Black Christmas (2019)
92 min.
Release Date: December 13, 2019 (Wide)
Predating "Halloween" by four years, 1974’s atmospheric, genuinely creepy, altogether classy “Black Christmas” is arguably the first holiday slasher classic. It was remade once already with 2006’s seasonally stylish, wickedly entertaining, if critically reviled, “Black Christmas” that delivered the gory, eyeball-gouging goods. With this quickly made 2019 reimagining, writer-director Sophia Takal (2016’s “Always Shine”) and co-writer April Wolfe build upon the standard formula of a sorority-set slasher pic by overtly and explicitly bringing frat boys to their knees and calling out campus rape culture and sexual politics. As a woke slasher film, 2019’s “Black Christmas” held immense promise, being refreshingly told through a fiercely feminist lens. One roots for it to work, only to watch the final product miss the mark both as a slasher film and a message movie that celebrates female solidarity. Whereas the original baked feminism into its story and the first remake scalped Harriet the Spy with an ice skate, this one could have been a bit more sly in its messaging and much more fun in its slashing.
Over Christmas break at Hawthorne College, a select few of the sisters at Mu Kappa Epsilon are sticking around. Still reeling from being sexually assaulted by a fraternity president, senior Riley (Imogen Poots) is egged on by her sisters, including activist Kris (Aleyse Shannon), Marty (Lily Donoghue), and dippy Jesse (Brittany O’Grady), to embarrass The Founder’s Fraternity in an "Up on the Housetop" song-and-dance number that takes the untried brothers to task for their sexual assault. A black-cloaked killer has already begun taking out some of the sisters under their noses, and once Riley puts it together that her “little,” Helena (Madeleine Adams), has gone missing, she discovers that something evil (and misogynistic) is afoot on campus connected to the institution’s patriarchal history.
“Black Christmas” unmistakably has the best of intentions and more on its mind than just setting up disposable, pretty-faced dominoes and knocking them off. If anything, this is a true remake, never regurgitating what came before and parting ways with the original film past the general premise. The film still pays respectful homage—the title shares the same Pamela font as used in the original; blink or you’ll miss a cameo from that glass unicorn statue; and a plastic bag is used as a weapon—and in place of the phone calls coming from inside the house, the perpetrator uses direct messages on social media. It’s just too bad the script is so didactic and heavy-handed, coming off like a stick-it-to-the-patriarchy, burn-it-the-fuck-down rant.
In making a relevant statement about society, the film is a blunt instrument, but as a horror film, it's safe and mostly pulls its punches with a restrained PG-13 rating (which understandably was given to get more young women into the theater). Besides a menacing opener involving a sharp icicle and striking use of a snow angel, as well as one slow, unbroken pan that pays tribute to that hospital-hallway jolt in 1990’s “The Exorcist III,” the stalk-and-slash set-pieces, if they can even be called that, are pretty perfunctorily staged and not suspenseful enough. Bland as they are, the characters are better established as "sisters" than those in the 2006 version. Imogen Poots (2016’s “Green Room”) leads the charge and brings instant sympathy and nuance to the role of Riley, while the rising young actresses playing the main sorority sisters are fine with what they’ve been given, especially Brittany O’Grady, who makes the ditzy Jesse endearing.
There is a nugget of an idea here, a zeitgeisty, mildly clever subversion of the sorority slasher sub-genre set during the cultural "Me Too" movement. It's a disappointment, then, in the execution when story and character are overshadowed by message, which is highlighted in bold, italicized, and underlined until its thematic subtext just becomes text. Even if it's delivering talking points one agrees should be reiterated, "Black Christmas" goes about it with all the subtlety of being bludgeoned over the head with a snow shovel. Co-writers Sophia Takal and April Wolfe certainly update the material with a strong, personal voice, but then they throw all caution to the wind for a goofy, out-there left turn that deals in dark magic. Rather than reveal a genuine threat to be feared, the outcome to the mystery at hand is more head-scratching and nonsensical than something out of "Scooby-Doo." Taking a bold swing is welcome in putting a novel, ambitious spin on this property, but the route the filmmakers go is a profound miss. What “Black Christmas” wants to do is more admirable than what it actually achieves.
Grade: C -
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