Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Black Christmas’ on HBO, a Neo-Feminist Take on an Old-School Slasher Flick

Now on HBO, the latest remake of a remake of Black Christmas, gives the old slasher-slays-sorority-girls formula, explored in the 1974 original and 2006 update, a sparkling feminist slant. Filmmaker Sophia Takal updates the story for the #MeToo-era by tackling the issue of sexual assault on college campuses, hoping to give the movie purpose beyond exploitative thrills. Now we’ll see if the new approach works.

BLACK CHRISTMAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Something that looks vaguely Satanic happens in a frat house — but more on that later. A young woman strolls home alone on a snowy evening. She gets some odd and sinister direct messages from a clearly fake account. A man several steps behind her seems to be following her; he’s scrolling away on his phone as he walks. She quickly spins to confront him, but he turns down another road. Misdirection! Because the real attacker is behind a snowman, lurking menacingly among Xmas decorations in a yard. He wears a long black riding hood and a mask, and after some cat-and-mouse, the cloaked man — how do I know it’s a man? Isn’t it always? — snatches an icicle from the eaves and ici-KILLS her.

It’s the final day of classes before Christmas break. Riley (Imogen Poots) parks in her lit class as Professor Gelsen (Cary Elwes) lectures pompously, and directly addresses how a student is trying to get him fired because his curriculum consists of works entirely by white male writers. Riley’s sorority sister, Kris (Aleyse Shannon), posed the question, and Gelsen responded in enough of an assholish manner for her to begin petitioning for his firing. Can we still say Kris is “woke,” or is that pejorative now? Well, let’s just say she’s boldly, fearlessly, admirably vocal about her disgust for the patriarchy and pretty much every form of civil inequality. As she should be.

Riley is much more passive. She’s still traumatized by a sexual assault that happened a couple years back. One of the (possibly Satanic) frat bros roofied her, he denied it, nobody with any authority believed her — I hate to be cynical, but you know how it goes. Riley and her sorority sisters dress up in sexy Santa costumes to sing at a party for the rapiest fraternity on campus, and turn the lyrics for Up on the Housetop into a scathing indictment of the guilty entitled shithead and all his entitled shithead cronies. Now it’s worth mentioning how, shortly before their song-and-dance, Riley stumbled upon a Phi-Beta-Dickhead indoctrination ritual involving black riding hoods (aha!) and a marble bust of the college founder, crying black sludge from its eyes. This may very well have something to do with the many subsequent scenes of hooded creep-os taking out Riley’s sisters one by one.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Hulu’s Into the Dark anthology series (which, like Black Christmas, is a Blumhouse production) did the modern feminist-horror thing better with Pure and Culture Shock.

Performance Worth Watching: As the Black sorority sister with a righteous streak (“Did you just NOT ALL MEN me?” she spits with a vengeful fury), Shannon brightens a collection of characters in need of a little more shade and nuance.

Memorable Dialogue: “You’re all insane,” Riley says.

“No, not insane. Simply men,” retorts a character I shan’t mention here, but suffice to say, he’s a he.

Sex and Skin: None, although there are brief, blurry flashback snatches of Riley being assaulted.

Our Take: Kudos to this Black Christmas for transcending slasher-movie tropes by addressing a societal scourge. Takal — who co-wrote the screenplay with April Wolfe — drives her point home clearly and concisely. So clearly, the film drives its point home with a pneumatic drill in the final act, turning this genre’s exploitative tendencies so wildly on its head, it should be an ebullient expression of long-pent-up anger.

But it doesn’t really work. Without giving away too much, it transforms a slasher flick into a big, clunky, corny revenge fantasy that takes the central metaphor — patriarchy as secret society — and blows it to smithereens. The movie tries. Hard. And we’re there with it most of the way. Then it tries too hard, and shifts from tangible reality to supernatural hokum. It pretty much fumbles the ball at the two-yard-line.

We might forgive Black Christmas its stumbles if it better nurtured its characters. Riley is sympathetic, of course, but she’s a bland cypher of survivorhood with few other traits. Beyond Shannon’s relatively spirited performance as Kris, the other sorority sisters are empty shells. Caleb Eberhardt’s turn as the softspoken, awkward, shy guy who catches Riley’s eye gives the story a dynamic streak, but ultimately feels underdeveloped. This is where the movie falls into the slasher trap: Why bother to develop characters when they’re just going to get killed? In fact, the exact opposite is true.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Black Christmas has its share of tense, suspenseful moments, and it obviously has something to say. But it could be scarier, it could be funnier, and it really shoots itself in the foot with that cornball finale.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Black Christmas on HBO Max

Stream Black Christmas on HBO Now