Movie Reaction: Black Christmas

Formula: Black Christmas (1974) * #Feminism

The original Black Christmas is a somewhat forgotten but highly influential horror movie that either jump started or created (depending on who you ask) the slasher genre years before Halloween made it the dominant horror genre for over a decade. You may remember that there was a remake of Black Christmas in 2006 that doesn't exist anymore. Philosophers have actually updated the old saying about a tree falling in the woods to "If Black Christmas (2006) was released and no one remembers it, does it still exist?"* Just 13 years later, we get yet another version of Black Christmas that's determined to test the limits of diminishing returns. For some reason, people really love finding a way to mix horror with Christmas. There's probably a reason there aren't a lot of classics that have done it successfully.

*That said, pretty good cast for that movie.

The basics of the movie are pretty much the same as previous versions. Sorority girls start getting murdered around campus. Imogen Poots plays the lead character, who spends a long time being the only one suspicious about all these disappearances right before Christmas break. Eventually, the murders come to light and Imogen and her sisters have to fight for their lives.

If you are sitting here thinking "that doesn't sound like enough to sustain a 90 minute movie" then you'd be right. This version of Black Christmas fills in time by talking a lot about college rape culture. Which, in a broad sense, cool. Horror is a good way to be transgressive and address social issues in simplified terms that encourage a deeper discussion. I'm glad the movie tried to address this real horror by filtering it through this sensationalized premise. However...how can I say this right? The movie thinks it's a 400 level course when it's actually a 100 level survey. Do you know that feeling when you hear a person use a smart word that you know they just learned that day? That's how this whole movie felt. I'll be generous and suggest that it was an intentional movie. These are all college students, after all, so they would talk about this complex topic like they are working off a checklist of buzz words. College student are a great source of knowledge without nuance. Secretly though, I just think it's a screenplay that they didn't work very hard on (or got noted to death by studio heads).

My biggest issue really is that the movie undercuts its own message. Consider this your spoiler alert. So, the movie takes a crazy left turn into being about a magic Men's Rights cult run by the fraternities. A statue of the college's founder has the power to turn all men into their "true alphas" which leads to them killing all the strong-minded women on campus. That pretty much lets every male character off the hook though. These men aren't bad because of toxic masculinity or entitlement. They're bad because a magical force made them evil. It essentially undoes all the discussion from the first half of the movie.

Also, the movie just isn't very suspenseful. The deaths aren't memorable. The best characters all die early. The plot doesn't make a lot of sense. It's an easy movie to watch (it's short and uncomplicated), but it's not very good. The messaging is mixed and unfocused. It's not even sure what kind of movie it wants to be.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend