Donnierobot sent in this look at BLACK CHRISTMAS, which is a remake of a 1974 movie called BLACK CHRISTMAS (shockingly enough). Here's a look at the fi;m's trailer:
Yowza. Someone needs to post a better resolution trailer for this thing...I couldn't find any. Although, I'm not sure it would make any difference.
The original was directed by Bob Clark, who later went on to PORKY’S and A CHRISTMAS STORY. It starred Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, and Keir Dullea (David Bowman!). It’s about a psycho killer at a Sorority house during Christmas break. This time around, the carnage is helmed by Glen Morgan (THE X-FILES, MILLENNIUM, SPACE: ABOVE & BEYOND, and writer of FINAL DESTINATIONs 1 & 3).
Lacy Chabert is in it! Good God she’s hot! Alas, according to Donnierobot, even her intense desirability doesn’t make this film worthwhile – a notion which is almost inceonceivable.
Look for BLACK CHRISTMAS on December 22. Here’s Donnierobot….
So I just got back from seeing a screening of Black Christmas, I have a lot of love for the original , think it’s a really creepy movie that leaves a lot to your imagination, it features a great cast and well in my opinion is the father of the modern slasher movie but this remake well for me it sums up the dilemma of the modern horror film, although the genre doesn’t seem to be in crisis it is definitely at a crossroads with several paths being taken , you have the so called splat-pack (Eli Roth , Alexandra Aja & the Saw crew) who are trying to push for a new level of brutal gore, people like Lucky McGee who his travelling his own dark road of atmosphere over gore and new kids on the block Adam Green (Hatchet) & Steven C Miller (Automaton Transfusion) who are trying to get back the essence of 80’s splatter with little money but huge creativity and then this strain of studio horror which seems to be created in a board room for 17 year old kids, that want a quick easy thrill ride without engaging their minds I’d like to say that the remake of Black Christmas went for ANY of the first three, but unfortunately I can’t, I’d like to say that it at least enjoyable trash but again , I just cant.
I assume most of you know the plot, a mystery killer stalks sorority girls at Christmas? I really don’t want to talk about the story here so much, I want to talk about the crafting of the film, if the talk backers will cut me some slack? What the filmmakers have done is ! nothing short of a cinematic travesty , it fails on so many levels on all levels actually. The first question that sprang into my mind was ‘Are American youth so unimaginative they need everything spelling out for them?’ It’s seems they must be, its 84 minutes are so crammed with flashbacks and explanations that it leaves NOTHING to your imagination, everything is spelt out in big bloody letters, of all the flashback scenes the killers childhood is particularly badly handled the whole plot is played out in these flashbacks, it gives you the entire movie in 10minutes, the scenes in the sanatorium are so badly acted and stuffed full of cliches I was actually embarrassed watching them.
As for the dialogue and characters , it’s pitiful, it really is, there are more ‘Fuck Christmas ’ lines than Bad Santa,like none of the girls love Christmas or anything for that matter the dialogue is along the lines of ‘it’s snowing hard out there, the snowflakes are the size of ball sacks’ and more importantly none of the girls are really likable and there is no one you care about, I mean I wanted them all to die quickly to get this fucking thing over with. The murders are uninspired and although some of them are gory most are so badly edited that you have no idea what is going on, the sound design is shocking, the music is too loud , key dialogue is muddy and unheard, the editing of the final fight scene is so badly handled I couldn’t make out who was doing what to who and it features so many of those fucking annoying skewed MTV camera angles that I wanted to scream.
Add to this the fact that no one calls the police until they find a headless body despite several girls going missing and lots of obscene phone calls , cringworthy dialogue about sisterhood and convoluted characters that just pop out of nowhere to push the story where it needs to be without any real point and well it just adds up to a massive stinking turd of a movie, the! y could have filmed it in 3-D and it would have been flat. I hate to be so negative but it IS appalling , inept and unneeded . It’s a film full of missed opportunity the killer could have been a sexually twisted creature with a really dark fucked up undercurrent but it’s just a hulking monster, deaths could of included all manner of crazy Christmas paraphernalia but use the same plastic bag death repeated from the original movie over and over again I’m sorry but for me there were no positive points in it’s favour, we attended the screening with 7 people , 2 liked it and everyone else thought it was wretched.
