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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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by kellie abrahamson kabrahamson1@aol.com
C+ Rated R 98 min.
It’s Christmas Eve. As holiday tunes can be heard elsewhere in the house, a doe-eyed sorority girl named Clair (Leela Savasta) is wrapping gifts and writing Christmas cards. She hears a strange sound coming from the closet and goes to investigate… Of course, you know where this is going. After a bit of cat and mouse Clair ends up dead with a plastic bag over her head and her eyes stabbed out. So begins Black Christmas, a twisted take on the holiday classics!
It turns out that the sorority house was once the home of the Lenz family. Mr. and Mrs. Lenz hated each other and the odium only grew when their jaundiced son Billy was born. Billy’s mom (Karin Konoval) hated to even look at her son and became distant and cold even when he was an infant. When Billy was five (Cainan Wiebe) he witnessed his wicked mother and her boyfriend (Howard Siegel) murdering his father (Peter Wilds). As punishment for his snooping, Billy was sent to live in the attic while his mother and step-father began a new life without him. One Christmas night, many years later, a much older Billy (Robert Mann) snapped, murdering his mother and step-father while his little sister looked on in horror. Billy was sent to an institution for the criminally insane. He attempts to break out every Christmas and this year he succeeds. He’s heading home for Christmas and he plans to make himself a new family to spend the holidays with… whether they like it or not! Black Christmas also stars Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert, Kristen Cloke, Andrea Martin and Oliver Hudson.
Based on the slasher film that helped launch the genre, Black Christmas is a remake of Bob Clark’s other Christmas film (remember, he was also the guy responsible for the feel-good holiday classic A Christmas Story). Many fans attribute Clark with inventing some of the genres trademarked motifs such as shots from the kill’s point of view and creepy phone calls that originate from inside the house. Another one of Clark’s early horror films, Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, is also being remade and is currently in pre-production.
The storyline picks and chooses bits from the original, allowing the film to stand on its own, a plus for those who may not have seen its predecessor. Script-wise, the film is pretty formulaic. The filmmakers aren’t trailblazing here, it is a remake after all, but they do pull out some off-the-wall death scenes that are pretty surprising, complete with decent effects to back it up and make it look more real. It’s no Saw, but it is better than most of the stuff we’ve seen from the genre this year. The acting isn’t out of this world, but that’s not a total shocker given the film in question. A minor beef I had was with Michelle Trachtenberg, who I have seen grow up before my eyes on the big screen between Harriet the Spy and “Buffy”. Here, it seems Miss Trachtenberg is trying desperately to break out of her goody-two-shoes image by dropping “f-bombs” every five minutes. I’m not sensitive about language in films but this just seemed forced and really odd given all the preconceived notions I had about the girl based on her body of work. I guess we know who won’t be playing the lead in Disney’s Ice Princess 2, should they ever make one!
Black Christmas is good in the same the way that the Friday the 13th movies are good. The protagonists always make stupid decisions, like heading up the stairs instead of out the door. The killer never, ever stays down, no matter how much punishment they take. The tone is such that the audience is so keyed up that a sudden noise makes everyone jump and then laugh sheepishly at themselves for being freaked out by a ringing telephone. In short, Black Christmas is a lot of fun. Sick, twisted fun. It’s not the type of horror movie that will give you nightmares or make you nervous about being home alone; it’s the kind that makes you giggle when thinking about it afterwards. It’s the kind that has you describing the gory, over-the-top scenes in great detail to your friends because they were just so campy. It’s a horror version of Snakes on a Plane. It should have been called Psycho in an Attic.
Black Christmas is a decent way to spend a little under an hour and a half, especially if you are a fan of films that are so bad they’re good. Those looking for scares are definitely barking up the wrong tree. This is a movie where laughs will be heard more often than screams. Now whether that was intentional on the part of the filmmakers or not is still up for debate, but I would see it again, particularly if I could guarantee a theater full of likeminded people. Some movies are just more fun with a crowd and this is certainly one of them.
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