The holiday slasher movie, Silent Night, wants nothing more than to be a throwback to classic 80's slasher fare, but with a kind of winking, self-referential charm and glibness intended to let the viewer know that they're in on the joke with you (in this case the joke is, unfortunately, on you). Yeah, it's over-the-top in the bloodshed department (we get a topless girl forced kicking and screaming into a wood chipper) and there's the prerequisite boobage (see above), but the movie severely lacks that intangible fun factor that made so many 80's slashers classic and is, more-so, a fairly witless and charm-free zone that makes it's scant 94 minute run time feel much, much longer.
The synopsis on the back of the DVD would lead one to believe that Silent Night was a sequel, or at least in some way related to the original Silent Night, Deadly Night released in 1984, a film that was quickly pulled from theaters midst a storm of controversy. The only thing Silent Night (2012) shares with the original film is its plot. A Santa-clad psycho is out to wreak havoc on a small town (this is compounded by the fact that seemingly every male in the town dresses as Santa on Christmas Eve) and punish all those he judges to be "naughty". This milieu of degenerates includes adulterers, pornographers, coke dealers, a crooked priest and even a bitchy 14 year old girl. Oh, my! The movie also shares the most memorable kill from the original SNDN. I in no way want to herald the original 1984 film to a status its not due. It's not a great movie. Not even close. But the 1984 film had that intangible quality that a lot of early 80's slashers seemed to have in abundance. Exactly what that was isn't easy to explain. I'm talking about a kind of odd purity and a complete lack of cynicism that made you take the movies seriously, regardless of how corny and/or dumb they were. They were unabashedly bloody, and so what if they objectified women and seemed to revel in the fact that they made the fairer sex such entertaining victims for their predominately male audience to view butchered. Silent Night (2012) wants to capture that kind of senseless brutality and filter it through a tongue-in-cheek hue that falls incredibly flat. Everything about the movie is...well, flat. Lifeless. It's the slasher movie equivalent of watching paint dry.
It's a shame good actors the likes of Malcolm McDowell, Donal Logue and (more often than not) Jaime King are associated. Their performances are embarrassing, but you can't blame them for phoning it in. They really have very little to work with here. Even for a slasher movie the plot is toilet paper thin (think single ply). The characters make cardboard look like tempered steel. There are no surprises. There is no tension. Not a shock was stirring, not even the most disposable boo scare in sight. The climactic axe battle at the end sums up the entire movie: clumsy and boring. Are you still with me here? In other words I'm saying the movie is dull, painfully and remarkably and unequivocally dull. This is a serious lump of coal in horror fans collective Christmas stockings. Avoid.
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