Movies - TV
Violent Night Director Fought For The Movie's Home Alone Homage To Be 'A Lot Bigger'
By DREW TINNIN
December is a time for many to rewatch their favorite Christmas classics and update their annual rotation with new additions that are released during the season. One of the latest holiday movies is Tommy Wirkola’s “Violent Night,” an action-comedy that features an R-rated, butt-kicking Santa Claus and a sequence filled with traps in a homage to “Home Alone.”
Once Wirkola and his team visualized the realistic results of the life-threatening traps of “Home Alone” and expanded on them, the scene got bigger. The director explained, “Hey, let’s just show what really had happened if we put some people through those traps. I think also why it’s so funny is because Trudy, the little girl, she doesn’t realize she’s hurting people.”
The scene is so hilariously violent that those working on it had to remember that they were making a Christmas movie, especially when confronted with the possibility that the sequence had gone too far. Yet, according to Wirkola, “If you do it with that wink in the eye, if you do it with that Christmas spirit, it will still feel funny. That’s why we got away with so much as we did.”