Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Claus of Death

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Easily the best in the entire gruesome Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise, Mike P. Nelson's remake uses the bones of the original story, but adds many intriguing new elements, resulting in an entertaining and sometimes touching movie.

Young Billy Chapman watches helplessly as his parents are murdered by a man dressed in a Santa Claus suit. Years later, he has grown up (Rohan Campbell) and begun his own killing spree, also dressed as Santa. A voice (Mark Acheson) in his head guides him toward his targets, bad people who "deserve" to die, and he must mark off each killing in a bloody "advent calendar."

He arrives in a new town, meets Pam (Ruby Modine), and gets a job working for her father (David Lawrence Brown) in a shop that sells Christmas supplies. Billy kills a wife-murderer and the leader of a secret Nazi organization, and meanwhile he grows closer with Pam and comes to love working in the Christmas shop. But trouble is brewing as someone in town has been snatching young children. And it's up to Billy to stop him.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is the seventh movie in a series that began back in 1984. That movie caused an uproar among parents and critics, upset with television commercials that showed the killer Santa Claus.

Times have changed. Now instead of a quick, trashy, cash-in of a movie, here's a remake that actually tries something. The story is now somewhat supernatural, rather than just psychological. This Billy is rather likable, a victim of circumstance, who, despite being a murderer, is at least a murderer of bad people. (The movie doesn't discuss the idea of vigilantism, and takes for granted that it's acceptable, which requires some suspension of disbelief.)

The Pam character is likewise fascinating, shown as having her own bad side, a vicious temper that flicks on during times of stress. The movie also offers time for love, and for grief, rather than endless slashing. The movie is plenty Christmassy, too, especially in a delightful moment that involves the placement of the angel on a tree.

But best of all is the shocking and amazing centerpiece in which Billy finds himself at a Nazi rally, blending in with the crowd of White supremacists in Santa suits, celebrating a "white power" Christmas. He knows what he has to do. Silent Night, Deadly Night is, of course, far from perfect in its depiction of righteous violence and its lack of explanation of certain plot-related details (it leaves the viewer with many questions), but it's a happy (and bloody) holiday surprise.