Violent Night (2022) ***

Violent Night (2022) treads a lot of familiar ground—it’s basically Die Hard 2 (1990) meets Home Alone meets Bad Santa (2003)—but it’s a lot of ridiculously gory fun. It strikes a nice blend of hilarious vulgar cynicism (via some pretty good one-liners) and genuinely heartwarming holiday cheer. 

Tommy Wirkola apparently loves winter-set action movies, as displayed in his more overtly over the top horror comedies Dead Snow (2009) (review) and Dead Snow: Red Vs. Dead (2014) (review). VN is a step up from those earlier efforts but still not quite a home-run. David Harbour is however perfectly suited to the material. While it's far from a new Christmas classic, VN washes down like a nice plate of cookies with a glass of milk—a solidly entertaining good time.