Silent Night, Zombie Night (2009)

"This Christmas, you are the holiday feast."

Plot

A week before Christmas, a viral outbreak turns the citizens of Los Angeles into the walking dead. On the brink of severing ties with both his wife and longtime partner, L.A.P.D. officer Frank Talbot finds himself trapped with them. As death closes in their survival is further threatened by the fact that both men love the same woman.

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My quest to find new holiday-themed horrors every year is proving more difficult than ever so I’m having to scrape the barrel this season. No further evidence of that is with Silent Night, Zombie Night, a low-grade zombie flick that I would never have touched in a million years if it wasn’t for the festive theme. If the fact that Sean Cain was the writer, editor, director and producer didn’t set alarm bells ringing in my head, then nothing will. I don’t know the guy, nor his previous work, but when the entire film production revolves around a single person, it’s never a good sign of quality control and curbing excess.

Silent Night, Zombie Night is unquestionably the result of a brainstorming session where Cain got together with some friends and wondered how he could make yet another generic zombie outbreak horror film but add something that hadn’t been done yet. We’ve had all sorts from Volcano Zombies to Marijuambies and the unstoppable double header of Nazi Zombies. In this case, add a minor Christmas theme to proceedings (though you would hardly guess it was Christmas here save for a Santa hat, some throwaway dialogue and some Christmas lights). I guess setting it in Los Angeles, where the sun is constantly shining in the film and there are clear skies, kind of kills any cold, wintry festive ambiance the film is going for. If you’re going to shoot Christmas zombies, then at least find somewhere snowy or at least shoot the film at night to give it a bit of atmosphere. Don’t bet on surviving this one without seeing a zombified Santa too.

Silent Night, Zombie Night features a love triangle at the centre of the plot so amidst the carnage there’s daft human drama to focus on. The wholly uninteresting melodrama puts the brakes on the film ever wanting to break out on its own horror footing. Too much dialogue and too many scenes of getting to know the characters do allow the film to drag considerably from time to time. Even at eighty-three minutes long, writer/director Sean Cain seems to be stretching everything out as long as he possibly can and pads out the film with plenty of filler. He isn’t the first nor will he be the last to do so in such a film but its painfully obvious he’s running out of ideas in the final third by introducing some new characters into the mix simply to provide extra zombie chow. Trying to create chaos and carnage on the scale of what the artwork shows was always going to be a tough proposition for a low budget filmmaker and Silent Night, Zombie Night comes off a bit wanting in this aspect.

The zombie stuff is about standard for this type of low budget horror film. There are not too many zombies wandering around the suburbs, so you never really get the sense that this is an apocalypse in progress, just a localised infection. Standard issue zombie hijinks ensue including the usual ‘one character is bitten and the others must deal with the consequences’ scenario and ‘don’t trust every human survivor you come across’ nonsense. Zombie make-up effects are akin to you and your mates painting your faces for a Halloween party for the most but the gore effects are mainly practical and gooey which was great to see. Silent Night, Zombie Night toys around with the two types of cinematic zombies – the slow, silent shufflers and the Olympic sprinter snarlers – giving reasons for both to exist in the same universe. The explanation is daft and it’s a purely narrative choice to include them so that Cain could write set pieces around both types. Do you need your zombies to move slowly towards their target or charge at full pace towards them? Well don’t worry because the script will allow you to do both.

Vernon Wells and Felissa Rose get headlined billing though they’re only glorified cameos designed to ‘sell’ the film to a genre market who would recognise the two. It’s Jack Forcinito as who steals the show as the slightly unhinged Frank. In a film where almost everyone surrounding him appears to be reading their lines for the first time, Forcinito goes for broke with his performance. Silent Night, Zombie Night does have a light-hearted side to it and there are some humorous moments throughout, allowing Forcinito to play up the absurdity of some sequences. He’s meant to be an asshole of a character but he's impossible to dislike.

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Final Verdict

Silent Night, Zombie Night has its moments. As a low budget independent zombie film, it’s certainly better than most of its competition. However, as a festive-themed fright fest, it fails on almost all counts. Don’t sell your film as a holiday horror and skimp on, you know, the holiday stuff.

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Silenr Night, Zombie Night Director(s): Sean Cain Writer(s): Sean Cain Actor(s): Jack Forcinito, Andy Hopper, Nadine Stenovitch, Lew Temple, Vernon Wells, Felissa Rose, Timothy Muskatell, Jimmy Williams Duration: 83 mins