Silent Night, Deadly Night star pushes the importance of seeing the new movie in cinemas

Rohan Campbell (Halloween Ends) is stepping into another cult classic, and this time round he's a killer Santa Claus, a twisted character he hopes audiences will go and watch in the cinema this festive season.

A reimagining of the once controversial 1984 movie, Silent Night, Deadly Night follows Billy (Campbell), a serial killer who is driven to murder after witnessing his parents being slain by a man in a Santa costume.

The new slasher veers slightly from the original, with the 2025 iteration of Billy being guided to kill by a voice in his head that leads him to choosing people with poor morals as his next victims.

As described by director Mike P. Nelson, this movie has "something a bit sweeter than the trauma-filled original", which leading star Rohan Campbell has stressed is worth seeing in a movie theatre.

"I think it's all about just focusing on what the spirit or energy of what that first movie does," Campbell exclusively told RadioTimes.com. "It's why it's so important to go see movies in theatres. [It's] the collective feeling you get and the communal energy that comes out of the film, I think, is what is at the core of that movie."

With Nelson already a fan of the original source material, he was able to twist the original tale into "camp feelings, super random left turns, [and] hyper graphic kill scenes," providing a heap of "fun" for audiences.

Campbell continued: "This movie [has] got such a beautiful tone to it visually that I think really puts you in that place as well. And I feel like we just sort of focused on how it feels to go see that [in the cinema]."

Throughout the movie, audiences are taken on the wildest of rollercoasters as Billy finds himself committing murder, yet believing he is doing the right thing as they are bad people - and it's that inner conflict Rohan can't wait for fans to get stuck into.

He told RadioTimes.com: "I think those are the most fun movies to watch, right? It's like, if you can have a hero that's doing things that are incomprehensible, but you can understand the root logic of it, that's a fun place to sit in the movie theatre and be like s**t, this is interactive.

"You want to feel torn, you want to feel conflicted with these people. And I think with Billy, it's like even more than that. It's like this thing that he has to do, so if he's gonna do it, he's gonna do it the right way. And that's a fun thing, because it allows you to sort of sit back and enjoy that violence, without feeling too corrupted, or you get to ask yourself the question of, 'Well, what would I do?' in this safe space that's a movie theatre. It's a fun angle."

Silent Night, Deadly Night is released in UK cinemas on Friday 12th December 2025.

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