Young wannabe journalist Kim stumbles across a potentially interesting story about a suicide where a girl jumped from the roof of the building while getting herself on fire. What follows is a story about a twisted cult that targets Kim.
The first "Silent Night, Deadly Night" released in 1984 was back then a truly shocking movie that gave the usual good ol' Santa Clause his Mr Hyde persona. Traumatized boy Billy saw a man in a Santa suit killing his parents and years after that he dresses the same costume and goes on a killing spree. If you are not familiar with the movie or the series, my recommendation is to check the first one out. The movie was a success, generated hundreds or thousands of protest letters to the distributors, but the bad publicity didn't hurt the movie at all. The sequel was special only because it hosted at least 30 minutes from the original in a copy/paste way and the third one was just plain bad.
Every Christmas I engage in a X-mas horror movie marathon and this is one of the movies that were in my queue for these holidays. The major thing about this sequel is that it is in no way connected with the previous three parts of the series. Actually it is the first bastard child in the franchise, as the final part "Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker" also doesn't have anything to do with the original storyline. To majority of the people this sounds good, as the quality after the original went rapidly down, but these "off topic" sequels are quite disappointing.
 
The movie focuses around young office worker Kim, who really cannot make a jump start in her journalism career as the chief editor and his entourage see her just as a sex object. Her love connection with the journalist hunk really doesn't help in changing this fact. On her own, she starts to pursue the story about the mentioned suicide and within 10 minutes she becomes a target of a female cult. Unknowingly, she eats some "candy" and out of the sudden starts seeing large snake like cockroaches around the apartment. Soon, we find out that this is just her channelizing her fears (!?) and that the girls from the cult want to see her get initiated, as well as killing a man in the process.
While the movie is uninspiring it had a really cool horror clique working on it. It was written and directed by Brian Yuzna, which comes very apparent since the first special effect jumps on the screen. If you know his movies you are familiar with the distinct visual feeling his films empower. Besides him we have Evilspeak's Clint Howard, genre legend Reggie Bannister and even that girl that played the female lead in James Bond's movie "Octopussy."
The title "stinks" of a Christmas movie, but while the story is happening on this holy day, there isn't any special impact surrounding it. The X-mas part of the movie looked really silly as it focused on a typical family getogether where we witnessed some boring and stupid discussions. Besides this you can find a couple of Christmas trees in some scenes and that is it. Too bad, looks like I need to re watch "Jack Frost" (not the Michael Keaton movie, the "other" one) to get in a Christmas horror spirit.
The movie really isn't anything special. It is one of those sequels that after three or four predecessors stray into something completely different. It tries to refresh the series, but it fails. The only good aspect of the movie are the effects which in a couple of scenes made the movie at least a bit entertaining.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Bugs
MOVIE YEAR: 1990
DIRECTOR: Brian Yuzna
WRITING CREDITS: Arthur Gorson, Woody Keith
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Clint Howard, Neith Hunter, Tommy Hinkley
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 90 min
RATING: 3/10
Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation Website/IMDB Click here
Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation Trailer Click here
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