Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Thomas Pickering
Starring: Levi Heaton, Richard Galloway, Isabella Percival
But Christmas IS a form of psychosis! The simmering desperation of the last-minute shop, the office party, this suddenly ubiquitous social pressure to wear hot, itchy knitwear (it's "for charity"): tis the season to lose your fucking mind and behave in ways which would be balked at any other point of the civilised year. The marketing for this month's remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night sentimentally recalls the fuss which the original kicked up; wherein the PTA and angry heterosexuals, deeply nonplussed by the marketing of beloved Santa Claus as axe wielding maniac, remonstrated the film and got it removed from many cinemas and the marketing withdrawn to boot (my favourite part of the incident's Wikipedia "Controversy" section is the lovely detail that "protesters picketed the theatre and sang Christmas carols in protest" - my heart! Also, where were they for the far superior Christmas Evil, four years earlier?!). All horror fans yearn for the days when our genre was taken so seriously by the normies (the childish excitement of watching something so abject that it was actually banned by the government - take me back...), but the Silent Night, Deadly Night storm in an eggnog cup is especially indicative of our jaded attitudes. The Christmas horror is today as traditional as Elf on the Shelf, the John Lewis advert, and Xmas markets. And just as you can't move for deadass grilled frankfurters in these chintz bazaars, so too do bad Santas populate the screen: Christmas Bloody Christmas, A Cadaver Christmas, Bloody Christmas; the (imdb) list (I took those flamboyant titles from) is as long as my letter to the besmirched festive patriarch himself. There are more murderous Father Christmases than twinkly eyed Saints. It is a sign of the yuletide I am afraid, a tacit cultural acknowledgement that for many this is the season of badwill and barely restrained delirium.
Plucky indie He Kills at Night is another festive frightener, an impressive microbudgeter which exploits an icy setting and seasonal iconography to automatically pleasing effect (just like real life, every film is made better with the inclusion of snow and fairy lights). Based around the specific real-life misery of journeying home for Christmas, the Pickering brothers' (director Thomas, writer James) grinchy narrative focuses on an apparent serial killer attempting to escape the UK: problem is he can't drive, so he has to hijack cars with female motorists and menace them to drop him off at Dover...
Driving the motif home we open in an underground parking lot, wherein a lone female is foregrounded in long shots of negative space, with flickering shadows/illuminations intruding upon the background before she is inevitably abducted. Similarly staged stalker flashbacks intersperse the main narrative, in which Marie (Levi Heaton) is accosted by Richard Galloway's car-jacker threat. His dangerous nature has been established not only by an early Psycho wipe-out of Isabella Percival's feisty victim (dressed amazingly in a sexy Santa outfit: just as hardly anyone looks good in a Christmas jumper, almost nobody looks bad Christmas cosplaying. I don't make the rules) but also talk radio's phatic ruminations upon a serial killer operating in the area: "where are the police in all this?" etc, a fretful soundtrack played over a (hilariously) lachrymose "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" instrumental. Good tidings he does not bring, yet the pseudo-5 Live dialogue serves to establish He Kills at Night's thematic interest in British cultural contexts.
Via unpleasantly realistic make-up, Marie has a swollen and bruised eye, and implies that it was given to her by an abusive partner whom she is fleeing. Is it bad luck that she happens upon an even worse man, or is the film positing this plot twist as an inevitable consequence of increasingly vicious masculinity? Working with fixed and limited locations, Pickering manifests suspense well, notably during one of those "if you tell those other characters who I am I'll kill you and them both" sort of situations, where someone enunciates the phrase "toxic masculinity." Well, physical abuse is a bit more than that, really, but the theme is duly articulated, and, indeed, compounded when the passenger mansplains the multiple existent covers of The First Noel. Could Marie's relatively unflappable mien be because she is used to living with the threat of violence, and simply accepts the patriarchal dynamic?
With the loci of empty roads and Galloway's brogue invoking uncomfortable echoes of the Yorkshire Ripper, the British perspective is further developed with reference to illegal channel crossings, as Marie cannily suggests a reverse passage as a potential way out for her nuisance occupant. Of course, she herself is transporting him under duress, within a journey spiked with peril: the film essays a series of situations where people are trapped within sinister environments. This situational irony is consolidated in a final shot which cruelly juxtaposes familiar tabloid images depicting the beach-bound fate of doomed innocents who simply sought refuge. Amping the tone of desolation, He Kills at Night's Christmas iconography is hauntingly applied to accentuate the film's atmosphere of frosty isolation. A final act volte-face is a satisfyingly mean-spirited representation of the traditional, heteronormative family Christmas ideal: the Silent Night, Deadly Night protesters would choke on their mulled wine.
He Kills at Night is on UK/ROI VOD now.
