Black Christmas (2019 Review)
Black Christmas Definitely Doesn’t Have Any Holiday Cheer in it.
Holiday horror movies are a twisted pleasure of mine, so I was really looking forward to seeing Black Christmas. The smile quickly faded from my face though as I realized that the movie was more interested in being a cumbersome, blunt, and forced feminist film than a coherent horror movie. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of feminism in horror, especially when it comes to badass final girls. That being said, I prefer when the movies are more interested in creating strong female characters (such as Halloween, Happy Death Day, and Ready or Not). Black Christmas feels more like it’s trying to capitalize on feminism rather than contribute to it.
Black Christmas tells the tale of a sorority besieged by a masked killer intent on, well, killing all the girls that decided to stay at school over the holiday break. At the heart of the tale are four women played by Imogen Poots, Aleyse Shannon, Lily Donoghue, and Brittany O’Grady. Determined to crush the patriarchy, they decide to teach a douchey fraternity a lesson by performing a revamped Christmas song calling out rape culture (which is actually pretty catchy thanks to Riki Lindhome of Garfunkle & Oats). Now, no self-aggrandizing toxic frat guy cliche is going to let that go and soon the women find themselves fighting for their lives. Being the strong independent women that they are, the women soon decided to take the fight to the men behind their torment (rather than, say, go to the cops or escape).
Alright, here’s the thing, Black Christmas is filled with plenty of valid points when it comes to rape culture, patriarchy, and misogyny in general. I’m not going to try to take that away from the film. However, the way in which it addresses all these issues is so unwieldy that it feels forced. It’s more focused on making sure it hits checkboxes rather than investing in story or memorable characters. For example, by the end of the film, I can’t tell you anything about any of the women in it. I don’t know any of their majors, interests (besides feminism), or history (other than Poot’s character is an orphan and was raped). Instead, like the men they’re battling against, they’re just cliches. Of course, I’m not excited about any of them getting killed off one by one, but without any way to be invested in who they are as human beings, it’s hard to care when the bodies start hitting the floor.
More importantly, there’s no real memorable aspect to any part of Black Christmas in general. The killer wears a mask with absolutely no personality. In fact, it just looks like a black blob under a hood. When he does strike, the kills lack any sort of intensity or creativity to them. There’s the standard stabbing with an icicle or strangled by Christmas tree lights, but those have all been done to death before (pun intended). I was hoping that this new version of Black Christmas would live up the intensity that so many recent Blumhouse films have given us. Without spoiling it, I will admit that it does try to shoehorn in a big twist in the end (like every other horror film), but it’s one that caused me to audibly groan when it was finally revealed. Instead of being an icy thriller, Black Christmas is just muddy slush.
I quite enjoyed director/ writer Sophia Takal’s Into the Dark episode New Year, New You. It was such an interesting and creative twist on a classic horror cliche, and it’s disappointing that Black Christmas wasn’t the same. Sure, it’s a competently executed film and there’s not much I can complain about when it comes to the cinematography or the performances. There are even a few parts of some of the cat and mouse game are pretty cool. The key to horror is tension. Getting the audience to the edge of their seats as they wait with bated breath to see what happens next. There’s none of that in Black Christmas aside from the standard “villain appears suddenly in the background” shots that pretty much every horror film uses.
