Silent Night [Blu-Ray]

Of all the pointless remakes of awful horror films, Silent Night takes the viscera-coated cake. With a concept as gimmicky as a killer Santa, it was inevitable that Silent Night Deadly Night would be fed back through the Hollywood meat grinder, but there's nothing distinct about this desultory remake to explain, "why now?" Chalk it up to scheduling and financing; it's not as if Jayson Rothwell's screenplay has anything to add to the conversation of holiday-based psychosis, consumerism, trauma or even simple Catholic guilt. A more ideologically toothless script would be hard to find. As sloppy, hateful and perverse as the original Silent Night is, it at least has very specific character motivations and something approximating a consistent, albeit warped, moral stance about what constitutes "naughty" behaviour. The man decking the halls with parts of bodies in this shallow modernization is a mystery and so are his reasons, resulting in yet another faceless killer randomly racking up a body count. It's forgettable garbage that's nothing more than an excuse to film some grotesque murders and gratuitous nudity. In place of campy characterizations of a man driven mad by horrific trauma and abuse, this version focuses on the local police force trying to bring down the axe-wielding Saint Nick terrorizing a small town in the American Midwest. Jamie King is barely present, in the thankless lead role of a deputy grieving over the loss of her husband, but to be fair, all of the characters are such hasty sketches that not even Malcom MacDowell can figure out how to sink his teeth into the tasteless dialog and perfunctory reasoning. While the director does opt to recreate some famous scenes from the original, there's a separation between the nudity and the violence, making this version a slightly less repulsive, and less remarkable, piece of misogynistic exploitation. The special features — a few deleted scenes and some raw behind-the-scenes footage — offer no explanation as to why anyone involved chose to waste their time on this.