Saint, or Sint as it is known in its native Dutch, kicks off in the 16th Century as a group of villagers who have just been the victims of a thorough pillaging by a group of Spanish pirates under the command of a murderous bishop inflict fiery justice upon their tormentors. Flash forward to modern day Amsterdam. It’s a full moon and legend tells that when the moon waxes full on the 5th of December Saint Nicholas will return from his fiery grave to wreak havoc. So the scene is set for a movie I hoped would succeed in providing some laughs alongside some seasonal chills. What I got was something less than what I hoped for.
In the midst of the almost entirely generic Saint there is one almost impressive scene. A scene that could have been the single exciting and original moment in the midst of what is mostly an exercise in tired homage. The scene in question is a car chase with a couple of police officers in pursuit of Saint Nicholas as he rides his white stallion across the rooftops of Amsterdam. This is the sole scene where Saint comes close to presenting something new to the audience. But even that moment, although exciting in concept, is hamstrung by shoddy effects work.
Otherwise Saint is the ungainly, bastard offspring of John Carpenter’s Halloween and The Fog (not the only touchstones but certainly the most obvious). Where some might mistake the end result for respectful homage, I see a complete lack of imagination (the aforementioned pusuit scene notwithstanding). The main problem here is that the movies that Saint references are vastly superior and this only serves to draw attention to its shortfalls.
In terms of acting there’s nothing impressive to be found here. Everyone shows up and reads their lines but amongst the performances there was nothing that stood out as being anything more than deeply average. As a result I found myself somewhat disinterested in the fates of the characters.
This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the movie got the much needed shot in the arm it required every time the big bad and his undead flunkies show up to wreak not so merry mayhem. But Saint Nicholas, visually striking though he is, just doesn’t have the sort presence this kind of movie requires. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger all had character. Saint Nicholas is a huge void at the centre of this movie that should have been occupied by a terrifying supernatural presence. He mostly just sits there on his horse and lets his gang of burned brigands do all the nasty work.
It has to be said though that Dick Maas isn’t entirely lacking in talent as a director. The movie looks pretty good overall. It’s the script that is lacking here. It fizzles when it should explode. It coasts where it should be slamming the foot down on the accelerator. At just shy of 90 minutes it actually felt too long. There’s an entire subplot revolving around missing children that seems to have been shoehorned in there to pad things out. It has some pertinence but it’s underdeveloped and at the end of the movie it ultimately served no real purpose. This is frustrating because it could have added some much needed urgency to proceedings.
The movie has some gore just not close to enough. There are a couple of fairly inventive moments but a movie this devoid of anything like a sympathetic character to root for should cut loose and go nuts with the red stuff, deck the halls with blood and entrails fa la la. It has little else going for it so it may as well make a play for the gore dollar, because at the end of the day if the script is poor and the characters weak all a movie such as Saint has to fall back on is gallons of gore.
I can see what director Dick Maas was aiming for here. But he falls well short of hitting the mark. It’s entirely possible he was let down by a budget that was so small it compromised his vision. The movie was financed by the Dutch Film Fund who, it seems, are a hard sell where horror movies are concerned.
Even though I was underwhelmed by the end result it is impressive that Maas not only directed Saint, but also wrote it, co-produced it and did the score. It’s kind of tragic given the obvious amount of effort here that the end result doesn’t come within spitting distance of being worthy of comparison to it’s all too obvious influences. But ultimately Saint is a movie composed of a boring and clichéd first half that is followed by a confused mess of a second half. So file this one under missed opportunity.