Film Review: Santa Goes on a Rampage in ‘Violent Night’

Violent Night. Written by Pat Casey and Josh Miller; directed by Tommy Wirkola. Produced by Universal Pictures. Copyright 2022. (Seen December 24, 2023.)

I have to admit: 80% of the reason I wanted to see Violent Night was because I wanted to see David Harbour play Santa, and the other 20% was because the concept sounded so ridiculous I knew I had to see it.

David Harbour does indeed play Santa Claus – yep, the real deal – who seems to be having a bit of a burnout crisis. He drinks, cusses like a sailor, and is very obviously not happy with his job of traveling the world one night a year delivering toys to the people on the nice list and coal to the people on the naughty list. (He vomits on a house at one point.)

He’s visiting the home of Gertrude Lightstone (Beverly D’Angelo), who’s basically a rich bitch whose family is only there to toady up. But our focus is on granddaughter Trudy (Leah Brady), who knows her parents are going through a separation and wants only one thing from Santa – for her parents to get back together.

But the Lightstones have more than that to be concerned with. The home gets invaded by Mr. Scrooge (John Leguizamo), a thief who’s there with a team of other Christmas-themed code names to steal $300 million that is in Gertrude’s safe. Luckily, Santa hasn’t left yet and hears the bullets, which scare off his reindeer and leave him on his own. He’s about to leave the Lightstones to fend for themselves, but Trudy had been given a wakie-talkie by her father, and asks Santa for his help. After finding out that the bad guys were definitely on the ‘naughty list’, he goes on a mission to save Trudy and the day.

As the title indicates, the movie is viciously violent: there’s a reference to the pranks in Home Alone at one point, and shows what kind of damage they would do in a much more realistic world. Santa dispatches bad guys with almost a glee (we find out through flashbacks that he started out as a Viking with a hammer he called Skullcrusher). And there were several times I had to look away as a bad guy gets killed. But despite that, it’s a fairly clean violence: despite the amount of skulls crushed and hearts skewered by icicles, there’s not a lot of blood. It’s an almost comedic violence, and you can’t help but root for Santa and the Lightstones as they battle against Scrooge and his minions. I found myself laughing almost as much as I was wincing at the violence, and it somehow works.

The cast obviously had a field day making the movie: Leguizamo chews the scenery like he’s starving, we get Harbour with his shirt off (and hot dad bod with tattoos), and even D’Angelo seems pleased to be able to be a ‘good’ bad guy. Director Tommy Wirkola obviously let them just play with their parts, and the fight choreography is like a dance.

The film pushes the fine line between absurdism and camp with a splattergore twist. It’s definitely not your standard Christmas film, but I can easily see it becoming a holiday cult classic for a certain set of people. And yes – there’s talk of a sequel, which I will gladly watch. If you’re easily squeamish, this isn’t for you – but if you like movies like the Evil Dead series, you definitely want to check it out.

Violent Night is available on streaming, most notably Amazon Prime at the current time.