Posts Tagged ‘Rohan Campbell’

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT: 3 STARS. “Have yourself a creepy little Christmas”

SYNOPSIS: In “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” a new holiday slasher now playing in theatres, Billy Chapman (Rohan Campbell) becomes a Killer Santa after seeing his parents murdered by a man dressed as Jolly Old St. Nick. Have yourself a creepy little Christmas.

CAST: Rohan Campbell, Ruby Modine, David Lawrence Brown, David Tomlinson, and Mark Acheson. Written and directed by Mike P. Nelson.

REVIEW: For those with murder and mayhem on their Christmas list, “Silent Night, Deadly Night” is a naughty seasonal treat.

A loose remake of the controversial 1984 cult movie of the same name, this version begins at Christmas with young Billy left an orphan after a man dressed as Santa kills his parents.

Scarred for life, Billy (Rohan Campbell) grows up to become a drifter, moving from town to town working odd jobs during the day, and checking names off his naughty list by night. Every Christmas season, dressed as Santa—wearing the suit, he says, “flips a switch for me.”—and guided by a voice in his head, he uses an axe to dispatch people he deems as naughty, saving their blood as a souvenir in a gory advent calendar. “Santa’s gonna slay.”

When he lands in a new town, and gets a job at the local Christmas Shoppe, he not only finds plenty of new victims, but a chance at love with Pamela (Ruby Modine), a store clerk with anger issues. “She always was a pipe bomb,” says her father.

There are some vast differences between the violent 1984 Christmas exploitation flick and the 2025 version. The basic back story is the same, but this time around the narrative owes a debt to vigilante serial killer Dexter Morgan of Showtime’s “Dexter.” The voice that guides Billy to chop down his victims like he’s cutting down a Christmas Tree is essentially his “dark passenger,” and anti-hero Billy only kills bad people. So, maybe not the freshest fruitcake under the tree, but it doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth.

In a throwback to the original film and other slashers of the 1980s, “Silent Night, Deadly Night” has loads of practical—i.e. non-CGI—kills that have a rough ‘n ready feel. Whether Billy is using an axe or a giant set of antlers to off his victims, the effects, often punctuated by the loud, dramatic score by Canadian trio Blitz//Berlin, hit the mark between gooey and occasionally goofy. For instance, Billy’s rampage through a neo-Nazi Christmas party—“I’m dreaming of a white power Christmas,” they say.—is violent, cathartic and yet also quite funny.

At a quick 95 gory minutes, “Silent Night, Deadly Night” is perhaps best suited for slasher fans or anyone who would pay to go see a movie called “Silent Night, Deadly Night.”

 

THE MONKEY: 3 ½ STARS. “splatter gags in great big gory blasts.”

SYNOPSIS: In “The Monkey,” a new horror comedy based on Stephen King’s 1980 short story of the same name, a vintage toy monkey brings murder and mayhem into the lives of twin brothers Hal and Bill, both played by Theo James.

CAST: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, and Sarah Levy. Directed by Osgood Perkins.

REVIEW: An inanimate object horror film about the randomness of life and death, “The Monkey” feels like an old-fashioned Stephen King movie. It’s a little rough-and-tumble, meanspirited and it delivers a series of practical splatter gags in great big gory blasts.

There’s even a callback to one of King’s favorite psychopaths.

It’s the story of an organ grinder monkey toy—Wait! Don’t call it a toy! It’s evil incarnate! “It’s basically the devil,” says Hal.—who, with grinning rictus of terror, bangs on a drum like he’s Charlie Watts. As he taps away people die in increasingly terrible ways. From fishhook trauma and aneurisms to immolation and canon fire, the monkey is indiscriminate in choosing his victims or how they will perish. Think “Final Destination,” minus the monkey, and you’ll get the idea.

Try as they might, the twins can’t stop the monkey from dancing to his own drum. “We know it couldn’t be destroyed,” says Hal, “but we hoped it could be controlled.”

As the body count rises, they soon realize that won’t be possible.

Director Osgood Perkins channels his inner Sam “Evil Dead” Raimi, combining old school splatter with very dark humor. It makes for a giddy goodtime, especially as the kills get more and more slapsticky and outlandish.

“The Monkey” does feel stretched from its short story origins to feature film, but Perkins keeps the energy up and the storytelling efficient enough to warrant its 97-minute runtime.