Is Violent Night stupid? Yes, very.
Is it excessive? Completely.
Is it secretly quite heartfelt under all the carnage? Absolutely.
This is not a Hallmark movie.
Thank fuck for that. Nobody bakes. Nobody learns to communicate. Problems are solved with blunt instruments and belief. Santa finds his purpose again through violence and a small child who made him homemade cookies.
But after 12 days of varying degrees of pap, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Rating: 9/10. Not one for the kids, but definitely enjoyable. It’s on 4 on demand, so skip the Netflix shite and have a watch.
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