Review of Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation

Yours truly has a dumb but very punctual tradition to watch at least one holiday-themed horror movie during the Christmas period. After all these years, however, I'm running out of options and pretty much the only Christmas horror movies that I haven't seen yet are the more obscure sequels in the "Silent Night, Deadly Night" franchise. I couldn't get my filthy claws on part III, so I went straight to Brian Yuzna's fourth installment which has absolutely nothing to do with the original 1984 classic and actually hardly even qualifies as a Christmas movie. Apart from a couple of decorated trees left and right and one lousy strangulation with a cord of colorful lights, this "Initiation" has as much to see with Christmas as "Die Hard" has to see with the 4th of July… So, instead of a slasher with a psychopathic Santa Clause, we have a gooey splatter flick with a coven of female witches aiming to resurrect a demon by the name of Lilith. The over-ambitious Los Angeles journalist Kim is individually – and against the will of her superiors – investigating the bizarre suicide of a girl who jumped from a rooftop whilst on fire. She receives a lot of help from the kind and motherly occult book store owner Fima, but before she properly realizes what's happening, Kim is hallucinating about satanic symbols in her spaghetti and vomiting out cockroaches in her cockroach-infested little apartment. "SN,DN: Initiation" actually feels somewhat as if co- creator and director Brian Yuzna couldn't stuff all his crazy figments in his previous film "Society" and thus especially thought up another senseless plot. This way, he could also prolong his collaboration with the awesome special effects wizard Screaming Mad George and stuff the script – like a Christmas turkey – with perversities, filth and bugs. The film is definitely watchable, but a bit too random and imbecilic. Classy woman and two-time James Bond starlet ("The Man with the Golden Gun", "Octopussy") depicts one of the lead witches and surprisingly enough seems to enjoy herself as well. Cult actor Clint Howard appears as the men-hating witches' marginal errand boy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to look for an actual Christmas horror movie!