Director: Mike P. Nelson
Stars: Ruby Modine, Rohan Campbell, David Lawrence Brown
Lets take a moment to talk about Wrong Turn. Directed by Rob Schmidt, the 2003 Appalachian backwoods slasher worked just fine. Eliza Dushku made for a great final girl and the series proved as surprisingly unkillable as its cannibalistic inbred killers. Five (mostly atrocious) direct-to-DVD sequels made the series notorious in mostly negative ways, so much so that Mike P. Nelson’s smart hard reboot of 2021 barely made noise.
Now Nelson takes aim at another series of (largely undeserved) ill-repute. Putting the quality of its sequels and pre-existing remake aside, Charles E. Sellier Jr.’s 1984 yuletide slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night is one of the finest last-gasps of the genre’s golden age, and particularly of those with the killer as the focal character. Initially it seems as though Nelson isn’t taking quite as many liberties with the source. We’re introduced to young Billy (Logan Sawyer) aged 8, who is psychologically scarred for life one Christmas when his parents are inexplicably shotgunned in the family car by a raging Santa Claus.
However, it doesn’t take long for things to splinter off down creative new avenues. This isn’t the tale of a troubled soul being pressured off the rails. We reconvene with adult Billy (Rohan Campbell) some 20ish years later to find him well-settled into a serial killer’s groove. He’s effectively a drifter who takes December out to commit a spree of daily murders catalogued in the world’s grimiest advent calendar. What’s more, he’s ‘accompanied’ by a guiding voice in his head, Charlie (Mark Acheson), that seems to have a preternatural smell for ‘naughty’ Americans who deserve Billy’s punishment. Suddenly we’re in a cold fever collision of Venom and Dexter… and it works.
Casting Campbell is a savvy choice from Nelson, given his horror credentials. It turns his Silent Night, Deadly Night into a kind of perverse meta-sequel to David Gordon Green’s schizophrenic Halloween Ends. What if that film’s vilified central figure Corey had graduated to a fully-fledged iconic killer? Billy is not Corey, however, and Nelson’s film is less about picking at how damage redirects a person’s life (though it also sort of is about that). The concerns here are varied, and the tone far more irreverent. Once a victim is chosen we receive a blood-spattered intertitle for their mini-chapter in the narrative, hewing closer (but not too close, thankfully) to a Tarantino-esque playfulness. They are invitations to the audience to come over and enjoy the dark side for a while. Be with Billy (and Charlie).
The other major overhaul – and improvement – to the material is the complication of a potential love interest in dark-humoured small town shop girl Pamela (an excellent Ruby Modine). Billy’s life-long lonerism sees immediate romanticism in Pam’s cosy life tethered to the family business, while she senses some depth and mystique in the drifting seasonal hire who has come into her life. It helps that Campbell and Modine have wicked-good screen chemistry, which allows Nelson to play craftily with genre boundaries. What are we watching here? A grungy slasher or a seasonal romcom? Can’t Silent Night, Deadly Night do both?
And then there are the big (axe) swings. Making Billy’s victims society’s unpunished and irredeemables gives Nelson the opportunity to project dark fantasies of retribution for ills plaguing America (and much of the west). From corrupt cops to hoards of Nazis hidden in plain sight, Silent Night, Deadly Night becomes a splatterful fantasy of a present with, y’know, actual consequences for evil deeds. As we are inundated daily with news stories of the privileged and fascist elements of society getting away with blithe atrocities, there’s something liberating in Nelson’s messy fantasy of murderous reciprocity. It’s hard not to find yourself on Billy/Charlie’s side, which is exactly where Nelson wants you.
Inexplicably, there’s real Christmas magic in the air. Splitting out who’s naughty and nice with the quick flick of a retractable blade or swing of an axe, you could make a warped case that Santa is real this yuletide season, and his gift to the deserving is… mercy.
This is all, importantly, sackfuls of fun. Horror movies take all sorts of forms dictated by mood, from dread-fuelled dark nights of the soul to tone poems of painterly elegance. It’s a spectrum like any genre. Precious, though, are the sleeper hits that become sleepover standards or party favourites. In recent years the likes of Happy Death Day (also starring Modine) or You’re Next are notable highs. Nelson’s Silent Night, Deadly Night has the potential to join them. The shooting is a little dark and grimy (befitting the movie’s ’80s grandfather), the action a little roughshod and chaotic (a choice, reflective of Billy’s often instinctive attacking style). But the tempo is absolute fire. There’s never a dull moment here, and Nelson nails a darkly comic streak that never overspills into either the outright silly or outright mean. He never makes Santa’s shitlist.
It’s a crowded playing field this December at the movies, with big hitters from last month still taking up cinema real estate and a big (blue) monster looming in the darkness (and plenty other small releases besides). The likelihood of Silent Night, Deadly Night finding its desired audience at the box office seems disappointingly slim. But it’ll be a shame if this isn’t widely and warmly received, as it’s one of the (very) rare occasions where a movie absolutely gears itself up for a sequel worth making.
Being a fan of the original (and a couple of its bastard children), I had unreasonable expectations for this one. I wanted it to work. Not only does it work, but it delivers plentiful surprises that made me cackle with delight. Billy & Pam 4ever. Horror hounds have a real festive treat this year. What have we done to deserve this?
The Lost Highway Hotel 