There’s something you should be concerned about for sure. You’d better not cry as there’s no reindeer waiting outside the window on this day of Christmas. The slasher film Black Christmas has been remade for the umpteenth time, but this version is interestingly about a group of sisters known as the female protagonists, thanks to writer April Wolfe and director Sophia Takal of Always Shine.
Black Christmas is a remake of a 1974 film of the same name where we see the college senior Imogen Poots go with her friends to the sorority house on winter holidays. They want to prepare a lavish meal and invite people on a talent show of a notorious college fraternity. Unfortunately, their daydreams are shattered once a masked man enters the house and starts to slay the female students in a systematic way.
This is quite accurate as far as the bare bones of the plot of the original film is concerned. But, that’s only the starting point for Wolfe and Takal’s script, whose plot includes something more elaborate than just the “loanly weirdo stalking the upper room”. Spoilers will be avoided Parker for now states only that it is about the particularly nasty initiation practices employed by a fraternity. Fortunately, the plot doesn’t get tangled up like in the 2006 remake which over-explained why the killer was such a tragic figure – bent on incest and cannibalism. Rather, the two women filmmakers pondered on what could drive a person towards stalking, harassing, and murdering a group of sorority girls. This pretty much flows with the issues of the #MeToo movement, for example, institutional sexism, sexual harassment, date rape, and violence against women. From there, however, Takal and Wolfe move to provide horror that can be overly real for a lot of women.
A very good depiction of the first slaughter scene comes next. A lone girl is returning home late at night. She has just got off the phone with a friend, who is aware of her current location and when she is expected to reach. After that a wave of nasty text messages comes upon her. Is it the same psycho who is behind her? The movements of a man talking and striding towards the camera in reach and laughing are not encouraging. Thus, she pulls out her keys, putting them between her knuckles�? ADA’s style in a hasty venture, Pamela impersonation for example. She’s done her homework. But going down a practically bright street and informing their friends of their whereabouts, being cautious, and covering themselves will not help them.
This is a violent act yet so insidiously smart. Inside them are gruesome yet festive details such as an icicle knife and her corpse, auilty of dragging a snow angel. Other bits also have such a festive dimension, grateful to the old Black Christmas kills in seeking new angles of interpreting them. But, I guess, the scariest scenes are not those where the victims receive the most gruesome violence during the home invasion in this Christmas horror. Of course the kills will come. I mean, it is a slasher film, and those are sorority girls. We have rather become accustomed to the brutal rules of this subgenre by now: young aspiring and flailing women must get it because there is only one survivor, the Final Girl.
What really makes Black Christmas impressive is the tension that would develop in the rooms that Takal entails in between the attacks. A long shot holds to an interminated corridor where a lone sister in search of her cat, impatiently calls out its name. “Who else can hear her?” we witness and wonder. In the dark cloister of an attic, more lights in the spare decor are sought by another sister. After one dead set after another – they start screwing delayed lights into dead sets – with each we start getting a bit more uneasy – what then does their light murder over the place buy restraint the mind’s eye behind what. The very thought that someone is spying brings back the fear to these usually vacant places.
Not long ago, anticipation from some of the horror film community quickly turned to outrage when it was announced that this Black Christmas would be PG13, as opposed to its predecessors which were rated R. This is because there’s a risk that the movie will no longer be the same if they cannot include the level of bloodshed and violence which only an R-rated movie can afford. If you’re ever on a quest for those particular cuts that would lead to a PG-13, you would appreciate how fast and devoid of explanation a graphic shot of the limp body will be, or how the act of knifing doesn’t show the knife’s penetration through someone’s flesh, even though the bloody result appears in the following shot.
Regardless, I still regret not having been able to watch the shattering mayhem and violence of the Black Christmas which preceded this one. For one reason, we already have that from the 2006 version. For another, fears which were dealt with by Takal and Wolfe are magnified because there’s no flashy bloodshed. Usually in horror movies, the exposes of skinned up bodies provide us with an easy place to scream in this way easing us up from the tension which has been building up in form of goose tens and spine chill. With less war to fight in this rendition of this Black Christmas, we find ourselves still held hostage in this trance like anxiousness. Then, we are dressed and shocked with a turn of events which brings us to a peak the film leaves us half aching for-violets and disorder. Thank you for well-timed repose, but where are the flowers and political strife? The former are not here, hence the film lingers where the action plot long tosses the audience overboard. To amend hunger but without sanguinary last-minute standing wave of hysteria.
The Verdict
Ever since the inception of the slasher subgenre, the subtext has involved discussions of power relations and taboo sex. To the extent that these two directors are able to tackle gender politics and offer a more stimulating intellectual horror film, it is Black Christmas for genre fans who want not only scares but something substantial as well. As long as you’ve enjoyed the intricacies in books such as Get Out, Cabin In The Woods, Midsommar, Us, you will have something to look forward to this holiday. As for those who only want something scary and satisfying, this holiday slasher works on that level too. It provides an environment which is more or less commonplace, which makes the disquieting violation by the cold killer all the more terrifying. There is no need for high-end theatricality when we can visualize the cloaked menace slithering through our corridors, chimneys, and attic stairs. Its refurbished narrative provides an interesting twist to the origins of the urban legend while tension develops even in the perceived safe corners of silence. The ever striking Poots is supported in the charismatic cast of Aleyse Shannon, Lily Donoghue, Brittany O’Grady, Madeleine Adams and Caleb Eberhardt, all of them enjoying frothy dialogues, bloody screams, rough and tumble warfare and one even of a wry song.
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