My Review of Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025)

 

Written And Directed by Mike P. Nelson

Billy (to various victims): "Naughty."

My journey ending towards this horror franchise continued with the latest instalment, released in theatres last week. I can't believe I'm about to say but I actually liked this one. I'm being serious.

The movie opened with a young Billy Chapman (Logan Sawyer) witnessing the death of his parents by a homicidal Santa Claus. Years later and now played by Rohan Campbell, Billy's taken on the killer mantle himself, albeit with a twist.

For some reason, this movie wasn't interested in Billy being a villain but instead, it went down the Dexter (2006-2013) route into making him a rather sympathetic antihero. He's even got a "dark passenger" of sorts named Charlie (Mark Acheson) to make sure that Billy only kills deserving victims. 

In terms of changes, I think this worked well to the movie's direction. Ending up in a small town named Hackett, Billy ended up working in a gift store run by Mr. Sims (David Lawrence Brown) and fell in love with the latter's daughter, Pamela (Ruby Modine). Pamela had a bit of a dark side of her own and an unlikeable ex-boyfriend named Max (David Tomlinson).

Throughout the movie, we got to see Billy and Pamela's relationship development rather nicely. We also got to see Billy kill some horrible people, including an entire party of Nazis. At no point are we meant to not root for Billy. 

There's also a subplot involving a serial child kidnapper named the Snatcher that had Billy and Pamela working together. Again, this might be the most sympathetic version of Billy we're ever going to get and while the ending was predictable, I did find it satisfying enough.

- Billy's parents murdered his grandfather before they were killed themselves. Pamela could later "hear" Billy after his death. His bloody advent calendar was an interesting thing to have.

- There's some Easter Eggs to past movies in this franchise as well as Black Christmas (1974).

- Standout music: Kandy Korn's Saint Bitchless.

- Chronology: Billy's parents died when he was eight. He was in his twenties during this movie.

This has never been the strongest of horror franchises but I genuinely liked this version of Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025). Rohan Campbell turned out to be a great choice for Billy Chapman and this modern take worked a treat.

Rating: 7 out of 10