1984 Christmas slasher film. Silent night, deadly night has a mystique that many marketers would kill for (at least figuratively). The film itself can hardly be called a real hit. Its real claim to fame is that it was only shown in cinemas for about a weekduring which it outplayed fellow slasher on opening weekend A Nightmare on Elm Street (in twice as many theaters, of course) before being pulled over due to a controversial marketing campaign that featured a guy in a Santa suit committing grisly murders.
Like many such controversies, this one was likely driven more by perception and publicity than by the film itself, which, barring any moral panic surrounding the corruption of innocent children, is itself pretty bad. It's not particularly scary, it's not particularly funny, and it's not all that fun outside of the transgressive accusation of watching something forbidden. So it makes sense that the 2025 remake would change almost everything about the original while still paying homage to its illicit history. But new Silent night, deadly night ultimately goes too far in the direction of moral redemption, although it improves on the original.
The 1984 film begins with a five-year-old boy witnessing the brutal murder of his parents at the hands of a criminal dressed as Santa Claus. Writer-director Mike P. Nelson retains a version of this backstory for the remake, but spreads it out over the course of the film. He fills in extra details, occasionally flashing back between scenes to the adult Billy Chapman (Rohan Campbell of Halloween ends) moves to a small town, where he gets a job as a stockkeeper in a knick-knack store. The audience is privy to the deep voice in Billy's head that helps him select murder victims to satisfy his primal hunger to kill. Early on, we see Billy don, yes, a Santa suit and brutally kill an elderly man as the voice dictates. We also see the aftermath of an earlier murder when Billy is first introduced.
At first, the voice seems like it must be an intrusive mental illness, and it does interrupt parts of Billy's daily life, especially when he tries to talk to his co-worker, the store owner's daughter Pam (Ruby Modine). But as the film progresses, it becomes clear that the voice in Billy's head—an invention for this remake—is more like film version of the Marvel anti-hero Venom. No matter how picky it may be, it is not necessarily irrational or crazy. A voice warns Billy of the presence of “naughty” people who must be killed to protect the “good” ones.
This becomes most apparent in a scene midway through the film, already common in the film's marketing, where Billy stalks his intended victim at a gathering that turns out to be a “white power” Christmas party attended by dozens of attendees in full Nazi regalia. Billy dutifully locks the door and goes into town, taking out dozens of Nazis as the film shifts entirely from portraying a troubled young man to a righteous Venom-style superhero. This is almost an extreme apology for the earlier version, which used Santa (or someone in his clothing, anyway) as a threat. Here, Billy's Santa cosplay allows him to stand up to an even greater evil (though there remains the disturbing possibility that killing Nazis in 2025 is meant to cause its own form of controversy).
Billy's righteousness, however reluctant he may be when he would rather share a tender moment with Pam, relates more directly to the idea of ​​Santa Claus than in the earlier film, which largely used the costume and the idea of ​​killing the “naughty” as a tongue-in-cheek joke. The most gimmicky details in the new film are funnier, like the big Nazi murder scene or the fact that Billy's annual spree only lasts 24 days of the advent calendar, forcing him to carry one with him. It's more like Book of the Deadand he reseals each cardboard flap with the victim's blood, Dexter-style (another semi-virtuous killer carrying a “dark passenger” in his brain). For all its horror violence, the film is still a less cynical, more Christmassy, ​​and overall less dark holiday slasher than its dubious source material. (If you're looking for a gruesome, quasi-psychological 1980s holiday slasher film, Christmas Evil much better than the original Silent night, deadly night.)
Ultimately, however, Billy's status as the Christmas Venom (or Dexter Claus, take your pick) undermines the true horror. The specific origin of the voice in Billy's head isn't entirely fictitious, and after a certain point it's easy enough to guess, but it's too spoiler-y to discuss in detail. It's not a spoiler, however, to note that even before explaining it, the film erased any creepy ambiguity about this device. There's no point in wondering if he's really worried. Campbell walked that line between sympathy and monstrosity beautifully in his book. Halloween endswhere he had an eerily vague, borderline supernatural relationship with Michael Myers. Here he is playing a similar character in a film made mainly to justify his character, and perhaps the entire Santa killer subgenretoo much.
There's nothing particularly wrong with this. Silent night, deadly night takes the material seriously without stifling devotion to its cheap aesthetic. He also defines himself largely in these terms – as a proofreader who views his killer with utmost sympathy rather than the exploitative cruelty that defines the original. Non-fans of this film like myself will probably have a good time. But anyone heading to see the new horror film from Cineverse, distributors of Christmas horror Horror 3Hoping for some controversy, you might find a film that's more enjoyable than naughty.
