Santa Claus (David Harbour) finds himself in the middle of a hostage situation at the home of the super rich Lightstone family when some thieves led by Mr. Scrooge (John Leguizamo) descend upon them to open their secret vault full of money. 

Violent Night is a film that decides to pay homage to two of the most well known Christmas movies whilst featuring both extreme violence and extreme Christmas spirit sweetness. Best of all it is very funny whilst delivering its two tonal extremes. 

Opening with a disillusioned Santa in a pub in Bristol we get to see that he has become dispirited by the world of today and our love of consumption and just wanting more. We then meet the separated Jason (Alex Haskell) and Linda Lightstone (Alexis Louder) and their daughter Trudy (Leah Brady). Linda has agreed to go to Jason’s rich mothers house for Christmas so that their daughter can spend Christmas with the family all together. At home in the plush mansion is matriarch Gertrude Lightstone (Beverley D’Angelo of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation fame) and her daughter Alva (Edi Patterson) and family. The family are a hideous mix of entitlement, greed and stupidity. Whilst Trudy is a beacon of light who of course still believes in Santa. Something that Jason is willing to tap into by giving her a walkie talkie that he says is a direct line to the man himself. 

When Mr. Scrooge’s team of mercenaries begin their attack on the home in order to break into their vault they had not factored in a magical figure in Santa causing a mess. Although Scrooge considers it a possibly serendipitous event given he hates Christmas. 

The set up then is Die Hard in a mansion with some added ideas from Die Hard 2. Santa is John McClane, Trudy is Sergeant Powell and Scrooge is Hans Gruber. Whilst there are direct references to Home Alone being Trudy’s new favourite film, she also gets to try out some of the lessons that she learnt from Kevin Mcallister around home protection. This section of the movie is filled with perhaps the biggest laugh out loud and wince inducing moments. 

In amongst all of this we have a touching relationship build between Trudy and Santa where she makes him remember why he does all of this in the first place. Whilst more interestingly we get a small but intriguing back story for Santa whilst he is shown to be both physically and emotionally vulnerable. Something that raises the stakes in terms of the threat to his rescue attempts. 

Director Tommy Wirkola keeps the action moving forward all the time and delivers fun action and comedy moments. Whilst David Harbour, now well known for his everyman schlub of a hero keeps us all entertained with cheesy one liners, inventive kills and a heart of gold. Stick around for a mid credits gag as well. 

All in all this is another alternative Christmas movie that manages to deliver plenty of Christmas spirit off of the beaten path.