BLACK CHRISTMAS (2019) * ½

When is Black Christmas not Black Christmas?  When it’s Black Christmas!  

The genius of Bob Clark’s 1974 horror classic, Black Christmas was in its simplicity.  A crazy dude makes crank calls to some sorority sisters who are stuck at school over Christmas break before picking them off.  The 2006 remake overcomplicated things by giving the killer a gratuitous back story, but hey, at least it gave us a wicked scene where he used cookie cutters on someone’s back to make flesh cookies.  

This is the second remake and it pretty much jettisons anything having to do with the killer.  The premise is still the same.  A group of sorority sisters stuck at school are menaced by a killer.  Only this time the filmmakers infuse the film with a lot of feminist touches, commentary on the Me Too movement, and white male privilege.  Which is fine.  I don’t mind a movie that wears its passion on its sleeve.  

However, once the big reveal of the killer occurs, it undermines the message the filmmakers were trying to send.  I know the film was neutered by the studio to gain a PG-13 rating, and there are several moments where the would-be gore is awkwardly edited out or the ADR is obviously replacing harsher dialogue.  (It feels like you’re watching the TV version in the theater.)  I don’t know if these edits also altered the finale and somehow accidentally stripped the first hour of its potential power, or if the ending just wasn’t thought through to begin with.  Whatever the case may be, when Black Christmas shits the bed, it goes clear through the mattress and down into the box springs.

Lest I sound like I’m carving the flick up, let me state upfront I was with it from the get-go.  The opening sequence where a victim’s death rattle results in a snow angel gone horribly wrong sets the tone nicely.  There were also several instances where the cinematography was pitch perfect.  (I think my favorite use of lighting was the scene in which the sorority sister looked for her cat.)  I also liked that the filmmakers hired actresses that physically resembled Olivia Hussy from the original and Mary Elizabeth Winstead from the remake.  

To really get to the problem of the movie, I have to head to spoiler city, so anyone who doesn’t want the film spoiled for them, make a U-Turn now.  

Okay, so in the middle of the movie, the killers are revealed to be frat boys in black cloaks who wear Dr. Doom rip-off masks.  That would’ve been fine, I guess.  The problem is that they are all mind-controlled by this black goop that emanates from the founder of the school’s bust.  During a black mass/hazing ritual, pledges are smeared with his stuff and it “brings out their alpha” and causes them to be overly misogynistic and even homicidal toward women.  

Sure, this Tommyknockers bullshit is dumb, but it causes the film to shoot itself in the foot.  By attributing the boys’ criminal behavior to the onyx ooze, you’re essentially letting them off the hook.  Like the goo made them do it.  Wouldn’t the satire cut deeper if the fraternity brothers only had themselves to blame for their own toxic masculinity rather than this Stepford Skulls malarkey?  

Maybe I’m just overthinking the implications of the big reveal.  Maybe you’re not supposed to think when it comes to this movie.  If you ask me, it was better when the sorority sisters had to fend off one crazy psycho and not a bunch of Lovecraftian frat boys.  Maybe if they had called it anything but Black Christmas, I could’ve overlooked the shitty third act, because there truly is some decent stuff in the early going.

But let’s face it, “I’ve been getting some weird DM’s” is nothing compared to “THE CALLS ARE COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!”