VIOLENT NIGHT Movie Review
A group of bad guys led by Scrooge (John Leguizamo) hold a stupidly rich and literally stupid family hostage on Christmas while they try to steal 300 million dollars from their vault. A drunk, jaded Santa Clause (David Harbour) is trapped in the house and decides to stay and kill all the bad guys on his naughty list to save a little girl on his nice list.
Can I just say that Santa Clause is overrated? So is Scrooge and the whole ghost of Christmas past thing (though I liked Spirited, which is weird because I also hate musicals) It feels to me as adults were supposed to still pretend Santa Clause is this touching, awesome, nostalgic wonderful Coke commercial with Polar Bears cute thing and I’m sorry I just think he’s creepy and the whole concept is dumb. Call me Scrooge but there are already way too many movies about the creepy fat dude who commits B&E’s all night and gets off on cookies your kids left out for him.
That being said, Die Hard w Santa Clause? Fuck yeah, you got me. I’m in! Get in loser, we’re going crawling through vents and running through glass shoeless! Also, like everyone else am a David Harbour fan so I was quite looking forward to watching a B movie action/horror that somehow snuck into a wide theater release like I snuck my fat old ass into skinny jeans last week to go to Emo night.
Alas, Violent Night is no Die Hard unfortunately. I mean, it’s better than Die Hard 5 but that’s about as far as I’ll go. Violent Night just doesn’t seem to know if it wants to be an action movie, a comedy, a B horror movie or a whimsical Christmas tale and it doesn’t really leave a memorable mark on any of those genres.
First off, the action scenes just weren’t top quality. Were not talking full on shaky cam or anything but the fight scenes were just messy. There’s a few violent fight scenes that happen in dark rooms and its kind of hard to follow what’s even going on. I could be wrong but it seemed like some scenes were filmed in the dark to cover up some egregious CGI blood but again it was all so fast and muddled it was kind of hard to tell for sure. It’s all pretty standard stuff here. We’re not talking the choreography of John Wick or the well staged stunts of a Die Hard movie. It’s more VOD quality type stuff with some digital touches. When the action opens up and we go outside to the snowy landscape, it’s very clumsily handled and edited and just not at all exciting.
As far as the horror goes there are several kills by Santa that are pretty fun. The best of which involving an eyeball and a fire. Then there’s this whole weird warrior of the past subplot that I really don’t get. We took a cool, gruff Hungry Man microwave dinner eating dude with a little bit of magic up his sleeve into Thor the God of thunder which I hated and steals all the 90’s action movie thunder away.
The Comedy is hit or miss. Harbour has awesome charisma and some great lines but if you’re not someone who listens to Christmas music and November and walks around annoyingly whistling it in Kohls department stores, you are probably going to be over the Christmas puns by halfway through the running time. It is much too much. While the fun action one liners will bring a smile to your face for a moment I can’t remember a single damn one of them. The funniest parts come from the start of the movie when he’s getting trashed in a bar with a mall Santa or angrily judging the quality of cookies and milk people leave out while housing all their alcohol.
The Hallmark Christmas shit is borderline unbearable and absolutely the worst part of the movie. There’s multiple supposedly touching speeches about the meaning of Christmas and how we should all believe in Santa and I’m like “are you actually judging adults who don’t believe in Santa Clause right now? What do you want me to do just not buy my kids presents and hope Santa delivers them? That’ll be great parenting and I’m sure won’t fuck our kids up for life. Thanks writers of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies!
Plot wise, the writers half ass try to explain that Santa exists and give us this weird back story and excuses like “Oh no, he only delivers presents to kids in need and that’s why you haven’t seen him” and all it really does it make you think about all that irreverent horse shit, taking your attention off the plot of the movie.The bad guys show up and your like oh, shit right Die Hard. Christmas. Got it.
Speaking of the bad guys I was psyched when they were led by John Leguizamo but they didn’t let him John Leguizamo AT ALL. You hope in a movie like this that he’ll chew the scenery and be a little wild and crazy but it seemed like either they told him to play it boring and dead serious or he was really trying to go for a tough guy macho role here. It’s not bad it’s just not nearly as great as it could have been. It probably could have been played by any standard bad guy dude. Oh and speaking of the movie going way the fuck over the top on the Christmas stuff? The bad guys even use code names like Scrooge and Gingerbread and Christmas Tree or whatever the fuck. It’s exhausting.
Look, if you are a hardcore lover of all things Christmas (even the dumb shit) then Violent Night may make for a super fun time for you. I may just be a little jaded on the whole magical Christmas story. I by no means hate Christmas. I love Christmas! Just don’t try to wax philosophical with me about the magic of Santa Clause, alright? And don’t recruit me for your creepy live nativity scene either.
Looking at Violent Night as a well casted B-movie VOD flick that snuck into a wide release? I give it a lot of respect. It’s fun at times, holds a few laughs and has some wacky horror/action moments that make for half decent popcorn entertainment. Those that expect nothing else and don’t get nauseous at all the holiday hyperbole will have a good time. I would have preferred a quality action movie however. So for that, this one obviously disappointed me a little bit. I’ll go with a 6/10 for Violent Night. It’s not bad by any means but it’s not really something I’ll ever watch again either.
As my 13 year old daughter said after watching it “I couldn’t tell if I was watching a horror movie, an action movie or one of those Hallmark Christmas movies.”
