Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025) review: Get Rohan Campbell in a better horror
Silent Night, Deadly Night first graced our screens way back in 1984 and spawned four sequels within a decade. The first attempt at a reboot series came out in 2012, and now Mike P. Nelson is reviving it once again.
Taking inspiration from the original, the film follows Billy Chapman (Rohan Campbell), who goes on a killing spree dressed in a Santa costume every December. With the help of the voice in his head, he murders one person a day and puts a drop of their blood in a freaky Advent calendar. Typically a nomadic loner, Billy’s unusual lifestyle is tested when he relocates to a small town, gets a seasonal job at a wholesome trinket store and falls for his co-worker Pamela (Ruby Modine).
The original is a simple slasher that follows a man dressed as Santa killing lots of people. This version does have some of that, but it also tries to do something different by introducing the voice in the head (very Dexter/Venom!), the Advent calendar and a whole new twist on Billy’s backstory. I appreciate that Nelson didn’t want to repeat what came before, but he’s ended up making a weird, silly and messy film that’s less fun and horrifying than a straightforward killer Santa movie.
I really struggled to get into this. The first 20-30 minutes are slow, boring and unengaging. It takes its time telling us Billy’s history and setting up his story, but his character isn’t written well enough to make me care about him. He’s deliberately kept quite mysterious (it all makes sense at the end), but I felt like I needed to understand the voice, calendar, etc, to really get invested. Plus, the first couple of kills are quite tame (you don’t see much), so it lacked excitement and horror thrills. The pacing was totally off, but I figured it had to pick up at some point.
And it does! Billy crashes a party with an unexpected theme and goes on a wild killing spree that is easily the standout of the film. That scene is sure to go viral! I was instantly more interested and excited. Besides that and one gnarly death, the majority of the kills are underwhelming – there are only so many ways you can kill someone with an axe – and you don’t see much of the violence and gore before Nelson cuts away.
I’ve only ever seen Campbell in Halloween Ends, and I disliked that film so badly that it’s clouded my impression of him. He needs to be given a better horror with a more interesting character. This film feels very cheap and more of a direct-to-streaming horror than one deserving a theatrical release.
I haven’t seen the original Silent Night, Deadly Night, so I can’t offer up a comparison, but judging this one on its own merits, I can safely say that it’s not scary, gory or fun enough to be a memorable Christmas horror.
In cinemas from Friday 12th December