It's not like this movie is featuring a bad concept, after all, we have seen it used before in some popular and successful movies but this particular movie does a very bad job at handling its story though.

It's a movie that uses the "Strangers on a Train" concept (kill for me and I'll kill for you) but it however does it in a very uninteresting and ineffective way. There is never any real tension, no good twists, no good- or likable enough characters. All mainly because the movie is lacking a decent enough buildup to anything.

The movie shows and tells you a whole bunch of stuff really but without ever making you feel anything as well. It gives you too much information, which is especially a problem with the movie its first few minutes. The first few minutes is supposed to set the tone for the rest of the movie and make you interested in its story and characters. The movie however does all of this in such an extremely poor way, that you are already starting to loose interest, after the movie barely started already.

The acting also ruins quite a lot. Especially Tracy Spiridakos left me unimpressed, with her poor performance of a femme fatale type of character. But none of the actors impress really, or perhaps I should rather say that none of their characters impress. It's true that you perhaps should blame the writing and directing, instead of simply just the actors.

And it perhaps may sound nitpicky but a thing I was also missing in this movie was a good musical score. The movie was filled with moments that could have used a good musical score to support it but instead the movie is music-less for most part, even during the movie its most crucial moments.

It still seems to me that this movie had plenty of good ideas in it but just no idea how to implement them successfully and effectively into the actual movie. Just watch Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train" instead!

4/10

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It sounds so perfectly fun and awesome; a slasher with a Santa Claus killer. But the movie in fact is a far from fun or awesome one unfortunately. I haven't seen the 1984 original "Silent Night, Deadly Night", so I can't say how it compares but I can only hope and assume it's a better movie than this one was!

It's doing plenty of things wrong, which will especially displease the horror lovers. Sure, it has some gory killings in it but other than that there are very few other effective horror elements in it.

The movie for instance absolutely never works on creating a good, moody and tense atmosphere, with some interesting mystery thrown in. In the end you could say the movie is still a whodunit but the movie itself is absolutely never handled and buildup as such. As a matter of fact, it constantly shows you far too much of its killer, which ultimately makes him a far from scary or mystic figure. And when the 'twist' finally comes and you learn who's behind the Santa mask, it makes no impact at all, since it's so incredibly random and has almost absolutely nothing to do with anything the movie did before. The more you even start to think about it, the less sense it makes!

Because the movie is showing you so much from the killer's perspective, this also goes at the expense of the movie its main character. Due to this, it really feels that the movie is missing a good and likable enough main 'hero' in it. I don't feel I ever really got to know the Jaime King character and why exactly was she picked as the main character in the first place?

And really, you might at least expect to get some fun out of this movie. After all, it's one that has a Santa Claus as a killer! But the movie as it is takes itself too seriously and never gets clever or creative with anything neither. Entertainment-wise, this movie has even less to offer than its horror.

No good build up, no good atmosphere, no good acting, no good scares. No, this is just not a very good horror flick at all!

4/10

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The police force of a remote Midwestern town search for a killer Santa Claus who is picking off citizens on Christmas Eve. From: IMDb.com

Directed by: Steven C. Miller

Starring: Jaime King, Malcolm McDowell, Brendan Fehr and others

Current release date: November 30, 2012