Black Christmas (2019)
Slay, Girls
The original Black Christmas is up there as one of the original slashing flicks out there. It’s also particularly old. As it turns out, someone decided it needed a remake - kind of. Look, every good remake can’t just be a carbon copy of the original - art reflects the times, and there’s no point in simply just retreading an identical story. The story needs to be made one’s own. Of course, the times can bring with it some shifts in perspective that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s really only one way to find out, and I’ve been out of the slasher field for a while, so let’s see what happens. In a complete farse of seasonal planning, tonight we check out Black Christmas - from 2019.
Alright, expectations are always important going into movies - and here, I’m set for a typical slasher. Basically, if there’s a body count it meets the expectations, most the characters are expected to sit at “annoying or made to hate” and the plot as basic and cheesy as possible. Yes, that’s pretty low. Immediately on seeing the cover art of the title screen, I think perhaps my expectations may be misplaced - this looks like a women fight back movie more than a slasher! Well, given it’s MPAA rating, I don’t think this is going to be as brutal as something like Last House on the Left, so I think the expectations earlier set should still stand well enough - although maybe we should lower the body count expectation a little bit. Well, let me tell you, this movie took a twist I should have seen coming but probably didn’t because that low-thought expectation mood I had set at the start.
The plot starts off pretty slasher enough. Plenty of folks are heading home from the college for the holidays. Some aren’t having a very successful trip home though, as we witness a woman getting stalked and murdered. This event largely goes rather unnoticed, although does leaving us questioning if the entire town is filled with murderers. Back in the college, we get introduced to our leads. We’ve got a sorority house of ladies looking for some equality on campus and stirring up a little trouble. Some aren’t quite as vocal about it as others, and through the exposition we get introduced to a bit of a rape subplot. While this plot is playing out, we occasionally hop back over into our murder-plot as another girl gets taken out by the hooded figure. It goes, it goes, its goes, and then we hit the point where things suddenly take a twist - and we get the girls taking the lead in fighting off the killers. It’s a serviceable plot to get what’s happening on screen to happen, and at times it even has some pretty nice moments of feeling pretty thought out.
Of course, a big part of this is the bit that might have some folks feathers a little roughed up. This movie ends up getting real political in the forms of sexism and rape culture. Now, horror is a great genre to address different forms of political or cultural satire. They’ve been doing it for years, some with more style and tact than others. In the case of this one, it actually handles most of it’s thoughts relatively well through the start, having a little back and forth between it where it’s not really painted as one side being totally wrong and bad, even to a much lesser extent with the rape accusation (was it false? Did it actually happen?) By the end though… well, it falls of the rails of balance, so prepare to feel a bit like you should be considered a terrible person if you aren’t female. As a dude, am I offended by this? Not really, it still gave me a reason to have a pretty stupid fun scene at the end, and it thematically fits what the movie was going for with the whole “girl power” thing. It’s far less offensive feeling that changing something to be female oriented for the sake of making extra cash at the box office instead of actually trying to create something new - and I’m sure we’ve all had moments of that feeling at some point or another. Everyone needs hero’s and the likes, and the phrase “final girl” is a thing in horror for a long time - which makes wonder why you don’t get it as much elsewhere in the first place, but now I’m going off on a tirade - let’s get this back on track.
Ain’t she just an angel?
The actors here all do a good job. The girl squad comes of believable as a lady frat, particularly with their interplay between each other. Mind you, i have never and will never exist in a lady frat house (or dude frat house for that matter), so this believe-ability does not come from a place a familiarity. Some of the motivations - on both sides if you believe it - are actually pretty sound and understandable. There’s also quite a few moments that could be a bit rough to watch for some (what with the whole rape subplot element) despite nothing graphic being on display, and the actors do a good job with those moments as well. They all do a fine job making it feel like an authentic existing thing - down to being frightened and throwing one’s keys into their hand like a mock Wolverine. Yeah, perhaps some of it goes a bit out the window when we finally hit the finale and things get a bit bonkers, but the acting never really hits the point of being bad or terrible.
Effects are pretty good. There’s a few interesting kills on the slasher side of things - although arguably nothing ever really quite hits that opening kill in being creative. Things aren’t overly graphic - there’s some blood and the occasional objecting punching into or through something, but we aren’t getting slathered in viscera as the movie goes on. At one point, they even manage to find a way to get around the old censors a bit simply by tweaking blood colors - a tried and true tactic to confuse the MPAA, since only red blood is bad on screen. The settings are all pretty normal campus/frat house affair with winter decorations to spruce things up. They all look fine, and the killer mask is really just a mask of the college founder, so it ends up feeling very much like a generic robed killer than anything else. Still, nothing in this department is really bad at all, even if it won’t go out of its way to impress a lot of people. Oh yeah, someone gets tased - that’s always fun to watch!
There’s a surprising amount of humor in this movie. Some might be a little dark, like the talent show song the girls put on (I still got a bit of a chuckle out of it, as it is funny as a revenge-song sort of thing despite the subject matter of it). Other moments are straight up puns - that “why does Santa hate chimneys” bit got a good laugh out of me. It’s a good relief from some of the more serious matters on hand, without being so detracting it feels like it’s just poking fun at the serious issues. The movie is also shot quite well - there are plenty moments of tension building based around classic slasher movies that will have you floating on your seat waiting for the reveal, only to not do it and give it to you later - somewhat like how i feel the Paranormal franchise could have gone if they stopped being bland as heck and used some budget to do something besides sit around and be obvious. Of course, by the time you get to the power shift, a lot of the fancy camera usage for thrills goes away - but it doesn’t take away from the good usage of it before that.
Hold up, what?
This movie is a departure from it’s namesake in a few ways, but honestly it isn’t that bad. I expected a different movie, but even then it was still pretty entertaining. It fumbles it’s message balance a little by the end and get’s a little typical one sided, but makes up for that with plenty of characters that are relatively believable as entities and some nice camera work. I do feel that some might have issues with it, feeling it a bit preachy - which of course would be a positive for some, I’m sure. In the end though, it’s an entertaining flick that does some things I didn’t expect it to - including have some humor and not being a straight slasher movie. I will say one thing though: I watched the trailer for the movie (it’s where I usually get the images to accompany the review from), and they did a lot of little edits and changes to that thing that you don’t see in the movie - jump scares, living statues, certain camera angels or shots lasting longer. I don’t think it too misleads a person from what the movie is (after having watched it), but I really didn’t expect that.