Think Christmas tree stars, decorative nutcrackers, wrapping paper, ribbons, glass ball hooks, ice skates, snow blowers… and divert everything from its original function. To hurt rather than to smile or be useful, what. You have just entered the O violent night (VF of Violent Night) by Tommy Wirkola, Norwegian director, who made a remarkable entrance (for worse and worse) in the Hollywood dream with the desolate Hansel & Gretel. Witch Hunters.
This time, it is the myth of Santa Claus that he is attacking. What if David Harbor (Stranger Things, Black Widow) did not shine there like the star of Bethlehem, this comedy horror could have been placed at the top of the unstable pile of “unrelated” gifts.
The original idea of the film was however rich in this material so sought after that is the potential: let us imagine a bad santa that his reindeer would have abandoned in Home Alonewhere a massacre would take place Ready or Not. All spiced up with a hint of diehard. The ingredients are there, we mix them, we place in the oven and we watch everything rise… before deflating.
But you don’t give birth to a turnip thanks – we’ve said it, but it’s worth repeating – to David Harbour: he takes a lot of fun as a real Santa Claus, whose origins we discover in part (from which we deduce that the red of his costume is more sanguine than festive). Facing him, another asset of this violent night: the young Leah Brady, who makes her debut on the big screen and slips into a role that the young Macaulay Culkin would not have denied. This, with an extra soul.
Low blows as a gift
Unfortunately, around them are cardboard characters in a luxury crib where one warms up not under straw, but under greenbacks. Setting up: family reunion at the wealthy Lightstone, (not) good people who only have blood ties in common. From the matriarch (Beverly D’Angelo) to her children (Alex Hassell and Edi Patterson) and their spouses (Alexis Louder and Cam Gigandet), they trade low blows and backstabbing. As gifts, we have already seen better. Here come mercenaries, led by a certain Mr. Scrooge (John Leguizamo), who aim to empty the well-stocked family vault.
And everything that started badly will turn out very badly, then very very badly.
If the night culminates with a scene as hilarious as it is violent, where all shots are allowed, accompanied by the rough voice of Bryan Adams who explains to us in counterpoint that there is ” something about Christmas time », the feature film drags on when it dwells on the characters who have as much depth as a failed caricature, whose relationships are cliché; the pros, obvious; the outgoings, remote-controlled; behavior, not funny; and, above all, the performers, badly (or not) directed.
In short, we laugh and have fun firm (yes, yes) when it bumps. We are bored at least as firm when it does not bleed. Christmas, even horrifying, deserves better.