Black Christmas

Not only do you make a garbage remake of a horror classic but you make it a PG-13 version? Absolute trash. Someone should be arrested for this dribble.

I went into Friday the 13th wanting to watch a horror movie I'd never seen before. BIG mistake. This movie was alarmingly, underwhelming. I don't even know where to begin. Frat boys using black magic to prey on women because they're afraid of their masculinity being in jeopardy.

Honestly, anyone who's been waiting months to see this movie like me, don't waste your time going to the theatre to watch this movie. Wait until it's available for streaming or if you really want to see it, try to see it on a cheap night.

I give this feministic, horror film a lowly 3/10.

If you know someone in your life who you hate then buy them a ticket to see this. Then sit back and laugh like Mr Burns knowing they are watching this awful movie.

The original Black Christmas is a cult favorite, if only because of Olivia Hussey and the little well-known anecdote that it inspired John Carpenter to write Halloween. Sadly, since the 70's the "teen slasher" genre has been done to death (no pun intended), and whilst films like You're Next and Happy Death Day attempt to breathe life into a stale formula, we haven't really seen a great slasher film this side of the noughties.

This brings us to 2019 and the latest Black Christmas remake, which desperately wants you to take notice of its existence. It wants you to know that it's sincere, and hip and "cool" because it taps into the feminist movement. The first remake of Black Christmas was torn apart by critics in 2006 for its gratuitous violence and paper-thin female characters. The latest remake, helmed by Sophia Takal (who also contributed to the screenplay) fixes that by giving the female characters empowerment and an agenda. Think Charlies Angels with a bit of When a Stranger Calls and half a dozen fairy lights thrown into a slop bucket and you sort of get the idea. I am all for strong female characters. Laurie Rhodes from the aforementioned Halloween and Ripley from Alien are just two classic examples of empowered female leads in a horror franchise. Both of these characters are constantly one step ahead of the (usually male) antagonist and it reminds us that female characters are not only equal to their counterparts, but they often become a force to be reckoned with.

Black Christmas (2019) spends so much time telling us that the female characters are awesome that it forgets to develop any of their actual character. Most of the female characters might as well be referred to as "Girl 1" and "Girl 2" because their sole reason for being on screen is to be quickly bumped off in festive fashion. In a film that is clearly influenced heavily by the MeToo movement, to have such weak characters is detrimental to the whole saccharine message the film wants to convey.The male characters, most of whom are Fraternity Jocks are presented as either creepy, misogynistic or both. This film wants us to root for the female characters by forcing us to swallow the idea that the male characters are all wicked and degrading jerks. There is even a jolly festive song about sexual assault thrown in for good measure. This all makes no sense when a film about empowerment of the gender resorts to doing the very thing it is supposedly criticizing to get its point across.

Of the film itself, Black Christmas (2019) is decidedly dull. The original was a creepy little penny-dreadful type chiller. The remake was gratuitous fluff but it at least gave gore-hounds something to lap up. This one is both bloodless (physically and metaphorically) and is about as scary as a Christmas candy cane. The script feels like something out of a high school amateur production and most of the cast overact and chew the scenery. To achieve a PG-13 rating the violence was toned down so much that this feels like something off The Haunting Hour. All of the kills are off screen and so much time is spent with long and drawn out conversations between the female leads that even the short running time seems to drag on, and on and on. The film takes itself far too seriously, but then pulls the rug from under our feet right at the end when the "twist" is revealed. I won't spoil what happens, but the supernatural element that they tacked on did not make any sense and just made the whole thing even more ridiculous.

Watch the original. Heck, even go back to the 2006 remake, but skip this turkey.

No one was expecting a remake of Black Christmas, nor was anyone asking for it, so its announcement in June felt sudden. What kind of interest can there be in the cult proto-slasher of 1974? Especially after the notorious 2006 remake, which many still either recall as a nightmare or consider it an unintentional comedy because of its torture porn elements, plot holes, and ridiculous killers. However...

The rights to the concept were bought by Blumhouse with director Sophia Takal and screenwriter April Wolfe to helm the newest incarnation. Takal had previously shot some lazy indie thriller about mean-spirited female friendship and a full-length episode of the anthology series Into the Dark... also about mean-spirited female friendship. And with New Year's entourage. Perhaps, everything starts there. The two saw the opportunity to depict all of their modern ideas, only with some snow and toothless screamers.

Don't try to find any tributes to the original besides a gender-swapped sorority house cat (in 1974, we had Claude, now we have Claudette) and an attempt to strangle one of the villains with polyethylene. Instead, there's a group of stereotypical modern college girls, one of whom, Riley (Imogen Poots), suffers from emotional trauma after being raped by one of the frat bros (Ryan McIntire), who escaped the punishment and even dared to return to the college grounds. But the girls have worse problems: the most obnoxious student, Chris (Aleyse Shannon), demands the dismissal of one of the old-school professors for his boomer-ish way of teaching. While Professor Gelson (Cary Elwes) is trolling the Twitter suffragists by quoting Camille Paglia, female students begin to disappear. At first, nobody cares about the off-key acting blonde girl from literally every trailer and promo (Lucy Curry), but the further disappearances begin to slowly alarm. The campus police shrugs and isn't eager to do anything (another clumsy curtsy to the original), so Riley begins her own investigation.

With the subtlety of a jackhammer, Takal and Wolfe eagerly expose the cult of toxic masculinity, and every man is either evil or stupid. Armored with the tenets of Judith Butler, Gloria Steinem and many other founding mothers of women's studies, the duo weaponizes their liberal arts degrees but quickly finds itself cornered by their own ambition, unable to materialize timely messages, so they resort to supernatural gimmicks, where "toxicity" becomes literal. No Billy, no Agnes, no real freedom from male opinion. Somewhere in 1974, Jess Bradford sighs heavily while firmly announcing to her boyfriend the decision to have an abortion. Turns out that women's rights aren't about freedom of choice, but about driving away the "white men science" from universities.

Black Christmas doesn't want to be a horror movie. In fact, it doesn't want to be a film. But it wants to be an essay, wrapped in Christmas lights in a hypocritical attempt to capitalize on a familiar title. An essay, albeit with a budget of $5KK, is not capable of being exciting and thrilling. Even in others negative reviews, only Imogen Poots is rightfully praised, but she is underutilized by the writers, who didn't care to give her character a decent development. Cary Elves wasn't told this isn't another Saw movie, and something like "game over" is always about to burst from his perpetually menacing grin.

The film is mostly praised for showing certain socially disturbing topics familiar to many upper-middle class millenials. Campus abuse and rape culture were highlighted in The Hunting Ground, and the pointless gory gender violence was shown in epic Assassination Nation. What do we get in Black Christmas? The fear of walking down the street alone at night, the keys clutched in a shaking fist, and the annoyance with "not all men".

Black Christmas is a boring, bloodless, cheap-looking thriller that dramatically lacks appreciation for the genre, opting instead to radicalize the audience without a single care for the horror fans. Unlike the first two films, this one won't be fondly remembered in decades to come. A famous Russian actress Faina Ranevskaya is quoted as saying, "Making a bad movie is like spitting in the eternity." That's exactly what Takal and Wolfe did.