Two horror films in a row? Boy how I am treating you. We have also come to the second of the three ‘Black Christmas’ films, unsurprisingly called Black Christmas (2006). The original Black Christmas (1974) turned out to be a complete gem that I was totally blindsided by, becoming one of my favourite films I have seen this year. Now, with this film being a remake, and a horror remake coming out in the 2000s no less, my expectations were in the toilet. But who knows, maybe it would be as pleasant a surprise as the original film. The film follows a sorority house on Christmas Eve who is hunted down and killed by an old resident of the house who has escaped from the insane asylum which he has been in since killing his family.
Okay, so I won’t beat around the bush, this film is pure shit. I have very little positive to say about it, but I will give it a good try. The main positive of this film was the surprise appearance of Mary Elizabeth Winstead. She doesn’t even put in that good of a performance, but I had no idea she was going to be in it in any shape or form, so I was just happy to have an actor I know in it. I also appreciate that, although this film is a remake, it basically becomes its own thing. It effectively takes the skeleton of the original film as a basis, but then adds a lot of its own stuff. None of the changes are for the better, but I appreciate that the filmmakers tried their own thing instead of just creating a shot for shot remake of the original. The main change is that the killer is given a full backstory in the film. We are shown him during his childhood and all the actions and family issues he had that led him to become the murderous psychopath he became. It isn’t done well, and I couldn’t care less about the backstory of this killer, but I’m glad they did something so drastically different because if they didn’t what is the point of remaking it at all. And so we come to the end of the two compliments I have for this film.
This films script might be the worst I have ever heard in a film, especially in terms of dialogue. This might sound hyperbolic, and with the amount of shit I have watched there is a good chance I have seen a film with an ‘objectively’ worse script. But I don’t think I have ever noticed how bad a script is as the film is going on. The way characters act and speak to each other is all over the place and completely unnatural. It feels a bit like someone who has partially learnt English trying to write these characters. The narrative is also a mess, with the film cutting between current time and flashback at will which has the film feeling messy, characters are introduced and killed off immediately for no reason, seemingly big character moments occur that don’t lead to anything or move the story forward in any meaningful way. And this script really does a number on the actors as well who are almost all terrible. I have no idea if these actors are usually better as, apart from Mary Elizabeth Winstead, I haven’t seen them in much else, but they are all awful in this film. I do put a lot of this down to how bad the script is as there is only so much you can do with something that terrible, but the performances are laughable at times. The direction is also horrible. There are several horrible moments of editing and several shots which are meant to make you feel uncomfortable but are just horrible to look at. And finally, this film has possibly the most intrusive score I have ever heard in a film, and again I realise I am sounding hyperbolic. The score on its own is a pretty cookie-cutter horror score, but it never shuts up. It is constant and detracts from scenes rather than adds to them. It is terrible and honestly often sounds like it is taking the piss.
I hated this film. There isn’t much else to say. It is the first film in a long time that I have watched and actively been saying how shit it was during the runtime, head in hands, wondering why I am doing this to myself. Obviously, I don’t recommend anyone what it. It is easily the worst film I have seen for these reviews thus far, and yet I imagine some of the films coming up will run it close in that department.
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