Violent Night

Name: Violent Night
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Released: 2022

Tommy Wirkola

2022

Synopsis

When a team of mercenaries breaks into a wealthy family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone inside hostage, the team isn’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint.

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Recommendations

90
TheWrap
Violent Night is one of the Yuletide season’s most delightful surprises, not just for what it gets right but also for the many ways the whole production could have gone very, very wrong.
80
Slashfilm
The movie unexpectedly has a ton of heart that's guaranteed to refuel your Christmas spirit this year.
70
The Hollywood Reporter
For those who prefer their gingerbread soaked in booze and their tinsel splattered with gore, Violent Night might be exactly what the season calls for.
70
IGN
Violent Night might take a hot minute to find its footing and keeps plucking low-hanging wordplay sugar plums, but at full strength, nobody's stopping Santa from making this year the reddest Christmas imaginable.
70
Screen Daily
The picture is irreverent yet oddly touching, never especially great but often disreputable fun.
63
The Associated Press
It’s easy to initially dismiss it as an “SNL” digital short that got high on its own tinsel but there is a sort of perverse glee to seeing Santa suck on the tip of a candy cane until it is a sharp shard and then plunge it into a bad guy’s neck.
60
Variety
The movie has no comic-book hook; it’s a trash-compactor genre buffet that smashes together a dozen things you’ve seen before. But that’s the hook. Violent Night is amusing in a few spots, wearying in more than a few others, but to complain about it in the way that I’m doing is to come off as churlish. It’s a movie that feeds the beast.
58
IndieWire
If you can vibe with that whiplash-inducing comedic opening — gallons of vomit mixed with some magical holiday sweetness — you just might be in the right frame of mind to receive what’s to come in this hyper-violent, occasionally funny, and often oddly charming holiday trifle.