Black Christmas (2019)

Black Christmas (2019) attempts to reinvent the familiar holiday slasher with a different set of themes and a more overtly contemporary setting. I don't object to remakes finding a new point of view, especially when the original has already been adapted once. But I think a film still needs a coherent story and characters who behave believably. For me, this version struggles on both counts.

The movie has some ideas about institutional power, misogyny and the way women are treated on a college campus. Those are subjects that could support effective horror. A sorority setting gives the filmmakers a natural way to explore relationships and threats within a larger institution. I just didn't think the screenplay developed those ideas with enough subtlety or dramatic credibility.

The characters were a major problem. Too often they seemed to exist as representatives of an argument rather than fully developed people. That makes it harder to become invested when the violence begins. I don't need a slasher to have complicated character studies, but I do need somebody to care about or at least find interesting.

The horror sequences didn't make up for those weaknesses. There are moments when the film attempts to build suspense, but the story's choices became increasingly distracting. Some developments felt more like sudden additions to the mythology than natural consequences of what came before.

I appreciate that the filmmakers weren't simply repeating the 1974 film. There's room for a very different Black Christmas movie, and I don't think it needed to copy the original's phone-call mystery or exact structure. The problem is that its new approach doesn't create a compelling horror experience on its own.

There are elements of the production that work, but I struggled to get past the writing. By the end I was more frustrated than frightened, and I didn't feel the film had made the most of its themes.

Black Christmas (2019) is an example of a remake with a potentially interesting perspective but an ineffective execution. It has things it wants to say, yet the story and characters never gave those ideas the impact they needed.

Black Christmas (2019) was the worst of the three movies for me, and I had a hard time understanding why anybody thought this version worked as a slasher. I know the filmmakers were trying to tell a different story from the original, and I don't mind a remake doing something new. The problem was that I didn't like the characters or the way the story unfolded.

The film has ideas about how women are treated, and I can understand why those subjects would be important. I just didn't think the movie handled them in a way that made me care about the people. Too many characters seemed to be there to make a point instead of acting like believable students.

I also wanted a good mystery or some real suspense. That's what I usually enjoy about slashers. Instead, the story started making choices that were increasingly strange, and I found myself getting more and more irritated. I wanted the characters to make decisions that made sense, but they kept doing things that took me out of the movie.

There were some moments that were supposed to be frightening, and I can see the effort that went into creating a modern slasher atmosphere. But I didn't find the movie particularly scary. The story distracted me too much for the jump scares or attacks to have much impact.

I know some viewers like having a film make a clear statement about its themes. I can appreciate that when the story is compelling on its own. Here, it felt like the movie wanted me to agree with its ideas without giving me characters or a plot worth following.

By the time the film ended, I was completely done with it. I didn't want to revisit the characters or think more about the mystery. I was frustrated that a familiar holiday horror title had become something I didn't enjoy at all.

Black Christmas (2019) is not a movie I'd recommend for a fun horror night. I didn't like the writing or the scares, and I don't have any interest in watching it again.