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Luni's Thoughts: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 4
17 years ago
In the middle of the night in LA, a young woman falls to her death while ablaze.
A young reporter named Kim sees a report about it on the tv, and decides she wants to investigate behind this for her first full fledge article for her paper.
What she discovers behind this event is an evil cult, and now she's too far in to just back out now...she started it, now she must finish the Initiation.
Brian Yuzna of Re-Animator fame directs this 4th film in the SNDN franchise, the first film to really break away from the Killer Santa idea, as well as just the whole slasher genre entirely.
Clint Howard also co-stars as the homless/mental Ricky, a name chosen to be a kind of inside joke to those who had been following the series.
and Reggie Bannister from the Phantasm series makes a couple of quick cameo appearances.
Other then that? Who cares about the rest of the cast.
An interesting idea, to be sure...let's just drop the whole beaten path laid out by the last 3 films, and just keep using the same title for a variety of Christmas related horror stories! Not wholly original, since that had been the plan to do with the HalloweeN series back in 1982 with HalloweeN 3: Season of the Witch, a full 8 years before this movie was released.
And continuing it's copying of the HalloweeN series, this movie picks what is probably one of the weakest ideas for this kind of movie ever. While I'm a fan of HalloweeN 3, it was overall kind of 'weak' in comparison to Parts 1 and 2. Same goes here...Part 1 was deeply disturbing to parents that didn't really quite understand, Part 2 was riding it's coattails but managed to come into it's own with cornball jokes and just genuinely funny bits, and SNDN3 was more a generic slasher flick that just kind of finished the story.
The film shows promise in the beginning....a mysterious death, an intriguing story idea about this cult, and a reporter who's too headstrong for her own good, and them wanting her part of their cult.
But, beyond that, it begins to just fall apart. The first half of the film is long, drawn out, and in the end not that scary and pretty boring. There's all this nasty imagery to do with roaches, but once we get into the real meat of the movie, this never gets explained. We never find out what's the deal with the bugs....or, hell, the symbols, faces, and many other things.
Worst of all....we don't even know what the heck is going on with the cult itself! There's no reason, no rhyme. There is nothing here, nothing at all...no background, no purpose, nothing.
Ricky starts out as a seemingly homeless man, but we find out eventually he's part of this cult...we don't know what purpose he serves save for man-slave when they need a dirty job done(and we ain't talking washing dishes, folks), but why was he wandering the streets when the woman jumped? Don't know....when he should have been helping them.
Then 2nd half of the film gets nice and exciting, with a nice struggle with Ricky, Kim, and her boyfriend Hank at her home, leads into a kidnapping, more disturbing bug imagery, more things done by the cult. The 2nd half is much faster, more interesting...but it's not enough. The style and wow of the fight is overshadowed by the poor writing and info given in this film...it just flat out stinks.
And the Christmas relation? Forget about it...Kim is Jewish, first of all, and it seemed like what little bit of Christmas stuff that was in the movie(Mostly at Hank's parent's place), was just tacked on as they were making the film, instead of having crap-to-do with the actual story.
And, on top of all this, the body count shrinks considerably from even Part 3! And, let's face it, often times all a horror movie has going for it all the kills, and this one is incredibly lacking in even that department.
It is of interest to note, however, that this one, unlike Parts 2 and 3, consisted entirely of all original footage, and none used from the first film. Despite the original's director's claims of all the films just ripping off his first one, this was brand new stuff, even if it did stink.
The movie, much like the cult herein, serves no purpose then to bore, annoy, and frustrate you, and unless you like bad movies, steer clear.
.5 outta 5 chainsaws.
A young reporter named Kim sees a report about it on the tv, and decides she wants to investigate behind this for her first full fledge article for her paper.
What she discovers behind this event is an evil cult, and now she's too far in to just back out now...she started it, now she must finish the Initiation.
Brian Yuzna of Re-Animator fame directs this 4th film in the SNDN franchise, the first film to really break away from the Killer Santa idea, as well as just the whole slasher genre entirely.
Clint Howard also co-stars as the homless/mental Ricky, a name chosen to be a kind of inside joke to those who had been following the series.
and Reggie Bannister from the Phantasm series makes a couple of quick cameo appearances.
Other then that? Who cares about the rest of the cast.
An interesting idea, to be sure...let's just drop the whole beaten path laid out by the last 3 films, and just keep using the same title for a variety of Christmas related horror stories! Not wholly original, since that had been the plan to do with the HalloweeN series back in 1982 with HalloweeN 3: Season of the Witch, a full 8 years before this movie was released.
And continuing it's copying of the HalloweeN series, this movie picks what is probably one of the weakest ideas for this kind of movie ever. While I'm a fan of HalloweeN 3, it was overall kind of 'weak' in comparison to Parts 1 and 2. Same goes here...Part 1 was deeply disturbing to parents that didn't really quite understand, Part 2 was riding it's coattails but managed to come into it's own with cornball jokes and just genuinely funny bits, and SNDN3 was more a generic slasher flick that just kind of finished the story.
The film shows promise in the beginning....a mysterious death, an intriguing story idea about this cult, and a reporter who's too headstrong for her own good, and them wanting her part of their cult.
But, beyond that, it begins to just fall apart. The first half of the film is long, drawn out, and in the end not that scary and pretty boring. There's all this nasty imagery to do with roaches, but once we get into the real meat of the movie, this never gets explained. We never find out what's the deal with the bugs....or, hell, the symbols, faces, and many other things.
Worst of all....we don't even know what the heck is going on with the cult itself! There's no reason, no rhyme. There is nothing here, nothing at all...no background, no purpose, nothing.
Ricky starts out as a seemingly homeless man, but we find out eventually he's part of this cult...we don't know what purpose he serves save for man-slave when they need a dirty job done(and we ain't talking washing dishes, folks), but why was he wandering the streets when the woman jumped? Don't know....when he should have been helping them.
Then 2nd half of the film gets nice and exciting, with a nice struggle with Ricky, Kim, and her boyfriend Hank at her home, leads into a kidnapping, more disturbing bug imagery, more things done by the cult. The 2nd half is much faster, more interesting...but it's not enough. The style and wow of the fight is overshadowed by the poor writing and info given in this film...it just flat out stinks.
And the Christmas relation? Forget about it...Kim is Jewish, first of all, and it seemed like what little bit of Christmas stuff that was in the movie(Mostly at Hank's parent's place), was just tacked on as they were making the film, instead of having crap-to-do with the actual story.
And, on top of all this, the body count shrinks considerably from even Part 3! And, let's face it, often times all a horror movie has going for it all the kills, and this one is incredibly lacking in even that department.
It is of interest to note, however, that this one, unlike Parts 2 and 3, consisted entirely of all original footage, and none used from the first film. Despite the original's director's claims of all the films just ripping off his first one, this was brand new stuff, even if it did stink.
The movie, much like the cult herein, serves no purpose then to bore, annoy, and frustrate you, and unless you like bad movies, steer clear.
.5 outta 5 chainsaws.
blade
~blade
a definite yikes there...
