Reboots, remakes and franchise revivals have become a major trend in Hollywood over the last decade, and the horror genre hasn't been exempt. The latest horror remake is Blumhouse's Black Christmas, based on Bob Clark's 1974 slasher movie of the same name in which sorority sisters are stalked and killed. The original film was already remade in 2006 by Glen Morgan, which changed much about the original story even if the basic premise remained the same. Now, a new take on Black Christmas comes from Blumhouse just in time for the 2019 holiday season. Black Christmas is a decent slasher flick with trite feminist themes, until it takes a wildly baffling turn and becomes a whole different movie.
Black Christmas follows Hawthorne College sorority sister Riley (Imogen Poots), who remains on campus with a few of her sisters as it begins to empty for winter break. At a fraternity party, she must face the man who roofied and raped her three years prior, as Riley's sister Kris (Aleyse Shannon) urges her to be strong and fight back. Meanwhile, Kris is petitioning to remove Professor Gelson (Cary Elwes), and was previously successful at removing the bust of Calvin Hawthorne from their campus. All the while, sorority sisters from their and other sororities are going missing. It all comes to a head when Riley, Kris, their sisters Marty (Lily Donoghue) and Jesse (Brittany O'Grady) are attacked in their house by a masked killer. In order to defeat the killer, Riley, her sisters and other sorority women will have to join forces and fight back.
This new take on Black Christmas comes from director Sophia Takal, who worked with Blumhouse previously, helming the New Year's Eve themed installment of Hulu's Into the Dark, New Year, New You. Takal co-wrote the script with April Wolfe (Widower). In the case of Black Christmas, and many other films written and directed by women, there's an expectation (unfairly) that they'll be able to handle feminist themes and messages more deftly - but Black Christmas is neither subtle nor well-handled. The script by Takal and Wolfe is comprised of a list of feminist and misogynist buzzwords clumsily strung together into something resembling dialogue. ("Not all men" and "alpha male" are two phrases peppered into the film with little interrogation of what they actually mean within modern gender political discourse.) The result is a movie that revels in the most simplistic form of feminism, one that isn't anywhere near as groundbreaking as Black Christmas would want viewers to believe.
To be sure, there's an exultation in seeing women fight back against misogynist men, but Black Christmas first forces the audience to endure the pain of its female characters - the many murders, Riley's trauma and Riley being re-traumatized by confronting her rapist. Ostensibly, Black Christmas is about women finding the strength within themselves and within their bonds of sisterhood to fight back against oppressors. But while that would've been enough to sustain the film, Takal and Wolfe's story gets muddied in the third act killer twist, which brings in a new element to the film that feels entirely unnecessary - and verges too far into ridiculous B-movie territory. Poots delivers a largely compelling performance in Black Christmas, but it's doubtful any actress could carry off this twist, and here it ends up coming off comically absurd. Instead of reaffirming the movie's themes, the twist detracts from them. Up until that point, Black Christmas seemed to be a rather simple (if overly simplistic) slasher movie, but the twist overcomplicates it and forces the actors into a parody of the very film they previously established.
Even in terms of a slasher movie, which is what Black Christmas is supposedly meant to be, the film is muddled by sloppy editing. While some of this is likely meant to maintain a PG-13 rating, there are no obvious justifications for other instances. Certainly, there are ways for PG-13 horror movies to be scary, and the moments when Black Christmas leans into the suspense of its characters creeping around a house with a killer on the loose are effective. But the majority of the film's horror is derived from jump scares and gruesome murders sanitized by choppy editing, which is much less effective at best and downright unwatchable at worst. The PG-13 rating isn't necessarily the reason Black Christmas isn't an effective horror movie, as it's not clear if an R-rated version of Takal's film would be much better.
In horror, there's a possibility for movies to be so bad they're good - whether intentionally or not. Unfortunately, Black Christmas doesn't fall into that territory, though the film sometimes verges on it. Instead, Takal delivers a movie that's not quite a fun B-movie, not quite a scary slasher film, not quite an intelligent feminist commentary and, ultimately, not quite enjoyable. Black Christmas is neither as clever nor as scary as it wants to be, falling into the realm of just-plain-bad horror movies. While there's some triumph to be felt in watching women band together and rise up against the men who have oppressed them, Black Christmas takes too long getting to that point - and it's quickly over. Altogether, Black Christmas is a completely missable horror film this holiday season.
Black Christmas is now playing in U.S. theaters. It is 93 minutes long and rated PG-13 for violence, terror, thematic content involving sexual assault, language, sexual material and drinking.
Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!
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