Black Christmas (2006)

Director: Glen Morgan

Starring: Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg

Run Time: 94 mins

Certificate: 15

Plot Outline: It's a few days before Christmas and an escaped maniac returns to the house he grew up in to terrorize a group of sorority girls who have taken up residence there.

The Review: Still short on original ideas in Hollywood, here is yet another remake of a previously forgotten 70s flick. The original Black Christmas is little known outside of the horror genre and it's a pity because, although it's not the greatest slasher film out there, it has always been regarded as "the first slasher filick" and preceded the likes of Halloween and Friday the 13th by some years. It's relative obscurity has lead to it being cast aside in the annuls of the genre with the plaudits always heading towards John Carpenter's classic first. So it was a good choice to remake, if only for the fact it would send a lot of people scurrying to the video shops to track down the original. After 32 years and given the recent spate of appalling remakes (The Fog anyone?), how does Black Christmas stand up in the year 2007?

Surprisingly well it has to be said! It's never going to win any awards for originality and it reeks of the smell of modern teen horror but do you know something - this is one nasty piece of work! For a 15 rating, the boundaries are pushed as far as they can possibly go. This killer doesn't just stab people with a knife, he wraps plastic bags around his victims' heads, choking the life out of them before ripping out and feasting upon their eye balls! It's uber-violent, sometimes even too violent. It's nasty and it's mean-spirited - everything that Christmas shouldn't be about - and it plays on this with some choice killings (candy canes should be used more often as murder weapons). The female cast bobble about in low cut tops, displaying ample cleavage and legs but they're so bitchy and whiny, it's hard to root for any of them. Well, being a guy I always want the fit ones to be kept alive as long as possible. But the pace of the film is such that some of them don't even see out the first half an hour. The kills begin quickly and don't let up throughout the film which is good. Some recognisable faces are in there such as Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Die Hard 4), Lacey Chabert (various crappy American teen comedies) and Michelle Trachtenberg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but don't bother trying to second guess who will survive and who will not. There's a decent sized cast too which means the killer is pretty busy throughout. Thankfully any plodding moments in the film (of which there are many and mainly involve unnecessary flashbacks and pointless characters being introduced to up the body count) don't plod for too long before another body is thrown onto the heap.

On the flip side to all this, the remake just blends into the genre crowd like a Where's Wally cartoon. At least the original was a groundbreaking trendsetter which influenced the way the likes of John Carpenter approached the subject matter in Halloween. This one could go under the guise of any big budget slasher of the last 6-7 years and no one would notice the different. Replacing true atmosphere and scares with a splattering of blood is a cheap trick to cover over the cracks in the film. Apart from the blood and brutality there's nothing worthwhile. The writing sucks big time. The script makes the big mistake of throwing in an unnecessary back story to the killer and an even more confusing series of twists and turns at the end of the film. Do we really need to know what turned Billy into this psycho? Surely the fact that he is a psycho and he's heading for the house is all we need to know. But I guess that's what they call padding in Hollywood nowadays - fleshing out back stories! I don't see the need for horror films to focus so much of their time on giving their killers stories, turning them human and simply watering down any sense of fear or terror they may have caused. Arguably the worst cast of this is the silly way they pissed upon the Leatherface legend in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. But you get the message.

Final Verdict: Black Christmas is a pretty middling remake. On one hand it's everything that I hate about modern horror - the style over substance approach with more focus on gore and "ooo" moments as opposed to genuine scares or tension. But on the other hand if this had been made in the 80s, it would have fit right into the crowd of straight-to-video slash where it would have been appreciated more. Sometimes you don't need much story or substance if you've got plenty of slash! As you can see I'm undecided on this one so I'll let you make your own minds up.

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