David Harbour’s Santa has a machine gun, ho ho ho, in this trailer for Violent Night

If you hear “David Harbour plays Santa in a movie called Violent Night,” you might think “slasher movie” or “some kind of edgelord adventure like Mel Gibson’s Fatman.” Those seem like obvious choices, but really, director Tommy Wirkola (of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters) seems to have somehow found an even more obvious choice—one so obvious that we feel like fools for not guessing it in the first place. See, Violent Night isn’t a slasher movie or a “what if Santa was bad words” movie. It’s a freakin’ Die Hard. Set at Christmas. Starring Santa Claus. How have there not been 80 of these movies already?

Anyway, as seen in this trailer, Harbour’s Santa is clearly of the Bad Santa variety, but he’s also the real Santa, which is bad news for John Lequizamo and the team of terrorists/thieves that are in the middle of robbing a family’s huge mansion when he shows up to start yippee-ki-yay-ing some motherfuckers. The trailer also has a dozen cool John McClane-style action quips, Die Hard-style improvised weapons, and David Harbour talking to people on a walkie-talkie (like in that movie, whatever it’s called). Again: It all seems pretty obvious. But it also seems pretty fun, and David Harbour clearly must love this kind of tough-but-lovable character.

Violent Night will be in theaters on December 2 and also stars Cam Gigandet, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Edi Patterson, and Beverly D’Angelo. Hopefully the movie is a hit and they can start cranking out sequels… Violent Night With A Vengeance, Live Free Or Violent Night, A Good Day To Violent Night. There will always be naughty people at Christmas for Santa to kill, right? Especially if they start bringing in other Santa-related characters, like the Elf On A Shelf and Frosty The Snowman and… Heat Miser. We hate that guy.