Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! (in case you blink and actually miss a death scene) is a very slow moving affair which opens in a Doctor’s office and spends the next half hour there before someone finally dies.
The cast is much better here with Ricky now being played by genre fave Bill Moseley who is well supported by a fresh faced (and bra-less) Laura Elena Harring (who went on to star in Mulholland Drive and the underrated Willard remake) and Eric (crazy Leo from Twin Peaks) Da Re.
The film centres on a young psychic blind woman named Laura (it’s a stretch, I know) whose Doctor has been experimenting with her power by creating a psychic bond between her and Ricky Caldwell, who he has kept alive for his own medical curiosity. As Laura, her brother Chris and his new girlfriend Jerri set off for the siblings Grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve, Ricky wakes up from his medically induced coma and sets after the trio.
This film spends far too much time trying to copy the success of Halloween to the point that any creativity is lost as viewers with short attention spans will quickly tire of the films plodding plot. I’d never seen a film sync the pace of the plot to the killer’s physical walking speed before and I hope to never see another!
OVERALL SUMMARY
This is better than the second entry in the series and you do actually care about a couple of the characters, but it’s far too slow to be fully enjoyable.