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| Rohan Campbell in Silent Night, Deadly Night |
It was just over 40 years ago that director Charles E Sellier offended the censors, and likely the sensibilities of many others, by depicting a murderous, axe-wielding Santa Claus in Silent Night, Deadly Night. In Conservative Britain, the film was banned, going on to earn itself a cult following that positions itself as a quintessential Christmas horror movie. Horror has always loved to be a little sacrilegious, and now, director Mike P Nelson takes his stab at subverting the innocence of the festive season with his bloody remake.
This isn't Nelson's first attempt at remaking an existing intellectual property. In 2021, he directed the remake of Wrong Turn. His other credits include the segment No Wake/Ambrosia in V/H/S/85, and the Friday the 13th short film, Sweet Revenge.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Nelson discussed video store memories and taking his shot when opportunity knocked. He also spoke about subverting the familiar, the visual nature of the slasher film, and, through juxtaposition, creating tension.
Paul Risker: Can you remember the moment when you first became aware of horror movies?
Mike P Nelson; I was very young. I remember it very clearly too. We would always go to the video store with our dad. It's a common story, especially in the Eighties when video stories were everywhere — that was like the classic thing you did. You'd go to the video store and rent a movie once a week. With the posters all over the walls and stand-up cutouts everywhere, going to those video stores was like going to an art gallery. I'll never forget walking into those places, because you couldn't avoid seeing the horror boxes and posters everywhere. I knew immediately this was my thing.
I was always obsessed with drawing monsters and writing monster stories. I remember the first story I ever wrote in kindergarten was about the wolf man eating somebody. And I drew a picture of the wolf man with blood on his mouth. This was me at five years old, and I remember my teacher saying at a parent-teacher conference, "So, this is what Michael drew." My parents were like, "Yes, we know."
I wasn't allowed to watch the movies, honestly, but I was able to see those images, whether it be on posters or somewhere else. Before the internet, you had to be in a video store to see this stuff, or you could open up the newspaper to check the movie showtimes — they had all the posters inside. I'd look at this stuff and come up with my own ideas just from looking at the box art or the poster art. I'd think to myself, 'What would this movie be if I could watch it?' And that's where so many of those ideas came from.
PR: Did you ever entertain the idea of remaking Silent Night, Deadly Night?
MPN: I'll be completely honest with you, no, I didn't think that I would be doing a remake for this. I didn't think I'd do a remake or a reboot of Wrong Turn either. With Wrong Turn, I read the script and thought it was unique and interesting. There was a lot of imagery in there that led me to think this was my thing — I could see and feel it. It was like a doorway that was opening, and I was gonna go for it.
With Silent Night, Deadly Night, it was more that I always wanted to do a Christmas horror movie. When Brad Miska and Cineverse reached out, they asked whether I had a take for this IP. I said I'd come up with one because I loved the challenge of taking this on. They loved it, and so, here we are now — it's like a bucket list thing.
PR: What was the twist you found that gave the remake a different feel?
MPN: It was making a film that felt familiar. So, when you start it, you know you're in Silent Night, Deadly Night. Yeah, it's a little different, it's updated, but it's Silent Night, Deadly Night-ish. Then, no, this is something else. Now I don't know what to expect, but I'm in. The hope of telling the story was that you could grab people and bring them into some familiar territory, and then just throw them off a cliff and leave them to try to fly. I love doing that, and I love movies where you have to sort of stick around, pay attention and figure it out. It's not going to answer every question for you right off the bat. The movie's ahead of you by a beat or five. That's engaging cinema, and I really enjoy that. So, I like to do that with my own films, and whether people agree with me or not is a whole other story. But that's where I have a lot more fun with it.
In terms of coming up with the crazier things that we did, honestly, they were things I've wanted to try. I didn't want to go into this overthinking it too much. I didn't want to appease people and ask whether people really want to see this. Instead, it was what do I want to see? What excites me, and what would be surprising if I was going to this movie? And how I built the film was using those kinds of pieces and seeing if it all fitted together. It felt like it did, and the producers of the original film said it feels like Silent Night, but new.
PR: Picking up on your earlier point about being driven by the visual possibilities of Wrong Turn, did remaking Silent Night, Deadly Night pique your visual curiosity? And, thinking more broadly about the slasher sub-genre, it's a visual one, whose set pieces define our memory of these films.
MPN: We're doing a film during Christmas, so that's a character in itself. So, we have these nods to the Advent calendar and obviously people dressed as Santa. A lot of the scenes were in this gift shop that's beautifully decorated by Pamela (Ruby Modine), who has an awesome decorating and design sense. She has been making trees look beautiful, while Billy (Rohan Campbell) has a bloody Advent calendar with a tree on it, with a bunch of hanging bodies. They're strangely the complete opposite, but at the same time, they're both dealing with their own demons. So, visually, yes, it's important to find all that connective tissue of how it relates to the characters, and how it all comes together at Christmas, so that it's not just a backdrop, but it's part of the story and the lore.
Slashers are one of the most visually dependent types, especially when you do it right, and it does its thing, because there are a lot of generic slashers out there that can be very forgettable. Oh, it's people in the woods. They're getting offed. There's a weird, deformed guy. That's it. But when somebody takes a property or an idea like that and really makes it their own by putting their visual stamp on it, be it something like Adam Green with Hatchet, or even the first Wrong Turn movie with Rob Schmidt and Alan McElroy, then it stands out. Something like the original Friday The 13th had this very specific, weird, but really creepy vibe in the woods. And that's why I feel those movies have stood the test of time.
PR: Music and sound design are integral to whether a horror succeeds or fails. How did you utilise the soundtrack to create the full emotional range necessary?
MPN: Well, obviously Christmas music was a huge part of it. Finding a good, strange juxtaposition of happy Christmas music with some pretty terrible imagery was a lot of fun to play with. Of course, it is not a new concept. And going through the original soundtrack of the first Silent Night, Deadly Night, to decide what we'd use was also a lot of fun.
Whenever you're in the store, it's always this very calming, everything's going to be okay choral Christmas music. Then you have Pam, who is very much the opposite of that. She's this tense bucket of rage, ready to explode at any moment. It's always about how you juxtapose a bunch of things throughout the movie, and that creates tension throughout everything. So, yes, you're right, music and sound are huge. And letting there be these moments of quiet, of letting the voice in Billy's head really be present when they're alone and be the only thing. Also, letting some of the kills that are more creeping and crawling, we'll call it the classic slasher scenes, play chillingly by using oners and a lot of very subtle music to follow Billy through those moments. Then, you have the crazy, raucous Christmas party, which goes off the rails and hopefully gets people cheering, which it has when I've been to screenings.
So, yes, you do need to know when you are utilising certain set pieces with sound design and visual telegrams to really create these specific vibes. And as I said, the juxtaposition of both Christmas music and what the characters are going through is key to creating a constant tension throughout the movie that is always hanging there.
Silent Night, Deadly Night is in cinemas now.
