Also checked out the movie Black Christmas. This is a horror movie released on Friday the 13th and for the Christmas season, I guess. But it’s not a very good scary movie and its an even worse Christmas movie. And it’s not a very good example of the sub-genre of holiday horror film either. It’s also a particularly in-name-only remake of the original 1974 movie of the same name. But it does have a theme and it shouts it from the rooftops so it nails at least one of its agendas.
So Black Christmas is a sorority house slasher film. With most of the school home for the holidays, the remaining sorority girls (and frat boys) make plans for the Christmas break. Unfortunately, a masked killer is making his own plans as well. That’s kind of the premise of the original film and just about all this remake has in common. Because this new movie is about one of the sisters who previously survived a date rape nobody believed and how that boy is back on campus with his frat bros. The other girls in the sorority are at different levels of woke-ness about campus rape culture, the patriarchy, and so forth. The frat guys are the enemies… and since this movie is as subtle as a sledgehammer, we quickly learn they are the killers too. Because women are getting uppity and have to be put back in their place.
I’m all for a movie that focuses on these things in the same way Get Out focused on race. But this movie just doesn’t get the mix of storytelling right. For one thing, very little happens in this slog of a movie for the first hour. The characters are pretty flat and cliched and the story just keeps spinning its wheels. For another thing, it’s so hyper-focused on being a feminist film, it forgets to give most of the characters a personality beyond the message. Which is all the more odd since slasher films have long focused on the strong female survivor character (yes, she’s tormented for most of the film by the psycho killer, but she does fight back).
But the movie does pick up once the madness and the killing and whatnot starts. There’s some genuinely good horror moments and some ass kicking by the end of the flick. It’s still sandwiched by some particularly over-the-top mustache-twirling villains that are anything but subtle. So even when the movie gets better, it’s still a weird mixed bag of over-the-top toxic masculinity and even more over-the-top (but kind of awesome) girl power.
I think this movie was designed by a committee to make the anti-SJW crowd’s heads explode. And I’m kind of down with that. Except the movie still has to be a good movie and it largely fails in that regard. Not completely though and there’s just enough good stuff in the last half that I’d marginally recommend it on rental or Netflix. Unless you are the kind of person who thinks Kelli Marie Tran and Laura Dern single-handedly ruined all of Star Wars because they are women… then you might just want to watch it to stew in your rage.
Score: 73