When it comes to classic Christmas movies you probably wouldn't expect one where an incredibly violent Santa Claus goes on a rampage to make the list.
However, new movie Violent Night starring David Harbour has won over fans who reckon Santa Claus actually makes for a pretty good action movie hero.
As magical as Christmas is, plenty of people reach a point during the festive period where they get a little bit sick of how twee and jolly everything is.
Advert
Christmas is a time for joy, but sometimes the sweetest joy is the catharsis involved in seeing the most wonderful time of the year flipped on its head by the kind of Santa Claus who'd make you be good, for goodness sake.
This is pretty much where the 'bad Santa' genre has come from, movies where the jovial gift dispensing fat man isn't exactly the guy you'd want to come down your chimney.
That burgeoning genre has a new entry with David Harbour in Violent Night as a drunk and depressed Santa Claus who fights a group of hostage takers that are threatening a family over Christmas.
Among his arsenal of weapons to deliver a 'seasons beatings' are a sharpened candy cane he uses to stab people and a lump of coal, which is basically just a grenade.
Luckily this incredibly violent Santa is still heroic, saving the day to rescue a little girl on his nice list from a group of armed thugs on the naughty list.
It's going for a Die Hard crossed with Home Alone vibe where instead of John McClane saving the day it's Santa Claus.
Besides, if you can have Christmas classics where Santa gets killed then you can definitely do a movie where the jolly fat man gets to do the killing.
People who've watched the movie have called it a 'new Christmas classic' as it manages to live up to the promise of gory violence while still being able to 'deliver inspirational messages'.
SlashFilm editor Jacob Hall praised Violent Night as it 'doesn't just lean on its gimmick' but was instead backed up by a 'really strong screenplay'.
It would have been easy to make a 'what if Santa but he kills people' movie and pretty much phone the whole thing in, trusting on the premise to draw audiences in, but viewers have been pleasantly surprised to discover they actually quite like Violent Night.
Someone else called it a 'movie I can absolutely f**k with', and there really can't be any higher praise than that, as 'the action is on point' and the film commits to doing the silly concept justice.
Another called it 'perfectly executed', praising the film as one where the 'jokes land' but it also 'gives you the feels' while still being 'super f**king gory'.
Lots of people had very nice things to say about David Harbour, with the Stranger Things star 'having a blast' as Santa Claus and making the film follow a great tradition of 'schlocky Christmas horrors'.
Violent Night is in cinemas now.
Topics: David Harbour, Christmas, Film and TV, Celebrity
Joe Harker