Mark Reviews Movies: BLACK CHRISTMAS (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 13, 2019

The second remake of Bob Clark's proto-slasher murder mystery from 1974, Black Christmas at least knows what it wants to do. The first remake from 2006 did, too, although the less said about that movie, which eliminated most of the mystery and went all-out on gruesome killings, the better. This one's much better than the previous remake. Then again, no matter what unfolded in co-writer/director Sophia Takal's new version of a story about murders at a sorority house around the holidays, that superiority was pretty much a given.

Takal and co-writer April Wolfe set up their intentions quite quickly, as a young woman at a college, while walking to her car from the school library, receives some suspicious messages on a social media application on her cellphone. A man, staring at his own phone, is walking behind her—too closely for comfort. It's an uncomfortable position for the young woman, especially since the messages suggest that someone is coming for her, and the stranger keeps looking up at her, as if he might have something in mind.

The fear, of course, is normal, and the payoff to the scene, in which the young woman is inevitably killed (after struggling on the ground and leaving behind a twisted snow angel), relies on misdirection. The threat only seemed to be behind her. It was right in front of her all the while.

Takal and Wolfe's screenplay offers a sort of structural and narrative act of misdirection, too. The movie's concerns with being a woman in the modern world—always wondering if the man behind her has some ugly motive or if some fraternity guy is going to put something in her drink—continue through the movie's first act.

It's overtly political, in a similar way that Clark's film, which featured a "final girl" who stands up to her controlling boyfriend about his plans for her life, also was. The politics here are as apparent and even more pronounced, dealing with sexual assault on campus and online harassment and a professor's petty grudge about the classics he wants to teach and a lot of men telling a group of women that their thoughts don't matter.

Some, of course, will decry the filmmakers' decision to deal with these issues in what, as they would put it, "should be" a straightforward, entertaining slasher movie—as if the only goal of popular culture is escapism or that politics cannot exist within escapism. The inherent lack of imagination from such voices and within such statements has become tiresome.

Whether Takal and Wolfe intended it or not, their movie, as misguided as it becomes in its second act, is a direct counterargument to those sentiments. This movie is at its most entertaining when it tackles political issues. It's at its least effective when the filmmakers set out to do what they "should be" doing with such material.

The basics of the plot come from the original film. There's murder afoot at a sorority house. Riley (Imogen Poots), Kris (Aleyse Shannon), and Marty (Lily Donoghue) are the primary players and seemingly among the eventual victims.

After the first young woman is killed, one of the sorority's other sisters, named Helena (Madeleine Adams), is confronted by a figure in a black robe and disappears. This happens after a talent show at a fraternity house, where Riley, who was assaulted by the frat's former president, and her sisters perform a song that says exactly what their hosts have done at parties like this one.

One initially wonders what purpose these ideas serve in what seems to be a pretty standard horror movie, and that's the movie's biggest issue. It does, for a long stretch, simply become a straightforward horror tale, as young women wander the sorority house alone, only to be subsequently startled and murdered by the robed killer.

Takal omits the actual killing, and while that might seem like a blatant attempt to obtain a less restricted rating from the MPAA, the omission actually feels a bit more subversive in retrospect. In such movies, we "should be" seeing the murders. Takal's denial of that for the audience might just be a subtle pronouncement that this isn't that kind of movie—even or especially if the audience expects or demands such violence from it.

From the sorority sisters' perspective, more young women disappear, and the social media messages (coming from an account named after the college's founder, whose bust has been removed from the school library because he owned slaves) keep coming. Riley suspects the fraternity guys are getting back at them for the sung denouncement.

The truth is, well, right in front of us—or, better, behind a door. The third act of Black Christmas gives us the usual cat-and-mouse game with a masked killer, but then, it dives deeper into the politics. The climax is out there, for sure, but it serves as a culmination of the filmmakers' actual intentions—not the usual slasher business but a potent political allegory. It's only a shame the movie becomes just distracted enough by what it "should be" that it misses the full potential of what it could have been.

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