And so it came to pass that once Brian Yunza boarded the long running seasonal slasher series, Silent Night Deadly Night, he decreed that all mentionings of killer Santas, Billy Chapman, Ricky Caldwell and any utterances of “Garbage Day” be stricken from the record and the Halloween III-ification of the franchise would thus begin.
To fair, dropping the psycho Santa shtick in favour of getting Yunza in return sounds like a pretty fucking good deal on paper, especially when you consider that the producer turned director had already made the eye-popping class-war horror satire Society and the inferior, yet still utterly bonkers sequel, Bride Of Re-Animator. Whatever the director had planned, you could bet your bottom dollar it would be a damn sight more imaginative than having some maniac clad in a Father Christmas suit axing up the teens who screw their way onto his naughty list. However, I doubt anyone was expecting a film that threw feminist cults, weird bug stuff and Clint Howard at you with such reckless abandon.
Kim Levitt is a frustrated, wannabe reporter who is unable to break into making actual headlines due to the boys club that keep her well and truly stuck working on the classified ad section. Not exactly helping matters is that she’s also sleeping with successful reporter, Hank and is constantly badgering him to put in a good word with their boss, but the news of their relationship seems to be spreading round the office and making giant things even harder for Kim to achieve her goal. However, an opportunity drops into her lap when a flaming woman plunges from a roof in downtown Los Angeles under suspicious circumstances and despite Hank getting the story, Kim decides to do her own digging to find out how exactly someone spontaneous combusts in this day and age.
Her investigation introduces her to bookshop owner Fima whose building the victim left from in the first place and she sparks up a friendship with the woman who gifts her a book about feminism and the occult as a present. Of course, for anyone who’s ever watched a horror movie before, a gift of a book about feminism and the occult is usually a clue that some heinous, goopy shit is about to go down and as if on cue, freaky happenings start to occur that’s centred around Fima and her fellow female friends.
It starts off quite promisingly with Kim’s time with Fima learning her beliefs actually gets her an official job on the story, but soon she’s having fucked up “dreams” of her new friends and a local transient named Ricky hold a grotesque ritual involving sacrificed rats and a large, slimy bug placed somewhere you really wouldn’t want a thrashing larva inserted.
Before you know it, paranoia, conspiracy and a while lot of festive body horror is rearing it’s flesh twisting head; but can Kim manage to escape the clutches of this bug worshiping cult before they claim her body entirely?
While I would most likely agree that the whole killer Santa thing had probably been done to death, I’m still not entirely sure why Initiation felt the need to attach itself to a pre-existing Christmas franchise when they season literally doesn’t have a single thing to do with the story. In fact, in some countries, Silent Night Deadly Night 4 was actually released as Bugs, which also amusingly doesn’t really scratch the surface of the plot. Simply put, watching SNDN4 feels a lot like Yunza either watched Rosemary’s Baby and figured the film could use way more larva shoved into vaginas or he simply wanted to do for feminism what Society did for the class divide – either way, it doesn’t quite work.
It’s a shame, because whenever you seen Yunza’s name sharing a credits sequence with surrealist special effects nut Screaming Man George, you know you’re in for some seriously weird shit, but compared to the majority of the director’s other output, SNDN4 simply can’t hope to compare.
Credit has to given to Yunza for trying something so different, but his attempts to highlight feminism are so clumsy there are times where you’re not entirely sure what the film is trying to say. Is it supposed a takedown of feminism? Are we supposed to feel bad for Kim as she yells and complains about how shitty men are (which, in her defence, they totally are) while sleeping with a work colleague that’s totally going to look proper dodgy to her work mates? To be fair, a better actress might have made Kim more of a sympathetic lead, but Neith Hunter’s performance torpedos everything the movie may be trying to say as she screeches, nags and complains all the way through the film that makes her seem less like a competent woman with pertinent issues with the patriarchy and more like a foot stomping Karen.
While I would hardly describe the plot as being particularly tight either, at least Yunza has some A-list B-listers to give the supporting cast the necessary punch. Most noticable is professional weirdo portrayer Clint Howard as the bug cult’s grotty henchman who, when he isn’t impregnating people while wearing a mask with a phallus as a nose, is impatiently stabbing people when they stop him from completing his missions. Leading the cult is Octopussy herself, Maud Adams who gives the rather confusing coven the gravitas (and cheekbones) the script lacks and lurking in the background we even have Phantasm’s Reggie Bannister and Moonlighting’s Allyce Beasley packing out the cast which helps enormously.
Also providing some memorable moments are the trippy, if nonsensical, special effects provided by Screaming Mad George that don’t make a whole lot of sense (why exactly are giant bugs so vital to the cult), but then making sense was never really high on Yunza’s list of priorities. If it was, then we wouldn’t have the sight of Kim regurgitating up an insect the size of a French loaf, or watching in horror as her fingers stretch and entwine like rubber, but while these instances are certainly cool, they don’t work anywhere near as well as the special effects blowouts that ended the majority of Yunza’s movies.
Not as maniacal as the director’s other movies and certainly not as simply effective as the original Silent Night Deadly Night, Silent Night Deadly Night 4 just doesn’t really fit well in either list and just feels like a bit of an awkward muddle.
Not smart enough to have anything intelligent to add about feminism, not scary enough to work as a good conspiracy horror and not Christmassy enough to even count as an effective, festive frightener, this ambitious shift of the Silent Night franchise might be an improvement on the last couple of outings, but even giant bug rituals and Clint Howard going full creep can’t stop this Deadly Night from flat out bugging me.
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