For my second round up of festive films this year, I will start at the cinema and Silent Night, Deadly Night.

The 1984 festive slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night was remade once before in 2012. That was widely considered to be a failure, so now we have the third go round in what will, no doubt, be an attempt to re-start the franchise. The bare bones of the plot is the same – when Billy Chapman (Rohan Campbell) witnesses his parents’ grisly murder on Christmas Eve at the hands of Santa, it ignites a lifelong mission to spread holiday fear.

He moves around the country and every Christmas, he dons the iconic red suit and kills those that have been bad. When he pitches up in a small town called Hackett, he meets Pamela Sims (Ruby Modine) and falls for her, even though she has issues of her own.

Mike P. Nelson’s reboot is all over the place. It feels like two separate films bolted together. One about Billy’s annual killing spree and one about a child kidnapper called The Snatcher who Billy and Pamela try to track down. That is not to say that it is not entertaining. Campbell and Modine have genuine chemistry and there is one terrific sequence where Billy slaughters people attending a white supremacist party.

It is very uneven and not destined to be a Christmas classic, but it has some merits.

Rating: 6 out of 10

New on Netflix are a couple of films of very different quality. In My Secret Santa, a desperate single mother loses her job and resorts to disguising herself as an elderly man to get hired as a local ski resort’s Santa Claus for the holidays. Things become complicated when the resort manager begins to suspect her and she falls in love with the owner’s handsome son. This is a traditional inoffensive festive romcom with some minor chuckles and no surprises.

Jingle Bell Heist features two thieves, Sophia (Olivia Holt) and Nick (Connor Swindells), who realise that they both have designs on robbing the same department store at Christmas in London. Most years at least one new festive film arrives that will become a regular watch in my household and this is it for 2025. Abby McDonald and Amy Reed’s story niftily provides both Sophia and Nick with plausible reasons for committing the crime. Holt and Swindells work well together and the end twist was a good surprise.

Ratings out of 10:
My Secret Santa: 5
Jingle Bell Heist: 8

Over on Amazon Prime, the offerings are are not impressive. In Oh. What. Fun., Claire Clauster (Michelle Pfeiffer) makes the Christmas magic happen every year for her family but her children and grandchildren don’t realise the effort it takes, until she goes missing. There are a lot of good performers on screen but it feels like they just had a camera pointed at them with the hope magic will happen. It doesn’t. 

Merry Heistmas had the potential to be as fun as Jingle Bell Heist but it is no where near as good. A small-time thief, with the help of his unwitting, estranged daughter, puts together a band of Christmas crooks, posing as carol singers, to access a swanky house in order to steal a giant diamond. It is boring, lacks suspense, there is a lot more singing than robbing and the budget feels painfully small.

Ratings out of 10:
Oh. What. Fun: 3
Merry Heistmas: 4

As usual Movies 24, rebranded to Christmas 24, is pumping out a non-stop array of Christmas cheer. The best of the year so far from them is Christmas Above the Clouds. It is a modern day re-telling of A Christmas Carol that stars Erin Krakow as Ella Neezer, a workaholic boss who treats her staff appallingly, including making them work on Christmas Day. Then she is visited by three ghosts… This is pretty well done, with a few mild laughs and decent performances by Krakow and the dependable Taylor Hynes. 

After his engagement is called off, Justin (Joey Lawrence) retreats to a secluded cabin meant for his honeymoon in The Great Christmas Snow In, only to be snowed in with author Jane (Amy Fuller), his ex-fiancée’s cousin. As tension builds, a spark forms between them, but then  but Justin’s ex shows up with her new boyfriend. This is a very uneven film. Lawrence and Fuller are good and work well together. The amusing moments are interspersed with some cringeworthy ones, particularly when Justin acts out scenes from Jane’s books.

Much worse is Holiday Touchdown – a Bills Love Story. Sparks fly between two lifelong Buffalo Bills fans as they try to discover the identity of a mysterious Christmastime gift giver. Like the Kansas City Chiefs movie last year, the American Football theme leaves me cold and two parallel stories of unrequited love are pretty boring. What this does have in its favour are the talents of Joe Pantoliano and Christopher Schirripa as well as brief appearances by Andrew W. Walker and Tyler Hynes.

Ratings out of 10:
Christmas Above the Clouds: 6
The Great Christmas Snow In: 5
Holiday Touchdown – a Bills Love Story: 3.5

I really enjoyed the comedy action movie about an ex assassin getting pulled back into the business, The Family Plan, in 2023. This Christmastime set sequel, also written by David Coggesgall and directed by Simon Cellan Jones, Family Plan 2, is exclusively on Apple TV. Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Monaghan return as Dan and Jessica Morgan. Going for a trip to Europe during Christmas, Dan had planned the perfect vacation for his family, until his past continues to haunt them in unexpected ways. Not as zippy as the first film and Wahlberg is hardly stretched but there is still a lot to enjoy.
Rating: 7 out of 10

Sky Movies is treading on Christmas 24’s toes by showing some new Hallmark movies. Three Wisest Men is the second sequel to Three Wise Men and a Baby features the three Brenner Brothers dealing with personal changes and their mother’s decision to sell the family home before Christmas. Between in-laws, wild animals, and a mall Santa, they try to make the holidays perfect. The first in the series was one of the best festive Hallmark movies of recent years, though the sequel lowered the laugh count and increased the ‘cute’ kids. The third entry is a marked improvement, with a number of chuckles and good turns from Andrew W. Walker, Margaret Colin and Lochlyn Munro. 

An Alpine Holiday is much more run of the mill. A grandmother’s last wish brings two estranged sisters Faith (Ashley Williams) and Kelly (Laci J. Mailey) back together to travel to the French Alps for Christmas to recreate her first trip there with their grandfather. I liked the start of this story but it gradually runs out of steam.

They also have their own production, Tinsel Town. Kiefer Sutherland stars as Brad Mac, a washed up actor who made a career in action movies, resulting in three Razzie nominations. Devoid of all other options, his agent secures him a part in a play in England, though Brad is unaware that it is actually a pantomime. With Danny Dyer and Rebel Wilson in the cast, I was not expecting much but the first half is pretty good. Then it descends into sickly sentimentality and characters unrealistically transform from being bad people to good ones. Derek Jacobi adds class but Jason Manford is wasted. The panto at the end is painful, particularly Sutherland’s singing.

Ratings out of 10:
Three Wisest Men: 5.5
An Alpine Holiday: 4
Tinsel Town: 5

Finally for this time, available to rent on the usual services, is The Secret Santa Project. It is based on a book by Tracy Bloom and set in a London council’s accounting department. It tells the intertwined stories of the people who work there, including Diane (Samantha Giles), the grinchy head of accounts, her deputy, Jerry (Barrie Ryan English) who has fallen for a man he met in a coffee shop and cheery trainee Jolene (Myla Carmen) who attempts to sprinkle Christmas joy with her plan for secret Santa.

Director Sean Healy has worked mostly on TV, primarily in soaps, and that shows in his rather flat style, as well as with the casting not only of Giles but also Charlie Brooks as a single mum who has met a handsome guy who treats her badly. She actually gives the best performance, along with the reliable Richard Durden as a grief stricken colleague. Mark Williams as the object of Jerry’s desire is miscast though and Jolene is pretty annoying. Everything gets wrapped up for the best at the end, and, whilst there is some Christmas cheer, it is all quite ordinary and predictable.
Rating: 5 out of 10