After 41 Years, New Horror Movie Reboot Sets Franchise Record With First Ever Fresh Rotten Tomatoes Score

Rotten Tomatoes may not have been around in the 1980s for the heyday of slasher movies, but that doesn’t mean the reviews for all those endless sequels haven’t found their way onto the platform in the meantime. Fans may be surprised if they go check what the score for a recent Halloween sequel is just to satisfy their curiosity, only to find that, yes, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers does have enough reviews on Rotten Tomatoes to earn a score (there are 28 reviews for an appalling 11% approval rating). Even more surprising than the old films in a series all having RT scores, though, is when a new one comes along that completely flips the script.

This Friday will see Cineverse release the brand new Silent Night, Deadly Night, a fresh take on the classic 1980s slasher movie from writer/director Mike P. Nelson and starring Rohan Campbell. With just a few days to go before the film makes its debut, the reviews are starting to come in, and in what may come as a surprise to horror fans, they’re all mostly positive. So positive in fact that it has propelled the new Silent Night, Deadly Night to a place on Rotten Tomatoes that the series has never enjoyed, a fresh score.

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Silent Night, Deadly Night Reboot Sets Major Franchise Record

As of this writing, the brand new Silent Night, Deadly Night has an impressive 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 27 total reviews. Though not technically “Certified Fresh,” the movie isn’t too far from hitting that distinction, something that would previously be seen as impossible for a film in this franchise. Deep Focus review notes that the new Silent Night, Deadly Night is “sure to become a rewatched Christmastime classic for horror-obsessed households,” while The Mary Sue reveals that the film “takes what the original sets up and does something new and refreshing.” Even Fangoria, one of the most respected names in horror, has high praise for the film, specifically calling out its “copious gore” and “tongue-in-cheek humor.”

For comparison’s sake, the 85% rating for the new Silent Night, Deadly Night puts it in a totally different class from the rest of the series. The first film, the 1984 version of the title, sits at 53% and has the highest score of any movie in the core franchise. Horror fans may know it well, but Silent Night, Deadly Night was controversial at the time of its release for depicting a “killer Santa” as many audiences started to turn against the violence of slasher and horror movies in the decade. In truth, the picketing that happened around the movie almost certainly gave it more popularity, leading to more and more sequels.

The first film was followed by the cult sequel, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, notable for a meme-worthy line (“Garbage Day!”) that it reused 25 minutes of footage from the first film in its brisk 88-minute runtime. That sequel, though marginally beloved by horror audiences now, sits at 30% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Three more Silent Night, Deadly Night movies followed that sequel, but they all have a fate worse than the dreaded green splat of a “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, in fact they don’t have a score at all because there aren’t enough reviews. Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! has only four reviews, all negative, while Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation and Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker both have three reviews each. (Part 4 has one positive review, while Part 5 has two positives). A forgotten remake of the series, simply titled Silent Night, was released in 2012 and is currently clinging to the barely fresh rating of 62%, just three points away from a Rotten score with 13 total reviews.

Suffice to say, this all paints a grim picture of the larger Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise in the grand scheme of horror movie series, but it goes to show how the 2025 revival of the series is clearly doing something right, or critics have finally just caught up to this specific style of Christmas carnage.

Silent Night, Deadly Night premieres in theaters on December 12.