Black Christmas (2019)

 

Since Scream 2 is set around a college campus and it is around Christmas time, I thought I take a dive into the 2019 version of Black Christmas.

Um...this movie was forgettable and definitely fails as a horror movie. Although it's a very loose remake of the 1974 cult classic, I"m still going to make comparisons, along with the equally dreaded 2006 version.

Let's give a little backstory. Director Sophia Takal was originally going to remake I Spit On Your Grave but was offered to remake this instead. Okay, let me stop there. Don't we already have a remake of I Spit On Your Grave? It came out 9 years before this movie. Plus there have been two sequels to that film, including a spiritual sequel to the original. Why is Hollywood so remake and reboot happy? (I just now heard they're rebooting True Blood and it's been only 6 years since that show's been canceled.) But I guess Black Christmas is the more appealing of these choices, so Sophia Takal agreed to direct this one. 

This movie reportedly had only five months to shoot with an incomplete script. You can imagine how the end result turned out. It's a movie that's lost in translation. It has a message but it doesn't know how to tell that message within a story. Everything is spoken loudly. It demands your attention. It PREACHES to you from the screen. I get the director's intention. I really do. But I wish she would've been more subtle about it.

You think that by looking at the poster of the four girls that they would be the main focus of the movie, but only Riley and Kris are better developed than the other two. They are what you call the Four-Girl Ensemble: Riley, the shy reserved one, Marty, the nice one with the steady boyfriend, Kris, the outspoken one, and Jess, the slightly ditzy one.

Let's start with Kris first. She's sort of set up as the mouthpiece for the film, being very vocal against the DKO fraternity and uses her activism to get Professor Gelson fired along with the removal of Calvin Hawthrone's statue. But unfortunately, that's basically Kris's character. A mouthpiece for the message of the film. 

Okay, let me put my two cents here for a minute, just to see how better written this character should be. Yes, her activism should be a vital point to the story. Let's say Kris had this friend during her Freshman/Sophomore year and then suddenly that friend gets date raped by one of the DKO frat brothers. Her friend tries to seek justice but to no avail. There's a court date and her friend's rapist gets only one year and finishes his education at another college while her friend falls into a deep depression and drops out. Kris soon finds out Professor Gelson, who is one of the founding members of DKO got that frat brother off scot-free. Kris is livid. So in fierce determination, she uses her activism to take down the DKO fraternity. This will also explain why she's so pushy towards Riley. It's because she doesn't want her to end up like her friend did. I feel like that would've been much better character development for Kris than the one we have here. Furthermore, Kris could've been much more likable as a result. Her personality can be grating at times. She is self-righteous and opinionated to the point of nausea. I feel like if the filmmakers give her better development, she might've been a compelling character.

Riley was the only character that was actually properly developed than the rest. Her story arc involves a terrible incident where she was date-raped by DKO Fraternity brother Brian Huntley. It leaves Riley into a sort of sheltered state, not knowing how to cope with the events of what happened. She tries to seek justice but to no avail. Brian is out scot-free and she has to deal with his lingering presence. 

There is actually one scene that I liked and that's the "Ho Ho Ho, I didn't know," sequence. Besides the song being earwormingly catchy, it also strengthens Riley's character. At first, Kris convinces her to go on stage as an understudy and she isn't sure if even wants to do the performance. But once she faces Brain, she looks at him straight in the eye and sings out loud, basically saying, "Hey, I'm not gonna let you forget what you did to me, asshole." I found that to be a powerful moment but sadly that's the only good thing I can say about this movie. 

Imogen Poots did a decent performance, displaying the emotions needed within her character, which made her distinctly relatable.

I wouldn't say the same for the other two girls though. Marty and Jess are just so one-dimensional without a pinch of character development. All we know is that Marty is the nice one and Jess is the ditzy one and you think by judging from the movie poster, they'll survive for the rest of the movie. But *spoiler alert* they get killed off fairly easily. There's just isn't enough time to get invested in them, unfortunately leaving the characters to be interchangeable. 

Speaking of interchangeable, the men don't fare much better. They're your typical smarmy, misogynistic frat boys with their overly overt toxic masculinity, looking to cause a disturbance amongst the MKE sisters.

The only good male characters are Landon, a guy who has a crush on Riley, and Nate, Marty's boyfriend. Though there is one scene where Nate goes into a rant about how men get blamed for everything leading him into a heated argument with the girls including his girlfriend. However, it's revealed that it was the migraine effects of the Hawthrone statue bringing out his "inner alpha." Ooookay. yeah, I'll talk about that later.

This is how I think this should've played out:

Let's say that Nate speaks from the heart and approaches Kris and the girls in a calm manner to where Kris opens up about her friend and why she's so headstrong when it comes to her activism. She wants to make sure her MKE sorority sisters feel safe and that comes from a place of sincerity. The dialogue felt like something out of a Twitter thread, not hitting the different viewpoints well. If the filmmakers wanted to do a scene like this, I think it would've worked better if it was set in debate class. 

Landon was developed a bit better since he was Riley's love interest. He's this sort of shy kind of guy who becomes fiercely protective of the girls later on. It shows that he genuinely cares and wants to do the right thing, which was one of the good points of the script.

So this leaves us to the more antagonist male characters:

Brian Huntley, Riley's tormentor, is just another typical smarmy jerk jock character who has some sort of grudge towards the DKE sorority sisters. This comes from having his ego bruised by the Christmas performance. The only way this movie portrays him is cartoonishly evil. Sure there are guys like him that do exist but I wish the movie would've handled him better.

