Like a cyanide-laced sugarplum, Violent Night is a jolly and vicious burst of holiday mayhem. Bloody and crass, yet brimming with Christmas spirit, it’s a 110-minute joke that largely works because of how firmly everyone involved commits to the bit.
David Harbour stars as Santa Claus, first seen drinking his holiday blues away at a London watering hole. Santa’s having a rough Christmas Eve; kids are getting greedier and naughtier every year, and he’s thinking of hanging up the hat. His night doesn’t get any easier when he heads to the United States-based home of a wealthy, heartless matriarch (Beverly D’Angelo), whose family has been taken hostage by a gang of thieves (led by John Leguizamo). While his first instinct is to fly off and finish his route, the presence of an innocent child (Leah Brady) causes Santa to reconsider, call upon the skills he learned centuries earlier as a Viking warrior and mete out a little bloody Christmas justice.
Badass Santa has been a punchline in films ranging from Scrooged to Ernest Saved Christmas. And it’s not the first time that Kris Kringle: Action Hero has fueled an entire film. Just two years ago, Mel Gibson donned the red suit in Fatman, a gritty actioner that asked what if Santa was a grizzled grunt with a side gig for the U.S. military. That movie mostly worked because it played its ludicrous premise completely straight, toning down the holiday magic to give it a slightly more plausible feel.
Directed by Tommy Wirkola of Dead Snow (2009) and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) fame, Violent Night takes a different approach. It leans fully into the enchantment and magic of a traditional holiday film and then infuses it with the scuzzy extreme violence of a grindhouse actioner. Here, Santa is a immortal who flies with the help of reindeer, has a magic Naughty and Nice List, and can be sucked up a chimney by laying a finger on the side of his nose; he also has a sledgehammer nicknamed Skullcrusher and can fashion a candy cane into a shiv. It’s ludicrous, gory, and completely over the top, yet it mostly works.
Much of that comes from Wirkola’s commitment to the tone, combining the warm and whimsical look of Christmas movies with the extreme bloodshed and violence of something out of John Wick or even a slasher movie, with just the right amount of self-aware humor. Santa smashes, bashes, decapitates, and disembowels an army’s worth of bad guys, with the effects shown in grisly detail. At one point, he smashes a star ornament through a henchman’s eye and then plugs it in, frying the baddie. It would all be rather unpleasant were it not set to a backdrop of colorful lights and popular Christmas songs; the two extremes balance each other and make the joke work.
The script by Pat Casey and Josh Miller has a fun knowledge of holiday movies, and makes sure to include all of the usual tropes – estranged families, last-minute redemption, and the way a lack of Christmas spirit can imperil Santa. Both Die Hard and Home Alone are name-checked, with the latter leading to the film’s most wince-inducing and memorable sequence, when a young ally helps Santa out by laying booby traps that have much more fatal results than the ones in Chris Columbus’ classic comedy. The writers also weave in the expected beats from any one-man-against-the-odds action flick, and keep its tongue firmly in cheek. Any movie that has Santa chuckling “ho, ho, holy shit” understands the assignment.
Alexis Louder as Linda and David Harbour as Santa Claus in “Violent Night.” (Photo by Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures)
The cast also knows just what tone to play, most notably Harbour, who brings the grizzled, badass sides of Kris Kringle to life, and can summon a sparkle to his eye when the situation calls for it. Leguizamo has a harder job, but acquits himself well. He plays the villainous role straight and navigates the tonal shifts deftly, understanding how to evolve the character from a man out for money to someone snarling that they’re going to destroy Christmas. D’Angelo, miles from her sweet National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation character, spits venom and threats better than anyone in the film. Occasionally, the balance between humor and splatter-film overbalances – some side characters are a bit too cartoony, and the violence will likely put off squeamish viewers – and the film can’t quite navigate a subplot about the family’s one decent member (Alex Hassell) trying to make things right for his wife and kid without it feeling like a bit too much.
But for a one-joke movie, Violent Night mostly nails that joke successfully. It’s not for everyone, but for those who can get on its ridiculous wavelength, it could be a perennial holiday classic.
