Review of Black Christmas (2006) by Zack S — 04 Oct 2009

Sadistic and at times, brutally nasty, remake of the 70's seasonal horror that works effectively for most of it's duration before giving way to ludicrous plotting and silliness.

Trish from Harper's Island, Lucy McClane from Die Hard 4.0, Dawn from Buffy and that little girl from Party of Five are amongst the sorority sisters leaving it way too late to get home for Christmas and choosing instead to stay on in their house which formally belonged to the family of a jaundiced serial murderer. Using the crux that everyone comes home for Christmas, has he come back for more stalking and sleighing? (Seriously, that's the only Christmas related pun I'm going to do!).

The film does a decent job at first of cranking up the requisite amount of tension as the girls are picked off but a lack of imagination with the killings and too much time spent on an unpleasant expositional back story don't help matters. The cast are all fine in a kind of look pretty and shriek kind of way and there's a token Dawson's Creek boy thrown in for good measure but the film really throws itself towards it's conclusion.

Reason becomes an afterthought as the movie draws on before the killers motives seemingly go completely out the window and a predictable hospital ward set finale descends to all known horror cliches.

Black Christmas has obviously been remade to cash in on the horror audience at a time of year when cinemas are traditionally full of family fun sized movies. It isn't a total dump, there are some nice scary moments but the lack of cohesion and decent explanations leaves the whole thing stinking like sprouts (okay, I lied).