To my surprise, Cary Elwes, of all people is in this movie. I haven't really seen him in much lately which puzzles me as to why he would take on such a one-note villain role. For the most part, Cary Elwes just does a phoned-in performance. 

He plays Professor Gelson, the misogynistic founder of the DKO fraternity who refuses to do women's studies and is the one who helps out the frat brothers when they do their misdeeds.

He is very protective of the Calvin Hawthrone Statue and the reason why because it's filled with a mysterious black goo that somehow brainwashes the frat brothers into violent sadists. Yeah, I have to talk about this for a sec. I think this is the most stupid and nonsensical thing in the movie. This black goo is never explained. It's mentioned that Calvin Hawthrone has dabbled in the black arts but it never goes beyond that and some part of me thinks that this was a rushed attempt to finish the final draft of the screenplay.

This is how I think would've played out better:

What if Brian was Professor Gelson's nephew and the reason why he gets away with Riley's assault is that his uncle was able to get him the best lawyers on his case just like what he did with the previous frat brother that I mentioned earlier. This is where I think the movie could've kept the whole murder mystery angle to where Brian and Professor Gelson are responsible for the murders and it's because they have a vendetta against women. I think that's far better than the whole black goo turns you evil scenario, which I found to be ludicrous.

Most of the criticisms that this movie has is how terribly edited it is. In my opinion, there is just no way that a PG-13 slasher can work. But then again, I can see why the filmmakers wanted to cut down on the blood-letting. Looking at the 2006 version, the blood and gore are extremely gracious, sometimes unnecessarily with Billy making Christmas cookies out of his mother's skin and also eating the eyeballs of his victims. Yeah, it was a little too much. I totally understand. But, unfortunately, it's at the cost of suspense and tension, which this movie really needed.

Oh and side note, I wish the filmmakers would've kept the whole creepy phone call angle. I just don't find creepy text messages scary. 

And here's one example of a poorly edited scene:

The scene in question is where Riley and Kris are trapped in the sorority house and the DKO frat brothers are lurking about. They wait for the cops to arrive and once a police officer bursts into the door it cuts to a scene where another group of sorority sisters had just killed a frat brother in self-defense. After that, the police officer is suddenly impaled by a frat brother. It sort of took me out of the movie and ruined the suspense.

The next scene is more at the fault of how terribly rushed the screenplay is:

Riley and Kris narrowly escape from one of the frat brothers and as they drive off to safety, Riley goes off into exposition mode, practically explaining the entire plot. I feel like there is a time and place for exposition in movies and this wasn't it. It would've been better if they place the scene in a library where Riley and Kris do a little research on the Calvin Hawthrone guy. But then again, it shows how clumsy the movie is written.

The final takeaway of the movie is its social commentary. I don't mind the message, though it's more so of how it's told. Its very...forced and the dialogue doesn't feel natural because of it.

When looking back at the 1974 film, I felt it was pretty progressive at the time, particularly based on the topic of abortion, which was a big deal during the early to mid-70s.

There's a pivotal scene where the main character Jess sits and argues with her controlling boyfriend Peter. He talks of quitting his training as a concert pianist and insist Jess do the same with her ambitions because of the baby. But Jess refuses and sticks to her decision. She clearly tells him that just because he's getting rid of his ambitions doesn't mean she's getting rid of hers. I thought that scene was handled incredibly well by being very subtle with its feminist message to where the 1974 film works better in that regard. 

And that's what missing with both versions. They have no subtly and character development whatsoever. What I liked about the 1974 film is that it felt like a drama slowly turning into horror. We have time to really get to know the girls and their personalities. Their weaknesses and their strengths, the bad traits and their good traits. They were portrayed as actual human beings and the character development was handled much better than most slasher movies. This is what the 2019 version should've been. Where it puts more focus on the human drama and understanding the characters. 

Okay, now it's time to talk about the ending: *spoiler alert*

It turns out one of Riley's sorority sisters, Helena, betrays her and becomes a mole for the DKO fraternity. Then Professor Gelson goes into this long exposition monologue to where it made me think that this was another script flub from the filmmakers. Now I can accept Scream for doing this kind of thing, but I felt that this was not needed. Just to show how evil the fraternity brothers truly are, they kill Helena by snapping her neck.

It seems like it's all over for Riley until Kris and a group of sorority sisters come and save the day. A fight ensues. Riley defeats Brian, Professor Gelson gets caught on fire, Landon, who was brainwashed, gets out of his spell, and Riley destroys the statue of Calvin Hawthorne.

Riley, Kris, Landon, and the other Sorority sisters escape from the fraternity, locking the frat brothers in to be burned alive. Jesus! I mean didn't they stop to think that the rest of the frat brothers were brainwashed too? If Landon broke out of his spell, I'm pretty sure the rest of those guys did as well but then the group decides to burn them anyway? I don't find that to be the best moral of the story. And...the movie just ends. There's no sense of closure or anything. And that's why the overall message just fell flat for me.

So that was 2019's Black Christmas. I just didn't think this was a good movie. They were seeds to be planted here, some really good seeds but it was executed quite poorly. If Sophia Takal wanted to make a movie with a powerful message, she should take the time to put more care into the process.

My Last Word: It's a no for me.