Bob
Clark’s 1974 horror movie was the original “the calls are coming from inside
the house” shocker, predating When a
Stranger Calls by about five years. It was also the first really notable
Christmas horror movie, but certainly not the best. Nevertheless, it has
already been remade once. Blumhouse takes another stab at the yuletide slasher
with Sophia Takal’s Black Christmas,
which opens today nationwide.
Apparently,
at Hawthorne College, classes stay in session until sometime around December 23rd.
Christmas trees and lights are everywhere, but students are just starting to
leave for the semester break. Riley Stone will not be one of them. She always
remains on campus with a small group of self-proclaimed “orphans.” Tragically,
one of her coed classmates won’t be going home either, because a cloaked figure
hacked her to death during an early kill-scene, after sending her a series of
hostile texts. She won’t be the last.
We
soon learn Stone and three of her closest sorority sisters have also received
similar texts. As word spreads of other female colleagues who are missing and
unaccounted for, Stone starts to suspect something horrific is afoot. The elitist
fraternity she and her sisters just called out for date rape crimes are the
logical suspects, along with their faculty advisor, Prof. Gelson (you’d think
the smug defender of Western patriarchal meritocracy would have a doctorate,
but evidently not). It turns out, Stone has filed a complaint against him, just
to make it crystal clear Gelson is a bad guy.
This
take on Black Christmas has to be the
most clumsily didactic Christmas movie ever. Takal and co-screenwriter April
Wolfe are not satisfied with making their points. They are compelled to beat
them into the ground and salt the earth around them. Seriously, this film makes
Knives and Skin look like a peace
offering to the “patriarchy,” whatever that might be. Yet, most of their
attempts to score sexual-political points will fail to land for a very
fundamental reason. The stilted dialogue they put into the nasty frat brothers’
mouths sounds like things they want people to believe un-woke dudes would say, but
the complete absence of authenticity or credibility is crushingly awkward. Kicking
over a transparent straw horse like the evil Delta house will not impress
anyone and it will only entertain especially militant social justice warriors.
It
is a shame because Takal stages some reasonably intense scenes of slasher
horror. Frankly, viewers will almost start roll with it when watching the
psychotic Emperor Palpatine cos-player stalking the sisters throughout their
weirdly elegant-looking sorority house. In a radical departure from previous Black Christmases, Takal & Wolfe add
a wacky supernatural element. It is debatable whether this is a mistake or not,
but it definitely kicks the film into the sphere of unintentional over-the-top
comedy, ending the affair on quite a distinctive note.
Frankly,
Imogen Poots looks largely disinterested as Stone. That might be
understandable, but it is still rather problematic, since she is the lead and
her character has the most sharply drawn victim-to-empowerment development arc.
Besides Cary Elwes hamming it up as Prof. Gelson, most of the characters are
nearly indistinguishable from each other. Only Aleyse Shannon (so memorable in
the “Tutorial” episode of Two Sentence
Horror Stories) really makes any kind of impression as Kris, the impulsive
activist sister.
There
is real violence happening on colleges today, but it is nothing like what is
depicted here. Someone could make a genuinely “edgy” horror movie following the
violence of woke campus activists, who disrupt speakers they disagree with and
harass fellow students with opposing points view, as their aggression finally
descends into full blown killing sprees. Of course, Takal and Blumhouse did not
do that, which is why anyone in touch with the state of higher education today
will consider this film a complete disconnect from reality (check out No Safe Spaces for some truly
frightening anecdotes). More importantly for most viewers, it just isn’t that
good.
It
is not even very Christmassy, beyond the trees and trimmings. If you are in the
mood for a Christmas horror movie, watch Better Watch Out, or Secret Santa, or Anna and the Apocalypse, or Slay Belles, or Into the Dark: Pooka!, and skip the new Black Christmas. Not recommended, the Blumhouse remake opens widely
today (12/13) in theaters, including the AMC Empire in New York.
