What's up with all these killer Santa movies? An EW investigation

Santa Claus is comin' to town — to murder several naughty people, at least as far as the movies are concerned.

Last weekend's big new film was Violent Night in which David Harbour's Father Christmas kills a small army of mercenary-robbers. This Friday sees the release of the Grinch-parodying The Mean One, about a homicidal Santa-suit-wearing monster, as well as Christmas Bloody Christmas, the gory tale of a robotic Saint Nick that reverts back to its dangerous military programming.

"It's a survive-the-night chase movie about a couple of record-store employees," says Christmas Bloody Christmas writer-director Joe Begos about his story of mayhem under the mistletoe. "An animatronic, state-of-the-art robot Santa at the toy store next to the record store reverts back to its defense-department AI and goes on a killing spree through the snowy, gnarly, neon-soaked Yuletide landscape."

Universal; Sleight of Hand Productions; Josh Ethier/RLJE Films 'Violent Night,' 'The Mean One,' 'Christmas, Bloody, Christmas'

Begos had the initial idea for his movie when pitching to direct the remake of an earlier killer Santa film, 1984's Silent Night, Deadly Night, about a traumatized man who goes on a murder spree while dressed as Father Christmas.

"I got asked to pitch on a Silent Night, Deadly Night remake right before the pandemic," says the director, whose previous horror films include 2015's The Mind's Eye and he 2019 vampire tale Bliss. "I love Silent Night, Deadly Night, I love the iconography of the killer Santa, the title — there's just so much there. But the movie doesn't necessarily stick the landing as far as: This is an amazing story. I thought it was the ideal movie to remake. I was sitting there at night trying to rack my brain about what twist [I could bring] and I was like, well, what about if it's the Terminator? Terminator is my all-time favorite movie, so I've just had this itch in the back of my brain to do a killer robot movie at some point."

Begos' pitch was rejected because it strayed too far from the plot of the 1984 film. "They didn't want to go in that direction, because it was too different from the original, and the fanbase was going to be upset," says the director. "I'm the f---ing fanbase, so I didn't really buy that. When the pandemic hit, I wrote the script, and in the end, the movie is an original piece of filmmaking."

Josh Ethier/RLJE Films 'Christmas Bloody Christmas'

Begos cast Riley Dandy and Sam Delich as the record store employees and ER actor Abraham Benrubi as the robot Santa.

"Usually in this role, you would hire a stuntman but stunt dudes are thin and athletic, and I didn't want a bad-looking Santa in a baggy outfit," says the director, who previously worked with Benrubi on Bliss. "Suddenly, Abe struck me. He's got that big character actor face with the big eyebrows. I was like, Abe would be the perfect Santa but the dude's one of the best known character actors of the past 20 years. Is he really going to want to be onscreen, covered up, not saying anything for eight weeks? I pitched it to him and he was so onboard. He was like, 'F---, yeah!'"

Violent Night writers Josh Miller and Pat Casey successfully pitched their Santa Claus-meets-Die Hard film to Bullet Train director David Leitch's production company 87North at the start of the pandemic. The pair believed that the movie would only work if the film's Father Christmas only went vicious when it came to people on his naughty list. Fortunately 87North, the film's distributor Universal, and the movie's director Tommy Wirkola all agreed. According to co-writer Casey, "The only thing we wrote that was too extreme, that didn't make it into the movie, there's the part where the guys get sucked into the snowblower and shredded, we also had a bit of Santa aiming the guts and spraying it at other guys' faces and then they're all like slipping in the guts. And they were like, that's one too far guys."

Miller and Casey wrote the script for the film with David Harbour in mind to portray their Santa-with-attitude.

"Often when we're writing a movie, we'll kind of discuss, what's this character like, who's playing him?" says Casey. "Our fantasy casting for Santa, just to get on the same page, was in fact, David Harbour, partially [because of] Stranger Things but especially his SNL Oscar the Grouch sketch. We were like, Yeah, that's what Santa's like."

Allen Fraser/Universal 'Violent Night'

To play his Santa suit-wearing monster, The Mean One director Steven LaMorte cast David Howard Thornton, who portrayed the murderous Art the Clown in this year's sleeper horror hit Terrifier 2.

"David is unbelievable," says LaMorte. "Because he's classically trained as a mime and as an actor, what he brings to a non-verbal character is just astonishing to watch. The first time David came out and did a little dance, the whole crew applauded for him, completely unsolicited. I knew we had something special."

LaMorte argues that watching Santa murder people is just a different way to celebrate the season.

"I think that people are looking for new and exciting ways to rediscover the holiday spirit," says the director. "I don't think it's people that don't like Christmas that want to see Santa kick ass in Violent Night, I think it's people that love Christmas and love Santa Claus and want to see him as a hero."

Sleight of Hand Productions

Christmas Bloody Christmas director Joe Begos and Violent Night co-writer Josh Miller are friends and were surprised to discover that they were both working on killer Santa films. "We both got our movies financed and greenlit the same time and it was weird," says Begos. "'Wait, you're writing a Christmas movie, what's yours about?' 'Wait, when's yours coming out? What the f---?'"

Begos believes that Christmas Bloody Christmas being released a week after Violent Night can only help his movie, which was made for around a tenth the budget of the David Harbour action-fest.

"A lot of people, before my trailer came out, they [said], 'Oh, I saw the trailer,'" Begos explains. "It was like, no you didn't, you saw the trailer for Violent Night. Maybe people will watch my movie because they think they're watching a David Harbour movie. As far as I'm concerned, we get two cool Santa movies and I get all the spill over. They ain't benefiting for me, that's for sure, but I'll benefit from them!"

Violent Night is now in theaters. The Mean One and Christmas Bloody Christmas arrive Friday, with the latter movie also available on Shudder.

See the trailers for all three films below.

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