SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (2025)

Studio:   Cineverse
Director: Mike P. Nelson
Writer:   Mike P. Nelson
Producer: Scott Schneid, Dennis Whitehead, Jamie R. Thompson, Erik Bernard, Jeremy Torrie, Tanya Brunel
Stars:    Rohan Campbell, Ruby Modine, David Lawrence Brown, David Tomlinson, Mark Acheson

Review Score:

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Summary:

Haunted by a shocking experience from childhood, a drifter driven by a voice in his head spends the holiday season on a secret killing spree while dressed as Santa Claus.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

As a child, Billy Chapman accompanies his mother Tara and father Geoffrey on a Christmas Eve visit to see Billy’s grandfather in a hospice care facility. While waiting with his mother, Billy notices the facility’s janitor, Charlie, eyeing his family suspiciously. When they’re alone together, Billy’s grandfather playfully mentions that Santa Claus punishes naughty boys before suddenly coughing up blood and dying in front of his grandson.

On their drive home, the family’s car is rear-ended by Charlie, now dressed as Santa. Geoffrey exits his vehicle to confront the other man. Charlie suddenly kills Geoffrey with a shotgun. Charlie then moves to kill Tara, but her heeled shoe punctures Charlie’s throat as she defensively kicks him. Charlie still shoots Tara before falling to the ground.

While dying, Charlie extends his arm. Inexplicably drawn to the man, Billy takes his hand and feels a supernatural power rushing through him. From this point on, Billy hears Charlie’s voice as a mentor who also compels him to kill people who deserve to die during Christmastime once Billy reaches adulthood.

DECEMBER 20

Now an adult, Billy wakes from a flashback nightmare in a motel room where he killed Harold, an employee of Elroy’s Trees. Billy marks the date of the murder in blood on an advent calendar. With Charlie’s voice guiding him, Billy eludes Harold’s partner Elroy and a state trooper later identified as Max Benedict and boards a bus to escape.

Billy disembarks in the small town of Hackett. At the Thunderbird diner, Billy notices an attractive woman whose name he learns is Pamela Sims. Billy follows Pamela to the nearby store Ida’s Trinket Tree, where Pamela works for her father Dean Sims, the store’s co-founder. Following an awkward interaction with Pamela, Billy notices a stockroom job posting and is hired on the spot by Pamela’s father Dean, who also sets up Billy with a rented room in a house run by a woman named Rebecca.

DECEMBER 21

Billy begins bonding with Pamela as he starts his new job at the store. A true-crime junkie, Pamela shows her proclivity for rage when she has a sudden outburst upon receiving a call from her abusive ex-boyfriend Max, the state trooper seen earlier.

Billy observes an elderly man, George Vilmo, touching Pamela oddly. Charlie’s voice directs Billy to kill George. Later that night, Billy sneaks into George’s house, cleaves his head with an ax, then marks the date in blood on his advent calendar.

DECEMBER 22

Billy receives a package containing multiple Santa costumes to continue wearing when he kills. With Dean encouraging him to pursue his daughter romantically, Billy’s connection with Pamela continues to grow as he accompanies her to her nephew Liam’s hockey practice. At the ice-skating rink, Pamela introduces Billy to a mouthy mother, Delphine Anderson, whom Charlie instructs Billy to target next. Billy has to physically restrain Pamela after she uses a hockey stick to beat two bullies harassing her nephew.

Billy plays cards with Dean and Liam to pass the time while waiting for Pamela to be questioned at the police station. Liam and the two men briefly discuss a rash of child abductions attributed to someone dubbed “The Snatcher.”

Max confronts Pamela in the interrogation room. Pamela insists Max will never have a second chance with her after he punched her in the face. Max puts his hands on Pamela, yet she resists the urge to react.

Billy and Pamela talk about her anger issues. Billy assures Pamela she is a good person.

