Akin to opening a gift on Christmas, it’s always a nice surprise when a movie exceeds your expectations. Thankfully that statement rings true for Violent Night, a film that goes beyond simply providing some cathartic relief through on-screen violence during what many people consider a stressful time of year.
With its many references to Home Alone, Violent Night uses the home—which in the film eclipses the McCallister house, replacing it with a luxurious mansion befitting of a high-stakes heist—as its prime playground for over-the-top carnage . Of course, the inclusion of a very real and very disillusioned and drunk Santa Claus, played by the one and only David Harbour of Stranger Things fame, elevates Violent Night to something truly memorable.
Violent Night’s 101 minutes may seem brisk, but ultimately it benefits the film from never overstaying or dragging on during its runtime. After a genuinely funny opening in which audiences are introduced and given enough time to come to terms with the thought of a real-life Santa resembling a dishevelled pensioner in a mall costume rather than a whimsical children’s character.
“Violent Night’s 101 minutes may seem brisk, but ultimately it benefits the film from never overstaying or dragging on during its runtime.”
Violent Night quickly shifts gears and briefly takes on the guise of a more typical Christmas movie. Here we have the introduction of the Lightstones, an immensely wealthy yet dysfunctional family composed of an eclectic assortment of characters ranging from an ungrateful son (Alexander Elliot) to a cynically loathsome matriarch (Beverly D’Angelo), forced to make nice during the holidays.
Violent Night’s focus, however, falls on the youngest star of the film, Leah Brady (The Umbrella Academy) who plays Trudy Lightstone, the daughter of Jason (Alex Hassell) and Linda Lightstone (Alexis Louder). Her character wishes nothing more than for her parents to reconcile their strained relationship in a manner typical of a Christmas miracle.
Graciously, everything after this familiar setup goes against the common trappings of a Christmas movie. Instead, relying heavily on action movie material, to the point where Santa Claus mentioning the movie Die Hard feels closer to a jab. Violent Night feels like the more genuine Christmas action movie versus being a film that happens to take place around the holidays. David Harbour’s Santa Claus, who may or may not be akin to a Viking warrior in his past life, is pitted against John Leguizamo’s Scrooge, or in the context of the film, the heist ringleader.
Despite his less-than-jolly demeanour or access to Christmas mysticism, Leguizamo’s portrayal more than warrants his on-screen presence and acts as a brilliant foil to David Harbour’s Santa Claus, both in terms of his reliance on modern-day armaments and his disdain for Christmas.
Ultimately, the juxtaposition of ultra-violence in Violent Night filtered through the lens of a worn-out but tangible Santa Claus against what would otherwise be just another Christmas-themed film makes for a genuinely funny movie. It never takes itself too seriously, while still treating the audience to a feature that doesn’t feel cheap or pulls any punches for the sake of merriment.
