I’m a huge fan of Christmas movies. I’m the type of person to have a December movie advent calendar, so when I heard that Violent Night was coming out on Dec 2, I knew it was something I wanted to see. 

To start off this review, I want to clarify, this movie is rated R and should not be watched by anyone under the age of 17 without a parental advisor. 

I have seen the “Kill Bill” and “John Wick” movies, but this violence was on another level. Starting off with a drunk Santa (David Harbour), I had a feeling the innocence that intertwines with Santa would not be present in this movie. 

We follow the story of the very interesting Lightstone family, who seem to hate each other, through a home invasion. Santa, against his will, gets stuck in the house as well and decides to help the family out. 

The middle of the movie was a tad slow, but looking back on it, I honestly think they were giving the audience some peace before the storm. As soon as I was getting bored with the dialogue, the real action started and remained for the entire rest of the movie. 

Despite all the intensity, there were some cute moments between the Lightstone family, as well as between Santa and Trudy Lightstone (Leah Brady). A little girl guiding Santa through killing people is sweet, right? 

And to save another “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie” argument, this movie includes several areas of Christmas throughout it: there is the familiar Christmas music during fighting scenes, a play on “Home Alone,” and Christmas decorations being used as weapons. 

While this movie was extremely violent it had consistent comedic relief. The dialogue between the family had the entire theater chuckling. The facial expressions of Alex Hassell, who plays Jason Lightstone, alone were enough to make this movie great. He reacted as anyone would in the sense of seeing Santa killing a bunch of people. 

David Harbour’s acting was good, He switched from solemn moments to sweet that were very on brand for Santa, to psycho murderer very well. However, everyone else’s acting was average.   

If you get squeamish or uncomfortable at the sight of blood or gore, do not watch this movie. The SFX makeup really gets shown off in the scenes. But I enjoyed this movie. It had a little of everything, humor, caring moments, plot twists, Christmas, and to top it all off, a lot of violence.