Billy borrows Pamela’s car to drive to Delphine’s remote home, where it turns out Delphine is hosting an “I’m Dreaming of a White Power Christmas” party for fellow Nazis. Billy locks the door and embarks on a slaughter spree with his ax. Delphine tries shooting Billy with an assault rifle, but she ends up gunning down several partygoers instead. Billy pursues Delphine into the woods where he beheads her while she tries escaping on an ATV. After marking the date on his calendar and setting fire to the Nazi compound, Billy returns home to treat the severe wounds he suffered in the melee.

DECEMBER 23

With George Vilmo missing, Pamela and Dean ask Billy to play Santa for children visiting their store. Charlie’s voice advises against it because dressing as Santa is a trigger, but Billy agrees anyway. Charlie’s voice guides Billy through the experience so he doesn’t kill any children sitting on his lap. Meanwhile, Max sneaks into the store and learns about Billy from his resume on Dean’s desk.

Turned on by his Santa costume, Pamela aggressively kisses Billy in the stockroom. This leads to spontaneous sex as the couple solidifies their mutual interest in one another.

CHRISTMAS EVE

A police investigation begins after George Vilmo’s visiting daughter discovers him dead in his home. Pamela mentions to Billy that authorities also discovered George’s wife’s corpse hidden in a crawlspace, revealing George stabbed her to death.

Billy successfully navigates questions from the police. Charlie’s voice admonishes Billy for missing a day on the advent calendar. Charlie also asks Billy if he noticed a new flyer for another missing child abducted by The Snatcher. Billy counters that he is more interested in being with Pamela now.

Dean finds a kidnapped boy locked in a vehicle outside his store. A man disguised as Santa shoots Dean dead from behind.

CHRISTMAS DAY

Ida’s Trinket Tree hosts a wake for Dean. Max spies Billy comforting Pamela. Billy also reviews security footage and sees the Santa gunman waving at the camera after killing Dean.

Against Charlie’s advice, Billy confesses to Pamela that he is a serial killer who can grant her the vengeance she wishes against her father’s killer. Billy recounts what happened when he was a child, and how he became supernaturally linked to Charlie, who isn’t an imaginary friend or a split personality, but a separate entity capable of seeing evil who shares the same curse as him. Billy adds that Charlie killed his parents because they had poisoned Billy’s grandfather after getting him to sign over his inheritance.

Billy further admits that when he turned 17, Charlie went from being his mentor to convincing Billy he was ready to kill 24 naughty people every Christmas. Billy began with his abusive foster mother, who secretly killed three of her other adopted children, whom he impaled on deer antlers. Billy details other murders committed with various weapons including a chainsaw, hammer, and bow and arrow. He also explains that wearing a Santa suit helps him “flip a switch.”

Pamela asks what stops Billy from killing her. He replies he can’t kill her because she is a good person. Drawn to the danger and his derangement, Pamela willingly joins Billy.

Billy traces the van seen in the security footage to Elroy’s Trees, which he recalls is where his earlier victim Harold worked. Inside the business, Billy and Pamela rescue several children imprisoned in a ball pit. The Snatcher, now known to be Elroy, captures Pamela. Billy rescues Pamela by viciously stabbing and beheading Elroy, although he suffers severe wounds in their struggle.

Billy staggers outside. Max, who had followed Billy and Pamela, sees Billy covered in blood and shoots him. Pamela rushes to cradle Billy as he dies. Charlie instructs Billy to give Pamela his hand. Pamela clasps it and takes Billy’s consciousness into her mind like Billy had taken in Charlie. Now able to see that Max was an accomplice who helped Elroy and Harold get away with their child abductions, Pamela bites off Max’s nose and kills him with Billy’s ax. Billy’s voices asks, “Are you ready for this?” Pamela smiles with Max’s blood all over her mouth.

