Review: Black Christmas

Christmas time at Hawthorne College, where sorority sisters at Mu Kappa Epsilon are rallying around one of their own (Imogen Poots), whose rape by a frat boy wasn’t treated with any seriousness by authorities at all. After the girls perform a pointed skit about date rape at an annual Christmas show on campus, the girls all start getting nasty social media messages from an unknown source. And then the girls start to go missing one by one. Cary Elwes plays a literature professor who gets on the wrong side of feminist students, whilst Caleb Eberhardt plays the socially awkward nice guy whom Poots starts to have romantic feelings for.

 

Didn’t we already do this? Twice? And wasn’t one of those times in 2006? Well yes, and here we are doing it again 10+ years later with this 2019 film from director Sophia Takal (a writer-director and occasional actress) and her co-writer April Wolfe (no significant feature film credits until this). The best I can say for this is that it sucks slightly less than the 2006 remake, but why bother when the 1975 original (which helped give birth to the slasher genre along with “Psycho”, “Peeping Tom”, “Halloween”, and “Twitch of the Death Nerve”) still works just fine? Oh yeah, cash. That’s why. Sigh.

 

It’s a shame the film is relatively bloodless, because the opening kill scene is effectively done. I’m no gore-hound and horror films existed for decades without on-screen blood (though even “Halloween” isn’t quite as bloodless as people claim), but these days we know that an absence of it is purely for the purposes of getting in the largest audience possible to theatres. While I’m being charitable, I have to say I liked this group of girls an awful lot more than the better-known cast of the 2006 remake at the very least. These girls are fairly normal and relatable, much more in the spirit of the original cast of characters. Imogen Poots is especially likeable in the lead role. Even Cary Elwes, whom I normally can’t stand, is effectively cast as a literature professor who openly chastises students for starting a petition to get him fired for having a curriculum favouring white male writers. Funny stuff in a film clearly made for the #MeToo era. That’ll piss a lot of people off, as it’s clearly a film made with a very strict agenda and seemingly no room for nuance. For me that wasn’t something I was bothered by, I don’t necessarily have to agree with a film’s agenda to be entertained by or interested in it. Here it was just about the only thing I found somewhat interesting. Sure, the fact that the only nice guy here is the hunky black guy with glasses (the latter to show he’s ‘sensitive’, I guess), is a bit on the nose. Actually, it’s a lot on the nose and I rolled my eyes hard. But at least the filmmakers have a clear vision and purpose here for their remake, instead of just delivering an empty version of something we’ve already seen done a lot better. And if you’re gonna remake a film that worked fine the first time, at least have a clear vision beyond mere profit-making. Or so I thought. More on that in a minute. Early on we get a dreadfully (hopefully intentionally) funny song and dance skit about sexual assault from our feminist protagonists. It’s badly sung, very stupid, but absolutely hilarious and I actually believed it would be something that would happen at a real university/college in America. More importantly, the feminist spin here actually fits the m.o. of the original film’s plot, where almost all of the men in the film were viable suspects or at least kind of douchebag-y red herrings.

 

Unfortunately, things fall apart fairly quickly, after a creepy and rather effective start (It’s rather good-looking, too). Instead of the genuinely unsettling creepy phone calls in the original, we get text messages here…and nah, that just doesn’t work. I guess there’s something to be said for the lack of overt violence and creepy phone calls being made up for by the emphasis on sexual assault matters, which let’s face it, should be considered truly horrific anyway. I get that. The problem is, when you take out the blood and put most of the violence off-screen, what you’re left with is essentially an extended TV episode or Hallmark Channel thriller. It’s a problem. It’s reasonably suspenseful for a while, but if you can get this kind of thing on TV any day of the week, what’s the point? That’s what really separates this from horror films of years gone by where this sort of thing wasn’t found anywhere else. Apparently the writer-director wanted to make a feminist horror film for young girls. That’s completely admirable and I would like to see one of those that isn’t attaching itself to the label of an already existing thing in “Black Christmas”. And then we get the big twist at about the three-quarter mark, that completely and fatally torpedoes the film beyond resuscitation. ***** SPOILER WARNING ***** I was kind of into its Evil Dude-Bro feminist aesthetic, but adding an “X-Files” supernatural twist just brings the film crashing down on itself. Even worse, there’s a second twist that makes the #MeToo stuff rather pointless anyway. What the hell? All for the sake of #PlotTwist? It’s entirely unnecessary, entirely unwelcome, and so completely foreign to the original film so as to make you wonder why this was called “Black Christmas” at all. What a shame that there’s two women behind the film and they sacrifice the sisterhood in the name of trying to be the next M. Night Shyamalan and they botch it. ***** END SPOILER *****

 

Basically a feature-length holiday-themed episode of “Pretty Little Liars”, this second remake of a film that worked fine the first time is ultimately pretty unnecessary and unlikely to impress many. It starts off more promising than most, and wearing your agenda proudly on your sleeve isn’t an inherently bad thing. That feminist spin is interesting and even creepy at first, despite the lack of overt violence or gore. However, this horror flick just keeps getting worse as it goes along before self-destructing completely with a supernatural twist. It just doesn’t jive with the rest of the film, except perhaps thematically. Good-looking, well-intentioned, and largely well-acted, but ultimately a huge disappointment. Just watch the original, it’s still one of the scariest movies ever made and it absolutely sticks the landing. Then go read some Gloria Steinem books and learn something as well. Do both, seriously.

 

Rating: D+