Silent Night

Rating: *1/2

Just when you thought all available source material had been exhausted, someone realized that no one had yet remade Silent Night, Deadly Night. Killer Santa? Of course! Why didn't anyone want to remake this right out of the gate? Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees all have brand awareness, but Killer Santa Claus has only blasphemy and child welfare concerns, there's more than enough there to build a brand out of.

Of course, the original Silent Night was not greeted for its kitsch when it came out in 1984. Rather it was reviled for taking the secular foundation of the holiday season, a figure beloved by children the world over, and turning him into a slasher killer on par with the Freddys, Michaels and Jasons of the world of cinema. The film was outright banned in some places and Siskel and Ebert dedicated a whole finger-wagging segment of their movie review show to call out the filmmakers for their bad taste.

But for the 2012 version, the bad taste on display is the complete inability of the filmmakers to do anything thoughtful or interesting with the concept. Silent Night the '84 version may have been a cheesy, half-baked slasher film with a flimsy and contrived reason for its protagonist to go el santo postal, but it didn't seem phony. In this Silent Night there are shoe-horned references to the earlier film, but mostly the film is preoccupied with "inventive" kills, Christmas kitsch, and Malcolm McDowell doing his best Nicolas Cage impression.

The loose plot follows a small town at Christmas where Santa isn't bring toys to the good girls and boys so much as he's bringing a gruesome death to all the bad adults. A miserable kid that barks at her mom, provocateurs from the local adult film industry and the mayor's coked up trampy daughter are amongst the names on Santa's list, and meanwhile a small band of cops led by the irascible sheriff played by McDowell and his good-natured deputy played by Jaime King, try to keep Santa from going about his deadly chores.

A shrewd viewer might expect some social commentary, but by the time we see the naked girl go into the wood chipper any hope for subtle allegory goes right in with her. The is a gore party, pure and simple. Occasionally, intercut are scenes of the police trying to cope, King's deputy sees the writing on the wall early as McDowell's sheriff tosses out prime bits of crime-fighting advice like, "Don't put avocado on the burger!" McDowell overacts so much you get the feeling that he wasn't being directed at all, and that Steven C. Miller was just behind the camera laughing the whole time. Someone should have let King in on the joke because she stands there rather aghast as McDowell does his schtick.

Now I hardly put this film on expecting a Christmas classic, nor did I expect something of at least "so-bad-it's-good" quality, but even those rather limited expectations are let down. The whole thing seems built to cash in on the notoriety of the '84 film, but whether its because time wounds all heals or the movie itself is such a paint-by-numbers horror Mad Libs, not even residual controversy from the original elevates this beyond direct-to-video schlock. More's the pity because somewhere there's a real genre defying Christmas slasher film waiting to be made with Santa as the killer. Maybe next year.