Write a commentI used to be obsessed with Swiss Cake Rolls. They were my go-to snack. I'd get out of school, come home, grab a couple of packages and watch TV.
I always called them "Ho-hos" which are essentially the same thing, just a different manufacturer.
After a few years, I lost my taste for the sugary goodness of Swiss Cake Rolls. Not because they changed, exactly. I did. I grew up. My tastes certainly didn't become more refined. It's just the joy that I once had eating the chocolate covered, cream filled cakes faded.
After a couple of years, I was feeling nostalgic and I got a major hankering for them again. I was driving home from work and decided to stop into the closest gas station. They were out of Swiss Cake Rolls. Somehow, the exact day and time I wanted something I hadn't had for years, the place I stop is out of them.
I took a deep breath, sighing. I wasn't ambitious enough to go on a city wide search for Swiss Cake Rolls. I'm stupid, not crazy. I looked around and saw Ho-Hos. No, it wasn't what I wanted, but any port in a storm, right?
I checked out, got into my car and drove off. When I arrived home, I replicated my routine from when I was a kid. I got a drink, put on a TV show and sat down. After a rotten day at work, this seemed like exactly what I wanted. Maybe even what I needed.
I opened the package and bit into one of the Ho-Hos.
Maybe I should have gone on that citywide hunt afterall.
It just wasn't what I wanted. I still ate them, but each bite felt more out of obligation than desire. I was just going through the motions. When I got done eating, the night somehow felt incomplete. I spent all that time attempting to recreate something that gave me joy and, due to my own laziness, I soured the whole experience.
This is what happens with a lot of remakes. People remember something that gave them joy and, as if out of obligation to some absent authority figure, they watch the remake, hoping to recreate their original experience. Some go back to the source material and readapt it. Most are like a copy of a copy.
A quick aside:
If you've ever seen 1996's "Multiplicity", you know what I mean. The movie is about a workaholic who can't seem to find time for all the things he has to do in his life. Between work and his personal life, he just can't seem to get ahead. He meets with a doctor who offers to clone him. That way, the man can have time to relax while the clone does all the work.
Well, one clone isn't enough. Eventually, he has a second clone created from him. Then the two clones complain that they're doing everything and one of the clones goes in to get a clone of himself. This clone of a clone comes out not possessing all of his mental faculties. He puts slices of pizza in his wallet. Unfortunately, remakes feel like this third clone.
2025's "Silent Night, Deadly Night" is walking the razor's edge of being entirely pointless. For those of you who are familiar with the original, high-five.
You're my kinda person. For those of you who are not, I still like you, but here's a quick recap:
A young boy sees his parents murdered by a robber dressed as Santa Claus. He goes to an orphanage, gets pretty horrifically abused by one of the nuns there and grows up with extreme PTSD that causes him to snap and go on a killing spree.
Much of that film feels almost like a warm blanket. There are a lot of things that don't exactly work (the songs playing throughout are a bit too ridiculous), but it has a certain charm about it. It's not exactly a bad movie, but the deficits in its production and plotting are made up for because I think the filmmakers were legitimately trying to make a "good" film. You appreciate the effort they put into the production, even if it isn't entirely successful.
When you look at the 2025 version, there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek that doesn't exactly work. I've noticed with a lot of lower budget horror movies recently that they rely upon a snarky, almost cynical view of the film they're making. As if to admit they know they're making a bad movie so they're going to stylize it in this faux grindhouse aesthetic.
But, that kinda takes the "oomph" out of the movie. Saps whatever tension there was in it. I have a friend that I'm very close with. Unfortunately, due to our conflicting schedules, we don't often get a lot of face-to-face time so the majority of our communication is via text. This is perfectly fine, but there have been times when I have tried making a joke and they think I'm being serious. They've asked on several occasions if I could clue them into the fact of if I'm making a joke and I explained that if I do that, it ruins the joke.
That's what happens with "Silent Night, Deadly Night" (2025). It's too busy trying to be "clever" and "irreverent" that it forgets to just tell a decent story. Instead of a sort of campy and competent modern slasher, we get something that has a bratty attitude as if to challenge the audience, saying, "Oh, you don't like it? Well, you must not get it, stupid!"
In the 1984 version, Billy was just a troubled kid who went crazy, killing people he believed to be naughty. In the 2025 version, Billy is possessed by the spirit of the person that killed his parents and this spirit guides him to kill bad people. If he doesn't kill one person a day for the month of December, an innocent person dies instead.
So, Billy is a superhero now? There's even a line between Billy and the woman he falls for where the woman asks him why he wears the Santa suit. He explains essentially that it helps shift his mindset.
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THIS AND THE 2002 FILM "FRAILTY"
For those who haven't seen "Frailty", find it now and watch it. It's one of the best horror films ever made. For those of you who have, you'll remember that the entire time, the film doesn't really let you know if the people are crazy or if they're legitimately getting visions. In that film, Bill Paxton plays a father who claims to be getting messages from an angel to kill bad people.
The 2025 version of "Silent Night, Deadly Night" just steals that concept. Now, instead of the uneasy relationship the audience had with Billy in the 1984 version, the filmmakers of the 2025 version seemingly expect the audience to fully root for Billy. It is established that the people he kills are rotten people so, in a way, it's justified.
He's also not crazy. He just has a voice in his head who happens to be right about who is bad and who is not. So, what we get in this film is the equivalent of slop. Uninteresting, cowardly filmmaking that would rather give the audience a hero instead of making them, heaven forbid, think a little.
It's not all bad. I think that Rohan Campbell is a good actor, though he's got to get out of being typecast as the loser-ish guy who gets possessed by the spirit of a killer with the mentally unstable girlfriend. I also think that Ruby Modine, playing said girlfriend, does a pretty decent job with the character she's given. The two of them have some pretty decent chemistry throughout and they're both good actors that deserve better material.
As of the date of writing this (2/3/26), we have seven "Silent Night, Deadly Night" films. There was already a remake in 2012 that I don't remember all that well, but I suspect it's better than this one. The thing about the first five in the series is that they all feel like Christmas movies. Yeah, most of them aren't very good, but they have that distinct Christmas feel.
2025's version feels a lot like how Billy describes putting on the suit. It's just surface level. None of it feels like a Christmas movie. And for a movie that is part of a series soaked in Christmas atmosphere, the filmmakers should have taken more time to establish that.
My hope is that if people feel a hankering for a killer Santa Claus movie, they watch the 1984 version, no matter how much effort they have to put in to find it.
In other words, don't settle for a Ho-Ho when a little extra work will get you the Swiss Cake Roll you deserve.
Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025)
Directed by Mike P. Nelson
Cast: Rohan Campbell, Ruby Modine, Sharon Bajer, David Lawrence Brown, David Tomlinson
Runtime: 96 minutes
MPAA Rating: R (for strong bloody violence, gore, language and brief drug use)
Rating (out of ****): *1/2
"Silent Night, Deadly Night" (2025) is available on all streaming platforms for purchase and rent.
