Violent Night. The Fresh Dose of crazy Cinema You Need This Holiday Season.

Blessed Chikosha December 6, 2022

If Christmas movies and Deadpool had a baby..

Violent night is a breath of fresh air to the movie-going and movie-watching experience. It is a perfect blend of gore and a heart-warming storyline; a call back to the classics such as “Die Hard” and “Home Alone” only gorier and sweeter at the same time. David Harbour (Stranger Things) tastefully portrays the dark side of Ole Santa Claus to bring what could become one of the best Christmas movies of all time.

It’s Christmas eve and Santa is drearily dragged by his reindeer across the world to deliver Christmas gifts to the “good” kids who believe less and less in Christmas but still continue to make countless requests for video games. After 1100 years of being the Christmas delivery man there is no doubt that Santa has grown weary of the thankless job so, he drowns his sorrows in alcohol and cookies (Yes, alcohol and cookies).

Santa going on with his rounds finds himself on the Lightstone homestead, a rich and dysfunctional family that had just held what resembled a Christmas eve gathering. He goes on, as usual, to plunder the family bar for a drink to go with the cookies that had been left for him by the family. He finds a comfy massage chair and falls asleep in it. He is woken up by loud gunfire in the homestead. The gunshots are coming from “Scrooge” (John Leguizamo) and his gang infiltrating the house for a big payday that happens to be sitting in the Lightstone basement vault. Dear old Saint Nick tries in vain to escape the situation ending up maiming the assailants trying to get away from this homestead and when he finally gets an out, he sees young Trudy Lightstone (Leah Brady) and channels his past life as a Norse berserker to save this young child and her dysfunctional family.

What follows is a comedic, heart-warming gory story of Santa picking bad guys one by one with Christmas tree ornaments, repurposed candy canes and hammers to give a well-made mixture of Die Hard, Home Alone and Thor. The movie has all the tropes of an R rated action movie including the all too familiar self-surgery as well as enough emotional depth to connect the characters together for one enjoyable story. All this is done on a very simple and straightforward plot that does not require much to be understood. Beverly D’Angelo, portraying the foul-mouthed matriarch and David Harbour, the bad Santa were the stars of this movie, remarkably portraying their respective characters.

Needless to say, this movie is not for everyone, hence the R rating but the attention to detail, the comedy and the heartfelt story make this movie a fun experience, possibly a staple for the next few Christmases and definitely worth a trip to the cinema this December.

The movie only leaves us with one question. Why does Santa always have to fly past the moon at the end?