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Review:

Writer/director Mike P. Nelson’s 2025 version of “Silent Night, Deadly Night” pours its foundation from the broad beats of the 1984 original (review here), not just in the basic idea of an ax-wielding Santa, but by revisiting signature set pieces like a small-town store and memorable deaths like being impaled on deer antlers. Then Nelson reimagines the entire plot as a “Dexter”-like story where the killer Kris Kringle comes with a warped moral code. This means that the main difference between the two films is, instead of a triggered lunatic butchering anyone he encounters on his yuletide slaughter spree, 2025’s Billy Chapman has a “Dark Passenger” backseat driving his antihero to specifically target only kidnappers, murderers, and other despicable people the voice in his head wants to die.

Can an audience even tell if someone is a drifter if he doesn’t sling a beaten-up backpack over his shoulder, slink out of a cheap motel, board a bus, and wrap his fingerless gloves around a cup of coffee poured by a folksy waitress at a greasy spoon? Following an obligatory intro flashing back to how a man dressed as Santa broke his boyhood brain by shooting his parents, Billy follows this routine by doing his best David Banner impression while traveling through a Podunk town called Hackett.

Billy is in Hackett for less than one movie-minute when he spots an attractive young woman named Pamela. Not being creepy at all, Billy immediately stalks Pamela to her job next door at Ida’s Trinket Tree, a local holiday store that apparently does enough business the other 11 months of the year to not be drowning in red accounting ink. In fact, business is so good, Pamela’s father Dean is currently hiring a stocker/cashier to work alongside his daughter. Billy happens to have a resume handy and, not wanting to fuss with paperwork, Dean hires him on the spot without checking his work history. See? That’s how easy it is to set up a movie while plopping the protagonists on an unusual road toward romance.

Before Pamela can become fully enamored with Billy’s irresistibly dangerous derangement, there’s another matter to tend to. During daylight hours, Billy and Pamela bond over their shared interest in sudden fits of violent rage. Nights, on the other hand, belong exclusively to Billy and the gravel-gargling man in his mind compelling him to kill. On goes the Santa suit and out comes the psycho determinedly dishing out his own brand of justice. As bodies begin dropping, Billy continues coming closer to the #1 name on Santa’s Naughty list: an elusive child abductor known as “The Snatcher,” whose alternate moniker might have been “The Grabber” if “The Black Phone” (review here) hadn’t claimed it first.

In spite of or because of a silly supernatural twist giving it the energy of a retro slasher sequel that throws things back to when body hopping and inheriting a maniac’s mantle were all the rage, “Silent Night, Deadly Night” 2025 shakes out as a fair effort with a couple of quirky kills and a quirkier courtship at its core. Keeping the movie from making more of a mark is a weird reticence to go even farther with its few flourishes.

For instance, whenever Billy sets his sights on a new victim, the frame freezes on text that says “KILL (PERSON’S NAME).” Once, the name gets scratched out for another as a brief gag. But this gimmick is only used three times overall, so these intermittent appearances stand out like abruptly sore thumbs instead of as organic elements of an intentionally schlocky style.

The odor of post-production tinkering overpowers aromas of distinctiveness in other places too. Pamela’s ex Max, a rudimentary sketch of the abusive boyfriend stereotype, pops up in choppy spots like sneaking a peak at Billy’s job application, something that doesn’t give him any more reason than he already has to hate his romantic replacement. Especially with Max’s cursory characterization, there’s a strong sense that scripted yet unseen scenes didn’t make this occasionally clunky cut simply so what remains could squeeze into a 90-minute package.

Yet what remains is ample enough material to get the job done as a seasonal slasher with alternating slices of seriousness, goofiness, and gruesomeness for a straightforward fix of holiday horror. “Silent Night, Deadly Night” 2025 doesn’t possess the perennial pizzazz to supplant the Christmas classic it’s based on, but it’s fine for a one-and-done watch. Fresh eyes may even see brighter sparks since they won’t have an imprint of the original distracting them with callbacks or comparisons to a movie that looks even wickeder in light of this remake taking a relatively tamer, predictable pathway to more mainstream mayhem.

Review Score: 60

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