Black Christmas (2006)

I have written about this before, perhaps a bit too extensively, so I won’t waste too much time on it this year. I was amusing about how some of this cast of hot young talents at the time perhaps have more than their share of Lifetime / Hallmark Christmas movies under their belt by now. But in 2006, the future seemed quite bright and full of potential. Lead Katie Cassidy would go on to star in superhero television (“Arrow” among others), a slasher series (“Harper’s Island”), horror (“Supernatural”) and prime time soaps (“Melrose Place” and “Gossip Girl”). Lacey Chabert (with the famous, “I’d bury a hatchet in her head” line in regards to her sister) had plenty of television (“Party of Five”) and feature films (“Mean Girls” and “Ghost of Girlfriend’s Past”), now makes a living doing voicework and has stayed plenty busy on Christmas movies far less polarizing than “Black Christmas”. Cassidy had starred in the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” remake from 2010 as well. Chabert, for the most part, has stayed away from the darker fare since this film. Mary Elizabeth Winstead has stayed quite busy since 2006, especially in noteworthy projects in film mostly (the sleeper hit “10 Cloverfield Lane”, QT’s “Death Proof”, prequel to Carpenter’s “The Thing”, the video game homage “Scott Pilgrim”, “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter” as Honest Abe’s wife, “The Ring Two”, among others). Fun factoid: Winstead  and fellow cast member, Crystal Lowe (the drunk, snarky Barb role), were both in “Final Destination III”. Lowe, much like Chabert, has made a living in Christmas movies. Andrea Martin, as a house mother, from the original classic, tries to navigate the chaos, to no effect. Cloke, the older sister who happens to arrive on the worst night possible to meet her sister during Christmas holidays (the bag-over-the-head, pen stab to the eye victim at the very beginning), was actually in the first “Final Destination”. The young women of the cast say fuck a lot, shit on the holidays, kvetch and sound off complaints about each other, the bad weather (which strands them at the house), and eventually Billy and Agnes. Oliver Hudson is the “townie” dating Cassidy while also bedding Jessica Harmon (Bozzio of “iZombie”), a recording of the two of them in bed paused on the computer…this Oliver tries to sneak into Harmon’s room to erase, unable to because Cassidy stumbles on it, resulting in quite the fight. This is indeed just as nasty and mean-spirited as I remember from a few years ago. It was on, I believe, Showtime not too long ago, making the late night rounds. But because of late night purposes at this time of year, I didn’t want to spend good money on a copy so I took advantage of the closing of the final state Blockbuster a few years ago. Eyes are gouged and eaten, a sleazy Santa costumed orderly in the asylum is killed, a security guard is stupid enough to go into a cell all willy-nilly and gets candy cane stabbed, a glass unicorn gift is quite a weapon thanks to its sharp horn, back story incest and father murder/burial gives us a rather icky history of where Billy and Agnes were spawned, any number of useful weapons can be used such as a garden hoe, ice skate blade, Christmas lights, pruning fork, and a falling icicle (right out of “Die Hard 2”) certainly help to uptick the body count and lessen the numbers. What I personally liked—one of a slim few things I could actually draw from this 90 minute excursion into excess and depravity, with very attractive women quipping and snarling—was the green/red lights and tinsel decorating the sorority house and certain camera shots are creative enough to give us some aesthetic and style even as we endure the unpleasant characters, their cynical wisecracks, and wholly skin-crawling killers. Plenty of twisted subject matter if you dig that sort of thing. I think I wouldn’t have had as much a problem with this had it not been inspired by a film that really didn’t need any sort of reinvisioning or reimagining. And yet another Black Christmas is being released this year on Friday the 13^th (rated PG-13, this go-around, and only loosely resembling the 1974 Bob Clark iconic picture). This feels like a cashgrab, with eye candy and content swimming in bad taste. 1.5/5