How violent is Violent Night?

Violent Night is an R-rated film that gives viewers a fresh take on the Christmas-movie genre, and it will likely be available to stream after its theatrical release.

The Violent Night film, which was released in theatres this past weekend, surpassed expectations with its success.

However, even though the film is so popular, it has received mixed reviews, likely because of the innate confusion of combining comedy with violent horror elements in a single film.

The film’s streaming release is still unclear at this point, but Violent Night will most likely be available on Peacock first.

The Violent Night premiere weekend

The Tommy Wirkola directed film, Violent Night, was officially released in theatres across the United States and Canada on the weekend of 2 December 2022.

Violent Night’s release weekend proved to be even more successful than the creators of the film predicted, and its global earnings of $20.35 million during this premiere weekend alone have already exceeded the $20 million which it cost to produce.

Everything you need to know about Violent Night

There is no doubt that Violent Night’s early success is due in large part to the interesting premise and excellent team behind the film.

After all, putting an action-comedy spin on the well-known and beloved Christmas movie genre is enough to get many fans who are tired of the same old, same old, flocking to theatres to watch this film.

Not to mention the fact that the team behind Violent Night is also responsible for some of the most popular actions films of all time, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Deadpool 2. Moreover, the film has David Harbour in the lead role as the drunken, fist-fighting Santa Claus.

Most viewers and critics who have already watched the film agree that while the cast does an excellent job at carrying a complex script and the film has the same sense of Christmas joy combined with over-the-top schemes and violence that films like Home Alone and Die Hard have become known for, it just ends up feeling too much yet underwhelming at the end of the day.

While Violent Night gets a disheartening user score of 6.8 on Metacritic, the film scored high on Rotten Tomatoes with a 90 percent audience score.

Thus, although the film is good enough, there is no real chance that it will become a holiday staple, and this is likely also what has caused the somewhat polarising reviews from audiences.

How to watch Violent Night

While Violent Night has been praised for its fresh approach, the film is incredibly violent and borders on being a full-blown horror-film, which means that it may not be the ideal film for family holiday viewing.

Therefore, streaming the film can be the ideal solution, but since no official announcements have been made yet for the streaming availability of the film, the following table can give you an idea of the different places where you may be able to watch Violent Night during and after its theatrical release:

How violent is Violent Night?

As its name suggests, Violent Night is an incredibly violent Santa Slasher film. The Santa Slasher sub-genre of films may be new to some viewers, but it has been well-established by films such as Santa’s Slay, Deadly Games, and many more. Violent Night is R-rated, and it definitely has its fair share of blood and gore.

Although Violent Night definitely has moments of levity, with various Christmas-themed weapons, like candy cane shanks, Christmas light garrots, Nutcracker knuckle-busters and more, the film is definitely not a feel-good family holiday movie and it gets extremely violent, with multiple gruesome on-screen deaths being portrayed throughout the film.

Is Violent Night a horror movie?

Violent Night definitely has a few key elements which would normally place it firmly in the horror genre category.

This includes the lengthy fight scenes and the psychological torture of watching the Lightstone family as they are taken hostage by the group of mercenaries in the film.

However, Violent Night is technically billed as an action-comedy movie and therefore, it cannot truly be regarded as a horror film.

Will Violent Night be on Peacock?

Violent Night, like most modern films, has only been released in theatres for now. However, Universal Pictures owns the film, which means that it will most likely be made available on their streaming service, Peacock, to stream after the film’s run in theatres is complete.

Neither Universal Pictures nor Peacock have made an official announcement as of yet regarding exactly when Violent Night will be available to stream on the platform.

However, due to Comcast, which owns Universal Pictures, focusing much more on its streaming content in 2022, new films have been released on Peacock as soon as 45 days after their initial theatrical release dates.

Will Violent Night be available to stream?

As part of the new strategy by the Comcast-owned Universal Pictures, all of the films that are released by the studio in 2022, and moving forward, will be made available to watch on Peacock first.

This means that the only way for you to stream Violent Night once it is out of the theatres if you want to watch it right away is  to subscribe to Peacock.

Over time, Violent Night will become available to stream on other platforms, like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video as well.

Will Violent Night be on Netflix?

Although Peacock has exclusive rights to air Universal Pictures films like Violent Night after their theatrical releases, Netflix also signed a deal with Universal Pictures in 2021 which gave the platform the license to avail live action films for streaming four years after they are made available on Peacock.

This means that Violent Night will only be on Netflix from 2026.