David Harbour Is a Die Hard Santa in First Trailer for Violent Night

Have you ever been sitting at home in the winter, wishing that you could justify watching Die Hard as part of your Christmas binge more than once a year? Well, soon you’ll have access to the next best thing, in the form of the rather obviously deferent Violent Night. Except this time, the bone-snapping and impalements are being delivered with the righteous, magical fury of Santa Claus himself.

Stranger Things stalwart David Harbour stars as the one and only Santa Claus in Violent Night—not a mall santa gone rogue, but the literal Santa Claus, who just so happens to be dropping off gifts for a wealthy family in the middle of a robbery by a well-heeled group of mercenaries, when he gets sucked into the action and forced to defend the family. Because you know what they say: No one needs gifts from Santa quite like a family sitting on a $300 million vault.

The actual draw here, meanwhile, is the sheer spectacle of the action, which makes the title of Violent Night look very apt indeed if this trailer is to be believed. People are getting candy canes through parts of the human anatomy, electrocuted by Christmas tree stars and bludgeoned by lumps of coal and billiard balls, when they’re not being blown to bits. It’s almost enough to make one forget that John Leguizamo really doesn’t seem like he’d be a natural fit as a Hans Gruber stand-in.

Violent Night, in addition to Harbour, stars Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Edi Patterson, Cam Gigandet, André Eriksen, and Beverly D’Angelo in a nice nod to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. It’s scheduled to hit theaters on Dec. 2, 2022—in the meantime, check out the full trailer below.