Violent Night (R)
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Caution: spoilers.

This came out in 2022, but I didn't see it until 2024. I watched it on St. Lucia Day, because I wanted a holiday movie that night, but since it also happened to be Friday the 13th, I wanted a horror-ish sort of movie. This isn't exactly horror, but it does kind of have elements of a slasher film, I guess. Mostly, though, it's an action black comedy. (Well, I barely consider it a comedy, black or otherwise. But there are definitely some amusing bits.) I was going to put "action comedy" as my secondary category for the film (after "holiday"), before I watched it. But after I watched it, I changed my mind to make "badass" my secondary category.

It begins with a scene of Santa Claus (David Harbour), drinking at a bar in England on Christmas Eve, taking a break from his delivery route. We learn that he's pretty disaffected with the holiday, because of all the greedy children. (I assume this even applies to most of the ones on the "nice" list.) I feel the need to warn you, the way the scene ends, you might want to avoid it, if you have emetophobia.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, a woman named Linda is driving with her adorable young daughter, Trudy. They pick up Trudy's father, Jason Lightstone. (I'm not sure if Jason and Linda are divorced or just separated.) They all go to the mansion of Jason's mother, Gertrude (Beverly D'Angelo), for the holiday. Also in attendance are Jason's sister, Alva, her son Bert, and her boyfriend, Morgan. Santa arrives at the estate to deliver presents, but takes some time off to pour himself a drink and relax in a massage chair. Then a group of mercenaries led by "Mr. Scrooge" (John Leguizamo) arrive. Or... Mr. Scrooge arrives, anyway. It turns out that some of the holiday staff Gertrude had hired were actually working for him. They take the Lightstone family hostage, and intend to break into a vault in the house that's supposed to contain $300 million. When Santa finds out what's going on, he tries to escape up the chimney, but his magic fails him for some reason. And gunfire frightens his reindeer away. So he's stuck in the house, and ends up fighting some of the bad guys. I gotta say, at first I was expecting him to be more badass than he was, and take out the mercs with ease. That didn't happen, because the mercs were themselves pretty badass. Instead, he barely beat them after intense one-on-one fights in which Santa himself was badly injured.

Before all this started, Jason had given Trudy an old walkie talkie that he said would let her talk to Santa. And after one of Santa's fights, he takes a walkie talkie off the dead merc, and it picks up a call from Trudy, when she and the rest of the family are being held hostage in the living room. Because of her, Santa decides to help the family rather than run away, after he got out of the house. Eventually Mr. Scrooge learns that his people are being taken out by "a guy dressed as Santa Claus", and he assumes Gertrude had hired him for her Christmas Eve party, which she denies. When Trudy says she's been talking to Santa, her father tells her Santa isn't real. So she runs away and hides in the attic. Since she had just watched Home Alone the previous night, she decides to set up some booby traps for the intruders.

And... I'm not sure how much more I want to reveal of the plot. But there's a lot of family drama among the Lightstones, as well as a bit of backstory for Mr. Scrooge. We learn a bit about Santa's past: he was a warrior like 1100 years ago or something, before he became Santa Claus. I found that interesting, and I'd like to learn more about how he actually did become Santa. Maybe the sequel will reveal that, I hope. We also learn that Santa uses magic for various purposes, but he doesn't understand how it works, which I rather liked. And at one point, Santa finds a sledgehammer that reminds him of the hammer he used to use in his old life as a warrior. After that he becomes much more badass than he was earlier in the film. So that was cool. Really, all his fights are cool, whether one-on-one or one-on-group. The final fight with Mr. Scrooge is especially good, and the way Santa wins, while pretty gory, is fun and clever because it involves magic. So, of course all the bad guys are defeated by the end of the movie, and Trudy's wish that her parents would reconcile comes true. I've actually left out a lot of details, some of them quite important to the plot, but I think I've mentioned all I need to. I'll just add that there's an amusing mid-credits scene with Bert.

So, yeah... the movie is aptly titled, it really is a very violent night. As I said, there are some bits I found amusing, and I enjoyed the overall story. It's not the first time I've seen a disaffected Santa Claus, but this one was really good. The villains were also fun. And I liked the parallel between Santa and Scrooge both wanting this to be the last Christmas ever (until Santa changes his own mind). And... I dunno. It's just a really fun movie, all around. If you like that kind of thing.