आलोचक समीक्षाएं

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.

The movie unexpectedly has a ton of heart that's guaranteed to refuel your Christmas spirit this year.

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.

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.

The picture is irreverent yet oddly touching, never especially great but often disreputable fun.

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.

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.

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.

Good fun in places, but dull for the most part, Violent Night is serviceable Christmas viewing. It’s a shame, because with such a fun riff on the Santa story, it should’ve been good for goodness sake!

Ultimately, it’s the filmmakers’ insistence on both subverting the expectations of the family Christmas film and upholding them that leaves Violent Night feeling like it wants to have its Christmas cookies and eat them too.