Silent Night has been out for 10 years. It landed on Shudder’s streaming service this December, it is worth the watch. Review over.
No, it turned out better than I expected. Based on the poster and reviews, it sounded like it’d be…Garbage Day! Well, I am getting close to doing a ranking of the Silent Night, Deadly Night series and I may have stumbled on the best of a mixed bag of a series. Of course the series had been dormant for about 20 years when this was released and to me, it feels like the Silent Night Deadly Night series needed a kick in the ass and has more to offer.

Synopsis:

A vicious killer dressed as Santa Claus hides in plain sight during a small town’s annual Christmas festivities.

Not much to go on, but this one is actually loosely based on turn events. Yeah, kind of wild. In 2008, a man dressed as Santa killed 9 people by gun shot or fire in Covina, California. The turn around from the massacre to movie is kind of jarring. But, hey true horrific events make for good horror movies, right?

Of course they do take some liberties with the story, more kills that are not simply gun shots or arson. So, I would call this movie more inspired, rather than based on true events.

I think this movie should be looked at with more eyes.  It is a descent later slasher that unfortunately gets over looked.  Jaime King plays a police officer in a small town on Christmas Eve.  The movie mostly follows her as she hunts down the Santa killer.  The big difference between this movie and the Covina massacre, this Santa moved on and didn’t seem to have a “mission”.  Santa goes from place to place, killer with different implements, like I said, a return of older slashers.  But Silent Night also works as a who done it.  Donal Logue plays a park Santa and all signs point to him, mostly and pretty conveniently because he has a criminal record and is a stranger in town.  But, I knew it wasn’t him from his first appearance.  Malcom McDowell kind of plays his Sam Loomis as a small town sheriff in this movie and he is as good as he normally is.

I’ll tell you, Silent Night is not perfect in any way.  There are moments of cringe an there are moments of “hell yeah” as a slasher fan.  But looking back on the past movie, three slashers, a witch movie and killer toys, the 2012 movie may be the best.  I have no doubt that the 1984 Silent Night, Deadly Night is iconic with very iconic scenes.  That is the beauty of this movie, it stands on its own without remaking the old movie.  There are callbacks to the first two movies, Linnea Quigley and the deer antlers scene and of course “garbage day” comes back with a wink and a nod.  If this were a swan song to the slasher or rather Christmas horror franchise, it went out on a bang!  I like this movie.

So, we have this new rating system for The Horror Syndicate, it is closer to Rotten Tomatoes.

Rotten Tomatoes has a rating of 64%, which is surprising.  The audience score is 33%.

I rate Silent Night (2012) 53%, not too bad at all really.  Give it a shot while it is on Shudder.

This poster absolutely sucks and is a part of the problem.