[imagesource: Universal]

The holiday/horror puns are deep in a new movie featuring Santa, but with a gun.

Don’t worry, they haven’t made the Christmas character evil and scary as they did with Winnie The Pooh, but they did make him terribly serious about that naughty list.

That means that candy canes and Christmas decorations are used for other activities in Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola’s Violent Night, like trying to take someone’s eye out.

Mashable writes that Santa Claus has no choice but to beat the shit out of the mercenaries, led by John Leguizamo, who hold a family hostage in their overly ostentatious home in order to snag $300 million dollars as a Christmas gift.

Universal dropped the trailer for the “coal-dark” action-comedy starring David Harbour (Stranger Things) as the beer-drinking, ass-kicking Santa Claus, per Deadline.

Ho-ho-ho, hang on to your seats:

The Die Hard meets The Santa Clause film might change the way you think about Santa popping into your chimney, but hey, at least we know he’s still on the good side.

Violent Night will hit theatres on December 2.

[sources:deadline&mashable]