Remakes of certain films border on heresy. You’re not going to make Casablanca more heartbreakingly heroic, you won’t make Alien scarier, and, as 2012’s inessential Silent Night seemed to prove, no one feels like they got a big gift if you remake Charles E. Sellier Jr.’s 1984 Santasploitation classic, Silent Night, Deadly Night.
The original was a real sugar-cookie tosser, with a maniac warped by one very bad childhood Christmas going on a killing spree dressed as good ol’ Saint Nick. It relished its perversity, mixing top-notch axe-murders with a twisted take on Father Christmas, as butcherous Billy roamed around in a mall Santa costume. Everything about it was designed to be off-putting, not least that core visual, a subversion intended to have Middle America clutching its Reagan-era pearls and make the VHS tape fly off the shelves.
But it’s 2025, and a killer Santa just isn’t that shocking. In the last three years alone you’ve had a killer robot in red fur in Christmas Bloody Christmas and Art the Clown hiding a bomb in his sack for Terrifier 3. So it’s easy to expect that writer/director Mike P. Nelson – who was already on the naughty list for his unnecessary Wrong Turn remake – would drop cinematic coal in our collective stockings here.
His big error with Wrong Turn was to add a convoluted mythology, something that a franchise about cannibal hillbillies just didn’t need. This time, the shock value that greeted the original just isn’t there, so he had to find something to make it worthwhile beyond some good gore (and, fair play, Nelson has a knack for blood and guts).
What he adds is a real reason for his Billy (Rohan Campbell, The Monkey, Halloween Ends) to turn the season of giving into the season of killing. The childhood trauma is still there, and Nelson resurrects the original’s old-school sleaze for his flashback opening. Sellier’s film was also transgressive because of his decision to show the murders from Billy’s perspective, keeping it his story, forcing the audience to stick with him through every swing, stab, and impaling, to make them feel a little thrill and a little guilt. Nelson lets them off the hook some by giving Billy more motivation than a hatred of the holidays. He has access to a real naughty list, and not only does everyone who ends up on the wrong end of his chopper deserve it, but we’ll know exactly why.
As the tousle-haired and somewhat shy Billy, Campbell yet again proves he has a knack for idiosyncratic horror, adding a sympathetic glow to the performance that’s only brightened by his budding romance with small-town gift store owner, Pamela (Ruby Modine, Shameless). Of course, the expectation is that she’s going to end up on his list, since the first time Billy appears he’s ditching a blood-drenched motel crime scene. Not that he’s all bad – he does leave a tip for housekeeping – but the fact he keeps talking to his invisible friend, Charlie (veteran character actor Mark Acheson), seems like a bad sign for their burgeoning relationship.
Acheson channels exploitation legend Sid Haig as Charlie, and it’s just delightful to see Nelson give one of the all-time “oh, it’s that guy” bit part specialists a truly memorable role. That it’s in that rare remake that successfully inverts an old favorite while staying true to its grisly inheritance makes it even more of a gift. When what Billy and Charlie are really up to is revealed, it turns the original’s sick-making nature into a fun little morality tale with the wicked getting exactly what they deserve.
Silent Night, Deadly Night
2025, R, 96 min. Directed by Mike P. Nelson. Starring Rohan Campbell, Ruby Modine, David Lawrence Brown, David Tomlinson, Mark Acheson.
This article appears in December 12 • 2025.