Sunday, Bloody Christmas Sunday

Although Sunday was booked by other matters (life, yep...), I did get in Black Christmas (2006) early Sunday evening and Redboxed a couple Christmas horror titles I never heard of, Better Watch Out (2016) and Red Christmas (2016). Introducing new horror titles early December is what I like to do so that by the end, I can just finish the month with familiar titles.

Black Christmas (2006)

It has to be said: the reimaging of a film that didn’t need it sure had a casting agent that capitalized on the batch of attractive actresses working at the time. 2006 had a definite hotbed of actresses all over the medium of film and television. This film, though, despite its Christmas tree color aesthetic which does really appeal to the eye and cast of sorority sisters, it is hard to wash the taste out. God, the fucking incest angle that took place along with graphic murders in the house the sorority sisters occupy at the current of the film. Purposely thrown up with its grotesque details, we get the full monty. Ugh. The girls take turns either insulting each other or Christmas. It is as fun to watch and listen to as the incest back story. And the gore is shot so quickly folks that want to see the girls die don’t even get to enjoy that. And Oliver Hudson comes along to once again reassure us that man hasn’t evolved far from his ground knuckle dragging. Andrea Martin as the house mother was a nice touch, though. I liked Cassidy, too. Crystal Lowe, in the Margot Kidder role, has quite a shower…even Billy can’t turn away the chance to look. Trachtenberg, Winstead, and Chabert fill out the cast of vacuous beauties. Harmon as Hudson’s other girl, Savasta as the first victim Clove arrives (a former “legacy”) to locate, and Kole as the red herring (it is hinted at that she might be Agnes) are among the cast that fail to get much time on screen to develop a character besides a few minutes before exiting the screen for the hereafter. Plenty of glassworks stabbed in eyes (or eyes gouged out) and bags over heads. Tis the season, right? *½

Better Watch Out (2016)

Not too shabby “teen suburb scumbags torment babysitter” horror set during Christmas Eve where two twelve-year-olds (Levi Miller (Pan) and Ed Oxenbould (The Visit & Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day)) behave very badly. Miller was just in the Peter Pan fantasy adventure, Pan, and Ed in Alexander… maybe a year or so before this and there they are acting deviously with potty mouths. Miller as Lucas is especially a little monster, another of those deranged, mocking, obnoxious bratty types, seemingly always one step ahead of his victims and more than a bit too clever for a twelve year old creep. Olivia DeJonge, as the object of psycho Lucas’ lust, spends most of her time in the film trying to outsmart this creep and get out of binding to chairs. Lucas parades his misdeeds and plans in front of her, often because she’s got duct tape over her mouth (she spends much of the middle of the film that way). Without lackey, Garrett (Oxenbould), though, a lot of Lucas’ antics couldn’t have been as successful. Lucas needed Garrett to help him handle Ashley (and her boyfriends), but by the end he’s a nuisance to him because of a guilty conscience. By film’s end, it is obvious Lucas is so fucked up anyone making it out alive was doubtful (besides himself). This reminded me of an early 90s film starring Brian Bonsall called Mikey where the kid (because he’s a kid) continues to kill and get away with it until film’s end, completely chill and in control, smarter than those who too naïve (or maybe just can’t surmise such psychopathy in a kid). Lucas mimics the paint can scene from Home Alone to kill Ashley’s (Dejonge) boyfriend, Ricky (Aleks Mikic), while sneaking a rope over the neck of an ex (Dacre Montgomery), using a lawnmower to lynch him. Even at the end, Lucas goes about setting up the crime scene to implicate the dummy ex who signs a piece of paper apologizing to Ashley, left under his feet as he hangs from the tree. A shotgun blast, with the second easier than the first, pretty much concludes that Ashley has no allies and will need to outsmart the little shit. A middle finger and kick to the cherries are perhaps the only real satisfying chances Ashley, or anyone else, had to get even with the creep. **½

Red Christmas (2016)

In this most unusual Aussie Christmas slasher, bathed in a lot of green and red once the film goes dark, tackles the topic/issue of abortion and Down’s syndrome, quite weighty for what could have been just another exercise (and excuse) to see people destroyed in a number of imaginative ways. They are in the film, for sure…such as a bear trap dropped onto the head of a cop as blood geysers or a head pressed into the cutting blades of a blender. Actually featuring an actor (as the son of veteran horror icon, Dee Wallace) with Down’s syndrome (played by Gerard Odwyer), who becomes a major focus in the action, once the killer emerges (an abortion reject saved as a clinic is being bombed by pro-life advocating extremists), that factors mightily in the concluding violence. Cletus, the abortion reject, with sensitive skin, wearing a black cloak with bandages throughout his body, wants to hear mommy (Wallace) tell him that she loves him. Because he would have been another Down’s syndrome child (and her husband was dying), Diane (Wallace) saw no positive outcome, deciding on the abortion. The vigilant priest that rescues Cletus (Sam Campbell) raises him in a religious environment but dies, leaving him to search for his birth mother. Rejected by Diane and her family, this sets Cletus off, and none of them are safe. Diane’s family is rife with its share of troubles and peculiarities like all families. Her second husband boozes it up and just offers crude humor, as her very pregnant daughter often goes right at her inert, staunchly Christian infertile other daughter and vice versa. Once Cletus emerges with a letter to read to his mother, Diane is reminded of the abortion, reacting volatilely as one might expect. Red Christmas (2016) was unexpected surprise. Directed as well as can be expected on the cheap, the director gets around his limitations through stylistic touches and a full devotion to the topic of abortion and how its effects are a driving engine behind the violence. Perhaps if Cletus had been able to read his letter and been given a chance to open his heart to a woman that did want him dead, the outcome might have been different. Just the same, Cletus just massacring them because Diane wouldn't tell him she loved him and give him the affection he so sought isn't exactly a rational reaction. ***