In the spirit of the holiday season, “Violent Night” (2022, directed by Tommy Wirkola) provides a fun film that the whole family will enjoy, as long as the whole family doesn’t include the youngins and the particularly squeamish.
It’s Christmas Eve and a very cynical Santa (played by David Harbour, most well known as Sheriff Hopper in “Stranger Things”) is delivering presents to the very rich and vain Lightstone family. During the festivities a group of mercenaries, led by a man named “Scrooge” (John Leguizamo), begin to rob the place and hold the family hostage.
During the commotion, the reindeer are spooked and fly off, meaning it’s up to not-so-jolly Saint Nick to save the day through gratuitous violence.
The best way one could describe this film is “if a Hallmark Christmas movie was invaded by the terrorists from ‘Die Hard’, and Kris Kringle was John McClane.”
The film very much knows what it is: A very funny, violent, and oftentimes bloody action film starring Santa Claus.
The action is well done, with plenty of fluid fight scenes that are equally brutal and imaginative. There are a lot of very messy and clever kills performed throughout. Highlights include the use of a Christmas-tree star, a chimney, and “Home Alone” type antics as killing devices.
In some scenes, the audience might be tempted to look away with how brutal it is. But the violence wouldn’t work nearly as well if the gore wasn’t so visceral and well done.
When the movie isn’t entertaining the audience with gore and violence, it’s making them laugh with the very funny dialogue and characters.
Almost the entire cast gets a big laugh out of the audience.
Whether it’s Santa acting like Willie Soke from “Bad Santa” but if he was actually Santa, most of the Lightstone family being cut-throat to each other even when they have guns pointed at them, or the robbers sometimes being forced to act like family therapists to their hostages, there are laughs almost throughout the entire running time.
The film also hints at what looks like a pretty interesting backstory for Santa Claus, though the film wisely doesn’t get too bogged down in backstory that may kill the pacing.
While a very fun time, this soon-to-be holiday classic still has problems.
The first big problem that one might have (though this comes up to personal preference) is that the film is pretty unoriginal. It borrows a lot of plot points and characters from other films. Because of this, certain twists can be seen coming a mile away if one is familiar with other movies like this.
Another problem is the musical score (not the licensed music, which is used in clever and funny ways). More specifically, the music made for the movie blares over dramatic and sad scenes, telling the audience how to feel, instead of allowing the actors to do their jobs.
A smaller problem that happens early on, but eventually smooths out as the movie goes on, is that the family part and Santa part of the plot come off very disconnected and disjointed, not flowing naturally into one another. But as the plot points start to converge, this problem mostly goes away.
If one is looking for a good time in the theater this holiday season, “Violent Night” is a very funny and gruesome holiday movie that, while lacking in originality, uses what it has to its fullest.