Movie Review: Black Christmas

Wickedly Way Back Wednesday

Brings Us

Well folks, it’s Christmas time and I would be silly if I didn’t want to review the Black Christmas remake that’s coming out tomorrow. However, I didn’t want to watch it without watching the original 1974 version first. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but we all make mistakes.

Breakdown:

Black Christmas has such a simple plot that it would be difficult to screw this up, but they found a way.

A sorority house has got some issues during Christmas time (which is the only connection this movie has to Christmas, so I’m not sure why it’s in the title). The girls in the house have been receiving perverted calls by someone called The Moaner (honestly, with a name like that what kind of calls did they expect). For some reason, they have never called the police to complain about the calls. No, they decide to wait until late in the movie to do that.

I guess it’s good that they waited because The Moaner is clearly the killer and if they complained about him earlier no one would have died. This way we get a movie and they clear up some space in the sorority.

Anywhoo! Soon a girl in the house is murdered but her body is hidden so everyone just assumes she is missing. They team up with the police to find her but instead they solve an unrelated murder of a high school girl. Btw, they are obviously trying to connect the two cases but the M.O. doesn’t match so that doesn’t make much sense.

An hour in and the killer finally decides to kill again, but I’m torn when it comes to knowing who the true antagonist is. The killer should be the antagonist, but there is this cat in the house who seems to lure these women to their deaths, so I’m going with the cat!

When one of the girls finally complains about the phone calls, the police put a trace on their phone. Lucky for them this seems to encourage the killer to call a lot more. However, when the police finally discover where the calls are coming from, it might be too late to survive.

Thoughts:

Snore. Black Christmas was so dry. We got to hear about a bunch of information that didn’t matter at all. My mom sucks, I’m pregnant, he plays hockey, he plays piano, a high school girl was murdered, that cop is bad at his job and never learns. If you removed the extra stuff that didn’t drive the plot forward, the movie would flow so much better. But it just felt like the writers were trying to kill time to make the run time longer.

Also, you could have plopped this movie into any season and it would’ve been the same movie. Why did we call this Black Christmas? It’s not like the killer only focused on this sorority during Christmas time, because he is the obscene caller. And we find out very early that they have been getting those calls for a while.

I spent the whole time hoping that everything would be explained in the end. Unfortunately, nothing is explained. We don’t know why because the writer didn’t know why. What we do know is the killer was crazy and a ninja. He was able to sneak into the house and stay there unnoticed while on a killing spree.

The one thing I loved about this movie was that Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) was in it and the 70’s style was awesome. I loved seeing the clothes, the phones, the glasses, the posters, all of it. The clothes that Phyl (Andrea Martin) wore was my favorite.

True Fear?

Not a chance. Black Christmas from 1974 brought no sense of urgency, no jumps, no blood, no nothing. It was a disappointment, really. I understand that many people appreciate this film and it’s place in horror history but just because it’s an old film doesn’t make it a good one.