Silent Night, Bloody Night

MARCH 21, 2007

GENRE: HOLIDAY, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK!!!)

Silent Night, Bloody Night, not to be confused with Silent Night Deadly Night (one of the finest films ever created), came out the same year as Black Christmas, so the similarities are worth noting, and even a bit puzzling. Both have POV camera for the killer (at the time, this was pretty much unheard of), the killer makes strange phone calls, stays hidden in a house… someone ripped the other off. Or it’s just cosmic coincidence, like that year we had two movies about Steve Prefontaine, whoever he is.

Unlike Black Christmas though, SNBN, as it’s not known to anyone, is not very good. There are some creepy moments here and there, and it’s certainly not the worst Christmas horror film (hey there, Silent Night Deadly Night 4!) but it’s very uneven and disappointing. And the print I saw was filthy. There was a good 3 or 4 minute chunk where I had zero idea what I was looking at. Probably something else done better in Black Christmas.

On the other hand, it features a no good real estate lawyer nailing some woman (after calling his family to tell them he misses them) and then getting chopped up with an axe, so I guess it’s certainly worth watching. But, like Legend of Lucy Keyes proved to the world (or at least, viewers of the Lifetime network), in the end, real estate and horror do not mix.

I’d also like to point out it takes place in Arlington, Massachusetts (hey, Lucy was Mass-set too. Is “Massachusetts Based Real Estate Horror” a subgenre?). I lived in Arlington for a couple years. We did not have an institution, or farmland, or axe murderers. I would not judge Arlington based on this film. I WOULD, however, judge it on their decision to allow Dane Cook to film part of his god awful HBO show there. Christ.

What say you?