Black Christmas
review by Bobby Blakey
Throughout the years there have been so many remakes that is getting to the point where it’s hard to remember which version people are talking about. Thankfully some of the remakes surpass the originals but of course that is not always the case. The latest getting the reboot treatment is the 1974 horror classic Black Christmas that already got the remake treatment in 2006, but Blumhouse is stepping in and giving it another shot one more time. The latest version of Black Christmas stars Imogene Poots, Lily Donoghue, Aleyse Shannon, Brittany O’Grady and Cary Elwes, but does it bring something worthy of remaking this film again or will it not be worth a visit from Santa?
Black Christmas follows Riley Stone and her Mu Kappa Epsilon sisters athlete Marty, rebel Kris, and foodie Jesse who prepare to deck the halls with a series of seasonal parties when a black-masked stalker begins killing sorority women one by one. As the body count rises, Riley and her squad start to question whether they can trust any man, including Marty’s beta-male boyfriend, Nate, Riley’s new crush Landon or even esteemed classics instructor Professor Gelson. Whoever the killer is, he’s about to discover that this generation’s young women aren’t about to be anybody’s victims.
I honestly don’t remember if I have ever seen the original all the way through, but know I have seen some of it. I remember being excited for the remake in 2006 and while it offered up some great gore to my recollection it still fell short. With this new chapter I so wanted to come out of this one and be able to tell people we got another great addition to the slasher genre, but sadly I cannot. While the film wasn’t horrible I honestly was bored through most of it. I know what they were attempting with the set up as we meet all the girls and the message we are working with which is prominent for today’s culture, but it was just missing something. I not only couldn’t get to where I cared too much for any of them, but the lack of anything really happening had me feeling the slow pace.
Knowing it was a PG-13 movie I knew I wasn’t going to get the overly gory slasher flick and I get doing some off screen kills to set the tone, but that usually
has a big payoff and here I didn’t feel we got it. I will say the last bit of the movie when things are revealed and the bodies finally start piling up it gets interesting. Sadly even there it kind of falls short never fully going all in with the kills or twists. the cast were all fine, but it also offered up less of the strong female fighting back promised in the trailer and so many cliched dumb decision making while fighting for survival.
It’s a fun story that despite being predictable and silly at times still offers up a good time when it finally gets to the meat of it all. The problem is it takes too long to get there and despite it only having an hour and a half run time it felt way longer to me. I hope maybe there is a director’s cut or unrated version out there that steps its game up because it just needed that something special to stand out.