I am in a weird spot with Christmas movies. Action movies too if you can remember that episode. If you listen to our podcast, I said my theory on Christmas movies is that if you have some sort of a nostalgic tie to one, you’ll love it forever, if you don’t, you won’t care for it much. It puts new Christmas movies in a bind because it’s hard to compete with classics growing up for yearly watches and rewatches. One thing that helps: take any crazy idea you have and make it into a movie. Violent Night is quite literally like John Wick with Santa kicking ass instead.
David Harbour as Santa is something I didn’t think I needed in my life, but he does really well in this movie. Kinda like if Jim Hopper and Hell boy had a Christmas baby who ended up becoming Santa. His arc in the story is that he has been doing the job for thousands of years and is falling out of love with it. I think Harbour’s sarcastic nature is exactly what the character needed. John Leguizamo is the super cartoony villain who is definitely fun to watch just bitch about how he hates Christmas. The other characters, though? I really couldn’t care for them.
It’s a story about a rich family getting robbed and those other family members besides the main father, mother, and daughter suck, and even they’re not great. I don’t like the kind of humor where it’s just dumb, rich people being out of touch with reality. It feels way too played out.
The plot was nothing too out of the ordinary for an action movie, which is why I haven’t really loved many action movies in a while. The action in this movie was really solid though. There are a lot of fight scenes shot in long one-takes which I will always appreciate. Another thing I will always appreciate is gore and my lord is this movie bloody. It really earns the name Violent Night when Harbour is decapitating bad guys with ice skates and crushing skulls with a sledgehammer.
I also found it fascinating the backstory they decided to give Harbour’s Santa. They made him a warrior in his past life who did a lot of “naughty” which makes it ironic that he is now the face of being “nice”. While on the surface it’s a basic movie, there are sweet moments, specifically between Santa and the little girl character Trudy, who still believes in him and is a genuinely nice person.
Final Thoughts
While I wouldn’t say I loved Violent Night, I do appreciate how balls to the walls it gets. I really enjoyed David Harbour’s performance as well as John Leguizamo as a Christmas-hating, mustache-twirling villain. It does have some sweet moments if you can get past how annoying some of the characters are and I think overall, it’s a decent Christmas movie to watch if you’re bored with the classics.
