"Violent Night" is primarily comprised of bits and pieces borrowed from other holiday films of recent vintage. Most obviously, it intends to be some kind of hybrid of the aforementioned "Die Hard" and "Home Alone." The drunken, foul-mouthed, and cynical version of Santa depicted here, who we see projectile vomiting on a hapless victim while flying off in his sleigh during the pre-credit opening sequence, will no doubt inspire memories of Billy Bob Thornton in "Bad Santa." The dysfunctional family gathering interrupted by criminals is straight out of "The Ref." The presence of D'Angelo serves as a living reminder of "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," though her part is a 180-degree turn from the warm and loving mother she played there. Hell, even the conceit of Santa fighting off bad guys in bloody fashion was done a couple of years ago in the weirdo project "Fatman," in which Mel Gibson's version of Santa fights off an assassin hired by a monstrously entitled brat who objected to receiving a lump of coal. 

The problem with "Violent Night" is not its unoriginal premise but how little is done with it. Santa violently dispatching bad guys is a one-joke premise that could have been developed into something interesting, perhaps using gruesome physical violence as a way of commenting on the emotional brutality that holiday classics like "A Christmas Carol" and "It's a Wonderful Life" traffic in. Instead, Wirkola is content to stick with the same joke of Santa killing bad guys in grotesque ways (and this is an undeniably hard-R film) that quickly grow tiresome. Even that might have worked on some fundamental level as a gory black comedy, but then the film ineptly tries for sentiment towards the end by asking us to care about the fates of the most hateful family members. "Violent Night" also seems weirdly reticent to fully exploit the notion that it's Santa Claus doling out the violence—there's only one point where he fully utilizes his unique powers against one of the attackers and, perhaps inevitably, it's the only kill that sticks in the mind afterward.

The one saving grace of "Violent Night" is Harbour's performance. Like the rest of the film, his character is basically a joke, but one he commits to impressively throughout, whether knocking off the new additions to his naughty list or communicating with Trudy over walkie-talkies. Granted, he may not replace Edmund Gwenn as the ideal movie Santa anytime soon, but his work here is the one sweet plum in the middle of an otherwise rancid cinematic pudding.

Now playing in theaters. 

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