Just how many reboots does a film need?
Obviously, if you’re taking into account how many versions of Frankenstein, Dracula and Little Women there’s been, then I guess infinity is the actual number when you take the remaining history of the world into account. However, when the subject that’s being remade is that of a grotty little 80s slasher that gained notoriety by outraging parents with its ad campaign, things tend to get more than a little perplexing.
You see, Silent Night, Deadly Night already has a reboot in the form of Steven C. Miller’s Silent Night which tumbled down chimneys back in 2012, so that instantly means that Mike P. Nelson’s brand “new” attempt means it really needs to pull something different out of Santa’s sack if it can justify it’s existence.
Still, with the ad campaign boasting that the redo has been crafted by the studio behind Terrifier (which itself got a memorable Christmas edition with its savage third entry), fingers crossed that the people involved can come up with something new and stay off that naughty list.
As per Charles E. Sellier Jr.’s supremely spiteful original, we find young Billy Chapman understandably traumatised when a crazed man in a Santa suit pulls his parents over to the side of the road after a visit to a nursing home and blows them away with a shotgun while the horrified tyke watches. However, the big twist is that rather than being messed up mentally by the experience and a super strict religious upbringing, the 2025 version of Billy doesn’t think he can sense evil in people, he actually can and Charlie, the guy who slaughtered his folks, is now a guiding voice in his head that triggers him to kill bad people in the 24 days leading up to Christmas.
Such a life requires something of a nomad-like existence, but when Billy stops off in the quirky town of Hackett, both he and Charlie seem to instantly recognise that something is seriously amiss with the place. Not only is their a child kidnapper dubbed “The Snatcher” taking kids off the streets, but Charlie can sense that the whole town is riddled with dark secrets that means Billy will have plenty to do as the days count down. However, a serious bump in the road arrises when Billy falls for the troubled Pam while he works in the warehouse of her father’s Xmas nick-nack store and soon Billy is trying to taste a normal life while the voice in his head keeps warning him that it’s all a bad idea and he should probably focus more on pulling on a Kris Kringle suit and punishing the naughty instead.
However, the deeper Billy sticks his axe into the soft, darker parts of Hackett, the more he find the town is rotten to the core with murderers, Nazis and other such wrong doers seemingly lining up to get what’s coming to them. But can Billy do his grisly job and manage to balance his budding relationship with Pam? True love is powerful, but Santa’s gotta slay…
Arguably the angel on the tree of all psycho Santa movies, Silent Night, Deadly Night certainly has one of the most uneven franchises in horror history. I’ve worked through all their inconsistencies before, but when you take into account that the series has contained murderous Santas, evil bug cults, robot toy makers and the sight of Bill Mosely with an exposed brain, the notion that Billy Chapman could actually be a good guy doesn’t actually seem that out there. Similarly, director Mike P. Nelson has proven before that he doesn’t mind shaking up a remake with the radically different redo of Wrong Turn; but while I’d agree that he altered that franchise way too much, the tinkering he does to SNDN left me utterly unprepared for how much I’d enjoy it.
If we’re going to call things the way we see them, this new take of Silent Night, Deadly Night is basically a festive/supernatural take on Dexter, that has us follow the trials and tribulations of a young man who has an uncontrollable urge to kill, but finds himself drawn to killing the deserving instead. In fact, there’s a bit of mild genius involved with the simplicity of pitching the notion of what if Billy really could sense evil rather than just hacking up frisky teens for the crime of being horny. Obviously some SNDN purists are going to scream that the series has turned Billy woke as we’re asked to not only empathise with the dude, but cheer him on as he tries to balance his slaughtering duties while he woos Ruby Mosine’s spirited lead.
Finally, arguably pushing the controversy among the horror faithful even more is the fact that Billy this time out is played by Rohan Campbell who played another type of surrogate serial killer before after learning at the feet of Michael Myers in the hugely divisive Halloween Ends. However, this version of Billy Chapman ends up being far more fun to be with than the immensely punchable Corey Cunningham and another surprise is how weirdly sweet some of the relationships are within the film. Not only does the budding relationship between Billy and Pam avoid any cutesy crap and focuses on the union of two rather damaged individuals, but even the relationship between Billy and the disembodied voice of Charlie proves to be something of a genuinely cool buddy movie. Dodging the usual tropes of a tormented soul arguing with the evil voice within in him, it’s actually amusing to watch a film where the murdering entity and his hapless vessel are not only simpatico, but help each other out much like ifWillem Dafoe’s Green Goblin persona was more of a life coach than a demonic influence.
However, in case you think that a once controversial franchise franchise has been watered down beyond recognition, I can assure you that Campbell’s Billy can still swing a mean axe with the best of them. Obviously, if you hinge your ad campaign by mentioning the Terrifier franchise, you’d better be ready to back it up by spraying around the red stuff and Nelson certainly ensures that we get plenty lashings of gore to go round. In fact, a mid-film sequence that sees Billy decide to take on an entire Xmas party full of neo-Nazis armed only with his trusty axe has already built up a certain amount of hype and finds a good balance between rampant bloodletting and goofy humour. Of course, it also delivers all the in-jokes you’d expect such as a death-by-antler gag and the expected mention of “garbage day” (sic), however, when it’s all said and done, it’s also strangely moving love story which certainly wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card.
Fans of the classic may be bemused at a remake that not only brings the gore, but manages to put a bizarrely positive spin on being a rampaging, seasonal serial killer. But while I’ve always been impressed by any film that manages to nail that elusive film type I call the feelgood horror movie, it’s also a truly nifty example of a remake flipping the script in a way that’s utterly new, yet reassuringly familiar.
Silent Night, Deadly… Nice?
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