We have come to the third and final film of this ‘series’. Black Christmas (2019) is a film I have been aware of since it came out, but it just looked like another bog stand ‘Blumhouse’ horror film, so I had absolutely no reason to give it a go. Now I do. My opinions of the other two films couldn’t have been further apart on the scale of enjoyment, so wouldn’t it be serendipitous of this film to be middling. The film follows a group of sorority girls who begin to be attacked by masked strangers during their Christmas break, leading the girls to fight back against these killers.
That synopsis probably sends familiar if you have seen the first two films. But as my title suggests, that synopsis is the very bare minimum of what the plot actually offers. I will get into that in more detail later and I will be going into spoilers. I know I usually try to avoid major spoilers, but for me to get my true opinion of this film across I need to spoil it so there is your warning. But yeah, I have no idea why the film has the Black Christmas title. Apart from the setting of a sorority house and a couple of nods and homages to that original film, this film's narrative does not have anything to do with that original film at all. You may be thinking that I should be okay with that as one of my few positives about the 2006 remake was that it decided to change a lot. But it at least kept enough of the original film that it was clear what it was trying to be, a reimagining of that original film. This film feels more like the original film was something completely different and they just slapped the Black Christmas title on there in a cynical attempt to make more money. This isn’t that big of a deal, and if the film is good does it really matter? What a shame then that the film is shit. Okay, so, for the most part, is demonstrably fine. It looks okay if a little dull. The performances are all decent if a little dull. And the narrative, while not anything like the original film, is cliché but okay (if a little dull). How dull the film is can be mostly seen in the fact that the film is less than ninety minutes without credits, but it drags along at a snail’s pace. And then the last twenty minutes happen.
The last twenty minutes of this film goes off a deep end of stupid and goes from a mostly watchable if very boring slasher film to a complete mess. I think the first thing to mention to set up how messy this ending gets is that this film has a really strong feminist message to it. It is a message that I am on board with and while it can be a little on the nose at points it is a good message and for the first half of the film it is dealt with well in how the narrative plays. But as the film goes on this side of the film goes from being on the nose to jumping the shark and it gets comical in how much it is shoving it in your face at times. And this somewhat undermines the message that the film was trying to deliver. This is confounded with the whole narrative jumping the shark. As I mentioned earlier, most of this film feels like a pretty bog-standard slasher film, but then it decides to get supernatural with the fraternity and lecturer who the sorority girls have been attacking (and rightly so, all these characters are comically obnoxious) actually being part of an underground cult whose sole aim is to stop women raising to power and return them to being more subordinate. And they do this by being possessed by the old schoolmaster and killing all women who oppose their views. And it is here where the film goes from boring to some of the dumbest shit I have ever seen. I laughed out loud several times because of how laughably bad this narrative choice is for the film, and that was before I heard the dialogue. Before I said the original feminist message was sometimes a little on the nose, then it jumped the shark. The dialogue in the film’s conclusion flogs a dead horse while jumping the shark while beating its nose into submission. It is so over the top that it is comical, with the best example being when Riley (Imogen Poots), our protagonist, says ‘You’re insane!” and the reply she gets is “No, we are simply men”. And of course, it ends in a slow-motion brawl between the sorority and the fraternity. What a crock of shit.
After the 2006 remake, I couldn’t believe that this film could be as bad. And for the majority of this film’s running time, I would say that it was. Yes, it was boring, and it felt like it was lasting forever, but at least it was competent and had a decent message that I could get on board with. But honestly, the last twenty minutes of the film are so laughable, and the messaging becomes so comic that I actually started to think I may prefer the 2006 version. It is a question that may never be answered because I highly doubt, I will be watching either of these films ever again, and I don’t recommend you put yourself through it either. But I will use this opportunity to remind you just how good that 1974 film is. You should definitely watch that,
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