VIOLENT NIGHT Creative Team Discusses the Film's Brutal and Violent Homage to HOME ALONE
The Christmas action comedy Violent Night was released in theaters this weekend, and I don’t know if you saw it or not, but I had a freakin’ blast watching the movie! This movie is just pure violent holiday fun, and David Harbour was awesome in the role of Santa Claus!
The film sees Santa facing off with a team of villainous criminals who take a wealthy family hostage, and he swoops in to save the day! The movie has been compared to Die Hard, but it also hilariously pays homage to Home Alone as well.
There’s a great sequence in the film where a little girl starts setting up traps like in Home Alone, but the outcome is so much more bloody and brutal than the original family film. When talking about this Home Alone homage, producer Kelly McCormick told CB:
"[Jonathan] Eusebio, who's our second unit director and coordinator and Tommy Wirkola, our director with David Leitch and myself, had this plan of trying to really pay homage to [Home Alone] but allow for it to be sort of innocent but also incredibly dangerous at the same time. And so Leah's character, Trudy, doesn't know that what's happening is turning into a real problem, and she's just kind of playing games, and kind of how it then flowed into these like crazy and serious moments for these other characters. That you can really camp up and have a good time with. It is a kid, and you want it to feel like almost like an R-rated kids' movie in that section. That was the goal, and I do believe we achieved it in a way that kind of surprised all of us while we were making it as well."
Harbour went on to say that the Home Alone sequence is a “real crowd pleaser,” and it is! The audience I saw the movie with were laughing and just having fun while it played out. The actor added:
“I mean, it plays so well. I think part of it too is that she's so charismatic, and so charming and wide-eyed and sweet, that her trying to recreate that movie in a crazy violent way is quite surprising and hilarious. Tommy's great with all that stuff. He was so creative on set, so spontaneous and such a wacky, fun dude, and loved the bloody stuff so much that the whole spirit and the whole vibe was very joyful. It was a really nice shoot."
Director Tommy Wirkola said that the scene was in the script for the very beginning, but he wanted to take it to a bigger level. He explained:
"The Home Alone scene was it was always in the script, but one of the first things I said when I read the script was that this scene could be so much bigger. It should be the showstopper in the movie, because I -- like so many other people, and I'm sure that's the reason why the writers came up with it -- always wondered what would happen if Home Alone really took place. Those traps would be lethal. So, our approach was actually, okay, let's try to replicate that. We don't wanna go too elaborate with the traps. You just wanna really wanna show what happens if those traps really existed. We cast stunt people for those roles so we can really hurt them and really do some crazy stuff with them, and the reason why the scene work so well is also because Trudy, the little girl, she doesn't realize she's doing anything horrific. She's just doing the movie. It's just fun and games!"
In the film, “When a team of mercenaries breaks into a wealthy family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone inside hostage, the team isn’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint.”
The film also stars John Leguizamo (John Wick), Cam Gigandet (Without Remorse), Alex Hassell (Cowboy Bebop), Alexis Louder (The Tomorrow War), Edi Patterson (The Righteous Gemstones) and Beverly D’Angelo (National Lampoon’s Vacation franchise).
If you saw the movie, what did you think? If you didn’t, you should check it out, it’s fun!