O, 'Unholy Night,' fights are brightly shining
On the list of words that describe the novels of Seth Grahame-Smith — best-selling author of the genre mash-ups Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — "plausible" and "reverent" have been notably absent, and for good reason.
Grahame-Smith's usual M.O. is to take classic, somewhat stodgy source material and inject it full of Gothic fantastical elements, giving his readers a pleasurably anarchic jolt of disorientation. His books operate on the "wouldn't it be cool if…?" principle, appealing to those who are tickled by the sheer wackiness of, say, our 16th president hammering stakes into the hearts of undead Confederates. It's nutty, cheeky stuff, not meant to be taken the slightest bit seriously.
In his fast-paced new adventure yarn, Unholy Night, the author slightly shifts his tactics. In this retelling of the Nativity story and the holy family's subsequent flight to Egypt, Grahame-Smith provides an alternate — and, for him, not so very far-fetched — back story for the three Wise Men who arrive at a lowly stable in Bethlehem one night bearing treasures of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Instead of three kings of the Orient, Balthazar, Gaspar and Melchyor are itinerant thieves on the run from the soldiers of King Herod, whose palace Balthazar, a Syrian infamous in the region as "the Ghost of Antioch," has brazenly burgled.
After Herod — portrayed here as a raging lunatic beset by a leprosy-like disease — orders a campaign to exterminate the young sons of Judea to rid his kingdom of the Messiah of prophecy, Balthazar and his colleagues reluctantly volunteer to escort Mary, Joseph and their child to safety in Egypt.
They're pursued every step of the way by a Roman legion led by an ambivalent young officer named Pontius Pilate and a sorcerer, called a magus, sent by Caesar Augustus himself.
Although there are supernatural elements here and there — including a swarm of man-eating locusts and, perhaps inevitably, an attack of zombies — they're relatively minor and, in any case, mostly kept within biblical parameters. The holy family is treated inoffensively, even with a certain awe; certainly there are no controversies in the offing of the sort that accompanied The Last Temptation of Christ.
Literature it's not.
The book reads like an extended treatment for a screenplay (which Grahame-Smith, who wrote Tim Burton's upcoming Dark Shadows, is in fact writing for Warner Bros.); the author seems a good deal more interested in describing elaborate fight scenes and maintaining a breakneck narrative pace than in developing the characters or exploring the story's emotional or — heaven forbid — theological implications.
As a simple chase story, on the other hand, Unholy Night is reasonably effective — a quick and efficient read with clearly drawn conflicts, narrow escapes and, on a comic-book level, satisfying comeuppances. With some decent directing and a competent cast, it should make a crackling good B movie that should move plenty of popcorn.