SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (Credit: Cineverse)
Mike P. Nelson’s take on Silent Night, Deadly Night is now in theaters. After bringing down the house at Fantastic Fest, the Christmas horror is now unleashed into the wild, and it’s an excellent Christmas gift indeed. Nelson is well versed in playing in the sandbox of established franchises while bringing his own original take into the mix, first with his 2021 take on Wrong Turn and most recently with the Jason Universe vignette, Sweet Revenge. When it comes to tackling IP with an existing fanbase, “I had more of the anxiety earlier on,” Nelson admits.
“Look, I'm not going to lie, it obviously creeps in occasionally, but I think with Wrong Turn, that was the first one where we were like, ‘Balls to the wall, yeah, we're doing this thing different, and we don't care what people think.’ And then people told us what they thought. The movie was actually received pretty well, but we had so many people who were mad. Oh my God, did I get a lot of hate mail for that. That really opened my eyes to how scared I should be to take on these IPs, and do I even want to do this anymore?”
As more opportunities came in, Nelson decided, “Fuck it, I'm going to go for it. I don't care. If I'm going to make a film, I'm going to do something that's original, I don't care if it's an IP. First of all, I'm going to make an original story. Yeah, I'm going to bring in some of the pieces and bits from what it was and make you feel like you're there, almost like disarm you like, ‘Oh yeah, this is one of those. Oh, no, it's not.’ Knowing full well that's going to work for a handful of people, and some people it's not.”
Framed against the backdrop of his original story, of course, Nelson still included a Santa sack’s worth of Silent Night, Deadly Night Easter eggs for fans of the franchise. I won’t spoil them here, but you’ve undoubtedly seen at least a couple in the trailer: “Naughty!” But his favorite Easter eggs have absolutely nothing to do with Silent Night, Deadly Night. What are they? Two of them are in line with Christmas horror, but the third (and his favorite) may surprise you.
“Two of them are from Black Christmas, and one of them is from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” Nelson beams. Say what now?
“The first one is when Billy's buying gifts and he says, ‘For my dad,’ and [Pam] says, ‘A crystal unicorn and earrings?’ So there's one. Then you have Billy on the phone putting a PO order in, and he says, ‘Hey, Agnes, it's me, Billy. I just wondered if you could send us another order…’ so there's that.” Black Christmas meets Silent Night, Deadly Night, ok, that checks. How about that Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade nod? “My favorite because it's going to go under everybody's radar is when they get to that Christmas party, and Billy says, ‘Let's just find her and get this over with,’ and Charlie's response is, ‘Agreed. We are pilgrims in an unholy land.’ Which was Sean Connery's line in The Last Crusade, which was for me just mmmm.”
If you’ve seen that viral clip going around, the Last Crusade nod will already make a whole lot of sense. If not, it will all come together when you’re watching Silent Night, Deadly Night in the theatre this weekend. For more, check out our interview with star Rohan Campbell, breaking down that specific scene.
Even from the sneak peek floating around the internet, it’s clear that particular scene involved a lot of moving parts, including full stunt choreography. A tall order for a movie working without the benefit of a long schedule. “We were just going to do it and hope that we got enough,” says Nelson.”Honestly, we just got enough to get that scene, it was rough. But what made it work was our stunt team. Holy buckets, our incredible stunt coordinator, Kristen Sawatzky, helped design that sequence. I kind of told her what I was going for, what kind of things I wanted to see. She took her team, filmed this thing in their warehouse, and I was like, ‘You guys freaking nailed it.’”
But it wasn’t entirely the stunt team handling the action. Silent Night, Deadly Night star Rohan Campbell had to learn a good deal of stunt choreography under Sawatzky’s guidance to make it happen. “We threw around a couple of other little ideas, and then we locked it in. Rohan learned how to work with that ax and did 95% of that. You see he's doing it and that was so important. Thank God he's a very able human being and just picks stuff up on a dime. That was a lot of fun. It was a strange set to walk in on every day.”
Shooting a Nazi scene was admittedly uncomfortable, but in the end, “There were many middle fingers being thrown throughout the day, which was great,” Nelson laughs. “ I'll never forget in The Last Crusade when they were shooting the book burning scene, I remember watching behind the scenes where Spielberg said, ‘Okay, everybody cross your fingers behind your back when we roll,’ and I kind of had that mentality. You had to go in kind of like, ‘Yep, we're doing this. So okay, here we go. Let's get good with God.’
“The craziest part was obviously when things go down and you have all these people who are dressed up like Santas and they're saluting and you have to get a bunch of people to do it properly. Everybody is kind of uncomfortable, but then everybody's like, ‘You know what? We know what this is about and we know what we're doing here and we get to do this.’ Then, of course, everybody had so much fun dying.”
Silent Night, Deadly Night is now in theaters.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Watch our full interview with Mike P. Nelson below. For more, check out our interview with Rohan Campbell.
