Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2

Directed by Lee Harry, Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2 follows Eric Freeman’s Ricky Caldwell as he details his tragic, violent childhood for a psychiatrist (James L. Newman’s Henry Bloom) and eventually embarks on a killing spree of his own. There’s little doubt, certainly, that Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2 fares exceptionally, exceedingly poorly in its rather pointless first half, as filmmaker Harry, working from a script written with Joseph H. Earle, suffuses the proceedings with flashbacks from the first movie and offers little in the way of compelling new footage – which ensures that there’s almost nothing here at all designed to capture the viewer’s initial interest and attention. (It doesn’t help, either, that Freeman delivers a larger-than-life and predominantly inept performance that only compounds the arms-length atmosphere.) It’s worth noting, then, that Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2 improves slightly as it progresses into its comparatively enthralling second half, although Harry’s incompetent/campy approach to the material generally does prevent the viewer from embracing the narrative for more than a few minutes at a time. (That meme-friendly “garbage day” sequence is an obvious highlight, to be sure.) The end result is half a complete waste of time and half a midnight-movie-friendly endeavor that could only benefit from a raucous screening, as the picture, watched alone in one’s home, primarily comes off as a tedious and hopelessly padded-out sequel to an equally underwhelming first film.

*1/2 out of ****