Christmas has always been seen as a pleasant and jolly time of the year, “Violent Night” brings a whole new take to this theme. This is a much more adult version of a classic Santa “saves the day” story. 

The movie “Violent Night” opens to a rich and powerful family, the Lightsone’s, gathering at their compound for Christmas. Soon, the family arguments would be silenced by gunfire as they find they are being robbed and taken hostage. The head of the mercenaries, nicknamed Scrooge, comes looking for 300 million dollars that he believes is held in a safe somewhere in the compound. While this happens, a drunk and loathful Santa is considering ending his holiday run for good. Santa arrives at the Lightstone’s and when he is getting ready to put the presents under the tree just like any other house, the mercenaries take over and in the ensuing chaos his reindeers take off without him, leaving Santa all alone in a house of mercenaries and captives. When one of the girls on his nice list, Trudy, gets taken captive he decides to save her and the family. Santa pulls himself together and through various gruesome ways he dispenses many enemies of the mercenary group. Even Trudy dispatches the enemies using various “Home Alone” type booby-traps. 

This movie is best described as combining elements from different Christmas themed movies, such as the aforementioned “Home Alone” and also “Die Hard.” David Harbour, who plays Hopper in “Stranger Things” and also the Red Guardian in “Black Widow.” Harbour Takes inspiration from the character of Red Guardian in that the Santa Claus he plays is much less serious and much more of a joke character. The idea of Santa saving a family from a band of mercenaries alone is just not one that someone would normally think of when thinking of a Christmas movie. Santa is normally portrayed as a jolly fat old man who gives presents to children, however in this movie he is portrayed completely differently than normal media. It is safe to say this movie will not be your normal hallmark Christmas movie. This is a movie full of violence, gore, and laughs, and should be walked into with that mindset. 

This movie had its good and bad moments. Some of the jokes were a bit overdone, and even some parts were just boring. However, Harbour’s performance in this role was spot on. He committed to the drunken joke Santa Claus perfectly. This combined with his already experience in other action movies made him the perfect choice. Overall, the movie is perfectly rated at a 7/10 on IGN and 70% on rotten tomatoes; it was not an amazing jaw dropping movie, but it was a fun watch.