The title “Silent Night,” action icon John Woo’s first American film in twenty years, is a double entendre. On one hand it refers to the holiday season in which most of the action takes place, but it’s also a nod to the film’s construction. With no dialogue, it’s a quiet movie about a guy who makes a lot of noise.
The movie begins with a bang as Brian Godluck (Joel Kinnaman), dressed in a Rudolph Christmas sweater and sleigh bell necklace, attempts to outrun two cars filled with gun toting bad guys. The odds are not tilted in his favor, and soon he is in hospital with a bullet-sized hole in his throat. Alive but unable to speak through shredded vocal cords, he’s lucky to be alive but doesn’t seem too happy about it.
Returning home with wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno) it’s revealed he is not the only victim. Turns out, on the previous Christmas Eve a stray bullet killed their young son Taylor in the front yard of their Texas home.
Haunted by the loss of his son, Brian hits the bottle, spending his days drunk and disengaged, waiting for the police to get on the case. At an appointment with Detective Dennis Vassel (Scott Mescudi), Brian spots the Most Wanted posters for the men responsible for murdering his son.
It triggers something in him; a fierce need for revenge. He becomes a one-man army, builds up an arsenal, trains in self-defense, does surveillance on the baddies and writes “Kill Them All” on the calendar on Christmas Eve.
Those looking to “Silent Night” for the patented John Woo full-on assault action will be disappointed. After the pulse-racing opening sequence the movie becomes ninety percent set-up, leading to a generic shoot-out so dull it makes “My Dinner with Andre” seem exciting by comparison. A fight scene between Brian and a gang member is promising, but ultimately leads nowhere.
The gimmick, cutting all dialogue save for the odd police scanner buzz, radio news report or the self-defense videos Brian watches, works against the effectiveness of the storytelling. Woo’s poetic visuals are evident, although a tear that turns into a bullet feels a little heavy handed, but the lack of dialogue reduces the characters to one dimension.
Kinnaman’s vacillates between ennui and bloodthirsty, but not much in between. We don’t know anything about him and because he doesn’t speak, he doesn’t even get a cool, “what I do have are a very particular set of skills” speech.
But at least he has some range. The gang members are meat puppets, snarling bullet catchers with targets on their backs and nothing more. This is a basic good vs. evil bullet ballet, but some kind of character work might have gone a long way toward making us care about the people on screen and their stories.
“Silent Night” takes a long time to get where it is going, and once it gets there, isn’t worth the wait.
Richard joins host Jim Richards of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush for Booze and Reviews! Today we talk about the the stylish crime drama “The Outfit,” the college horror “Master” and the “adult” scares of “X.” Then, we learn about the most stylish man who ever lived and the drink named after him.
Nearly fifty years after the original “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” made power tools a staple in grisly horror films, an attempted Netflix reboot upped the gore but missed the mark completely. The scariest thing about that movie is its “rotten” Tomatometer Score of 34%.
There isn’t a chainsaw in sight in “X,” a new horror film, now playing in theatres, but it breathes the same fetid air as Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror classic.
Set in 1979, the film stars Mia Goth as Maxine, an adult entertainer who believes she is destined for a bigger and better life outside the strip club run by her boyfriend Wayne (Martin Henderson doing a spot- on Matthew McConaughey impression). “I will not accept a life I do not deserve,” she says. Her first step to fame and fortune is “The Farmer’s Daughter,” a low budget porno Wayne hopes could blow up and be as popular as “Debbie Does Dallas.” As the film’s executive producer Wayne hires RJ (Owen Campbell), a film student with delusions of arthouse grandeur, his quiet sound technician girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) and porn stars Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and Jackson Hole (Scott Mescudi).
They pile into a van headed for rural Texas and a remote farm where they will live and shoot their film. “It’s perfect,” gushes RJ as they arrive at the farm a.k.a. Wayne’s ”studio backlot.” “It’s going to have lots of production value.”
But that’s not all it has. There is a creepy old couple who live in the main house. Wayne neglected to tell farmer Howard (Stephen Ure) why they rented the property. “He doesn’t know what we’re doing, and I intend to keep it that way.”
Despite Wayne’s promise of discretion, Howard and wife Pearl soon find out what’s happening on the sheets, under their roof.
Cue the hillybilly horror.
On the surface “X” is another riff on the “Chainsaw” hapless-city-slickers-vs.-evil-country-folk vibe, but it’s not all blood and guts (though the plasma flows). Howard and Pearl fight against their decaying bodies, resentful of the good-looking folks flaunting their youth and skin on their property. They may be God fearing folks, but that doesn’t stop them from acting on their basest desires. Writer, director and editor Ti West weaves in the primal fears of aging and sexual repression plus a dollop of religious fervor that all add depth to the horror.
The rural setting, the eerie quiet and darkness of the location, takes on a sinister feel as West peppers his sequences with the odd jump scare or anxiety inducing overhead shot.
By the time we get to the really gross stuff, West has already established “X’s” slow burn atmosphere, adding layer upon layer of tension and subtext as amuse-bouches for the bursts of violence that come in the third act. West stages some truly unpleasant kill sequences, perfect for slasher fans but may cause uncontrolable shudders in others.
“X” is a throwback to the horror of Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven, but with a sensibility that simultaneously feels like a tribute and an update.
