Silent Night, Bloody Night 2



AKA: Silent Night, Bloody Night 2: The Revival

After the suicide of their mentally troubled elder brother, siblings Angelica and James travel to the small town of Willard on Christmas Eve to visit his grave-site. After their long car ride they don’t plan on driving back home, and instead opt to stay at a local bed and breakfast just outside of town. The owners give them a videotape that their brother left them, in which he apologies to the two of them and tells them that their family has a big, dark secret. But he doesn’t tell them what that secret actually is, only that they need to discover the truth on their own like he did. The two siblings have no idea what he’s talking about, but when Angelica stumbles upon the lost journal of Jeffery Butler later that night, they’re both able to piece together not only their own family secrets, but the horrible past of the town of Willard as well.



Last year I watched the first Silent Night, Bloody Night, an early slasher from 1972 that features Mary Waronov and John Carradine, and was a film that I thought looked like it was made pretty cheaply back in the day. But apparently it actually had a budget of somewhere around 300k (or around 2.3 million by today’s dollars). So, Lord knows what they used most of it on (it certainly wasn’t the lighting), but I stand corrected on that front, and I’d like to apologize for making fun of all its low-budget-ness. Because by contrast it’s direct sequel, Silent Night, Bloody Night 2, which was inexplicably made over 42 years later, appears to only have had a budget of somewhere around $300 dollars to its name, because — Woof — boy howdy, is this thing rough. And not always in a charming way…



You can really tell that this movie was a passion project, because it’s clear that the filmmakers couldn’t afford to put much else into it. The acting? Often awful. The line delivery is terrible. The enunciation is so bad with several actors that I had to turn the subtitles on so that I could tell what the hell native English speakers were saying. It was pretty bad. I think the one decent actor they had on tap was Jennifer Runyon, who may be the sole cast member with any kind of noticeable career, including the starring role in To All A Goodnight, another movie that involves a crazed person running around in a Santa suit and killing people. So she’s alright. But everyone else sounds like the filmmakers just pulled them in off the street and offered to give them $50 bucks to be in their movie.



The film’s technical limitations are equally bad. I’ll admit, I thought the picture and sound were pretty sub-par in the first film, but that movie had Oscar-worthy levels of effects when compared to this one. And at least the first film also had a cinematographer on hand. Here it feels like they only had one cheap camera to work with and occasionally a tripod, because there are several scenes where the characters are walking along or in the car, and the camera is clearly shaking along to the cameraman’s footsteps or jiggling around due to all the potholes in the road. Like, wobba wobba wobba, please end this scene before I get motion sickness, levels of shakiness.



And the framing? Meh. Some of it’s okay, but most of it is limited by their equally limited space in their filming locations, so don’t expect any of the arty type shots that were in the first film. They also added a lousy “scratched film” overlay that they put over the whole thing. I guess they wanted their movie to look a lot older than it is. Maybe make it feel more authentic? I don’t know. Doesn’t work though, cause it looks like they actually used a decent camera, so most of the visuals still look too sharp to look that “old”. But I feel like if they wanted it to look more “old” they should have just gone with a grainy look instead, because the constant artificial pops and scratches they went with just feel more distracting than anything else.


Wait, even over the opening credits? Why?

If you’re (somehow) holding out hope for the blood and gore department, then you’re going to be mightily disappointed there too, I’m afraid. You do get some, but it’s all very VERY low-key. Like, a hand gets dismembered and all, but even in the near total darkness they filmed the scene in, you can still tell it’s horribly fake. And there is an ax murder or two, but they’re shot at very specific camera angles so you can’t actually see anything, until they cut away to the result of the attack, which usually consists of either an immediate dead body (with some blood), or fake-looking body parts covered in equally looking fake blood or goo. So don’t get your hopes up.


The limited VFX is also exquisite.



The real ding against the film though, is that the filmmakers didn’t even have a full story plotted out before they made this thing. Because around 33 minutes worth of footage (yes, I counted), which amounts to a little over a third of the film’s full runtime, is dedicated to flashbacks of the first film, which are used to explain both the town’s and character’s backstories. Now, to the film’s credit, they do make that footage all sepia tone to distinguish it from the rest of the film, AND they also present it in a way that makes the muddled plot to that movie amazingly coherent. So props to them for that. But (!) they also completely rewrite the first film’s ending and Jeffery Butler’s entire character arc, by making him complacent in his father’s plans. Which, if you actually watch the first film, makes zero sense, because even when Jeffery is seen by himself it’s clear he has no bloody idea what’s going on. So boo to the writers for their poor attempt to link the two films together, AND the boring and plodding story they DID put together to get us to those parts. Their clear nod to the entire opening sequence of Night of the Living Dead was more successful than their attempt to actually link this movie to the movie they were trying to link it to.


Santa’s coming to get you, James!

And just for the record, who the hell thought it was a good idea to tie this all into Black Peter? I’m pretty sure that’s almost exclusively a Dutch tradition. I don’t even think most Americans know who that is. The only reason I even knew about him offhand is because I saw some old illustrations years ago, of him on something made around the turn of the 19th century in some antique shop, and had to look him up to figure out who the hell he was and why he was hanging around with Santa. That story was turned into such a racist stereotype that I’m surprised anyone involved in this was willing to touch it with a 20ft pole. Couldn’t you have just used Krampus instead? Isn’t that essentially the same idea you were aiming for? Why bring a weird Dutch blackface Christmas tradition into this that no one has talked about in decades? What an odd way to try to flex….


I’m so thankful they just had him put on a dark outfit and wear a mask.

So, uh, sadly I can’t say that I was all that impressed with Silent Night, Bloody Night 2. The visuals, sound and acting are subpar, and the story is about as boring and bare-bones as you can get for a cheap slasher. Basically it feels like something you and your friends might have thrown together one weekend back when you were in High School. The scenes cobbled together from the first film are probably the only highlight, and it feels like they put more effort into splicing them all together to fit their narrative than they spent on the actual narrative. So while I applaud the filmmaker for their determination and passion, I can’t say I can really recommend it to most people. If you’re just fascinated by the extremely low-budget horror or simply must watch every possible Christmas-related horror movie out there, then by all means, go for it and bask in the amateurish experience. But if you prefer to watch something with even just a little more competence behind it (or you really like the first film), then I think it’s safe to say that you can skip this one (and likely the next one, because I guess they’re making another one).

Silent Night, Bloody Night 2 is available on a variety of streaming services.

Silent Night, Bloody Night 2 is also available on Bluray, but currently appears to be unavailable.

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