{"id":7752,"date":"2024-10-30T22:47:51","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T02:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7752"},"modified":"2024-10-30T22:47:51","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T02:47:51","slug":"black-christmas-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/30\/black-christmas-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Christmas (2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Black Christmas<\/strong> (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, terror, thematic content involving sexual assault, language, sexual material, drinking)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sophia Takal\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Sophia Takal and April Wolfe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Will and Brooke Blair\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mark Schwartzbard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 13, 2019 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Imogen Poots, Aleyse Shannon, Lily Donoghue, Brittany O\u2019Grady, Caleb Eberhardt, Cary Elwes, Simon Mead, Madeleine Adams, Nathalie Morris, Ben Black, Zoe Robins, Ryan McIntyre, Mark Neilson, Lucy Currey.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $10.4M (US)\/$18.5M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0I like both earlier versions of the holiday-themed fright flick Black Christmas. The original 1974 version is a nifty, low budget Canadian horror movie in which a group of sorority sisters fall prey to a psychopathic killer whose identity and motive are never revealed. It\u2019s actually one of the first slasher films predating Halloween by four years. The 2006 remake is a cool splatter flick in which the killer(s) actually deck the halls with bowels and entrails (fa la la la la!). It follows the same basic plot as the original, but expands on the killer\u2019s sick, twisted backstory (it involves incest and matricide). I recently rewatched both as a double feature and it was great.<\/p>\n

\u00a0My feelings about the latest incarnation of Black Christmas<\/strong> are quite the opposite. Starting with the obvious, it\u2019s a slasher movie and it\u2019s PG-13. What\u2019s wrong with this picture? Yep, you got it! A PG-13 rating definitely defeats the purpose. Then there\u2019s the matter of the too-revealing trailer. Going in, we already know who the killers are; a group of frat boys in black robes and Eyes Wide Shut masks. We\u2019re also given an indication of the why with the mention of the word \u201csacrifice\u201d.\u00a0 Did we really need to know all this before seeing the movie? Not really. But that\u2019s not what gets to me. What really gets to me about the new Black Christmas<\/strong> is the added supernatural aspect having to do with a bust of the college\u2019s racist, misogynistic founder. It\u2019s stupid and adds nothing to the movie. If anything, it derails it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Once again, the main action of Black Christmas<\/strong> takes place among a group of sorority sisters at Christmastime. They\u2019re being killed off and must fend for themselves. Any similarity between the new and the old ends here. The plot has been retrofitted for the MeToo generation. In lieu of rehashing the plot, I\u2019d like to talk about the vibe of the thing. Imagine if Jane Campion (The Piano, In the Cut) directed a horror movie. It might turn out something like this. Director Sophia Takal makes no attempt to hide her disgust of the opposite sex; she depicts all men as either rapists or emasculated wimps. When one of the wimps grows a pair, the girls angrily reject him. I see what Takal is getting at here. She takes a genre usually defined as misogynistic and turns it around (the term is \u201cmisandrogynistic\u201d). Fine, turnabout is fair play in cinema too. The question is does it belong in what\u2019s supposed to be an entertaining holiday horror aimed at teens?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The protagonist of this Black Christmas<\/strong> is Riley (Poots, Green Room), a student at Hawthorne College, a hotbed of misogyny and sexual assault primarily at the hands of members of Delta Kappa Omicron, a fraternity of entitled creeps who belong in prison. She\u2019s still coping with being raped by their former president (McIntyre) three years earlier, a trauma made worse by nobody other than her Mu Kappa Epsilon sisters believing her. It seems she\u2019s destined to relive this nightmare after campus police dismiss her concerns over the disappearance of sorority sister Helena (Adams) shortly after she and her friends perform a number blasting rape culture and naming Riley\u2019s rapist at the DKO talent show. The guard on duty says she\u2019s probably with her boyfriend like 90% of the girls reported missing this time of year. So how does that explain the threatening DMs from a mysterious account?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, her super-feminist friend\/sister Kris (Shannon, Charmed) has drawn ire due to her petition to have popular lit professor Gelson (Elwes, Saw) fired for not teaching books written by women. She\u2019s also the one responsible for having the bust of founder Calvin Hawthorne removed from the main building. Is it any wonder they become targets? Given the movie\u2019s decidedly feminist slant, sisters from different sororities band together and fight back against the male villains in the climax.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The whole idea of female characters taking the reins of a slasher flick isn\u2019t a terrible idea in and of itself. In fact, I wouldn\u2019t mind seeing a movie where college girls turn vigilante and take down fraternity rapists officials refuse to punish citing lack of evidence or some \u201che said, she said\u201d BS. In Black Christmas<\/strong>, any attempted message about rape culture on college campuses comes off as crass and tasteless. This is mainly due to the idiocy of the black magic subplot. It feels shoehorned in. I might not have minded it so much if Takal remained true to the genre- Black Christmas in particular- and gone for the R with a lot of gore. A slasher flick without blood is like an oatmeal cookie without raisins. What\u2019s the point? I get that PG-13 horror movies exist because they\u2019re accessible to young teens and will make more money for the studio. The problem is that PG-13 remakes of horror movies originally rated R never work. I give you Prom Night, When a Stranger Calls, The Stepfather and now, Black Christmas<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t even know what to say about the acting in Black Christmas<\/strong>. Is it even worth the time and effort to comment on this aspect of a basically worthless movie? If pressed, I suppose I could say Poots is an engaging young actress. Elwes overplays it as the professor who makes clear his feelings towards women, especially ones who make trouble for men.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As for what else, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything to say other than the characterizations make perfectly clear the director\u2019s favored gender. All men are villains or wimps; all women are fighters. It\u2019s a generalization and an oversimplification. But why am I even talking about this? Black Christmas<\/strong> is supposed to be fun entertainment, counterprogramming for those who don\u2019t like feel-good cheery Christmas movies. Instead, it\u2019s a message movie undone by stupidity in plotting. It should go in the trash instead of under the tree.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Christmas (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, terror, thematic content involving sexual assault, language, sexual material, drinking)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sophia Takal\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Sophia Takal and April Wolfe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Will and Brooke Blair\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mark Schwartzbard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 13, 2019 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Imogen Poots, Aleyse Shannon, Lily Donoghue, Brittany O\u2019Grady, Caleb Eberhardt, Cary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7793,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,25,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holiday-movies","category-horror","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Black-Christmas-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7752"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7795,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7752\/revisions\/7795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}