This article is part of The Twelve Days of Doofmas, a daily series of articles on our favorite Christmas films that was released as Bonus Content leading up to Christmas Eve 2019.
If you watch cable or frequent Youtube chances are you’ve seen at least one Black Christmas ad. Hell, sometimes three in a row. Now, not to judge a book by its cover BUT the cover looks quite a cliche. Quick cut shots of knives slashing, a scream here and there, zoom in on eyes- blood splatter. At first, I was gonna go see it, fork over 12 bucks, 20 if the popcorn’s fresh, and sit through another one of these holiday slashers that comes out every year. But then I heard that it was actually a remake of the 1974 cult classic that apparently had a helping hand in fostering the slasher sub-genre. So being a lover of classic horror flicks and an avid subscriber to Shudder I decided to give the classic a spin instead.
To start, I wanna say this short review will be filled with spoilers, no time to beat around the bush. Really all the good this movie does won’t be ruined by knowing anything about it anyway. Black Christmas was director Bob Clark’s third film. After two flops he had the idea of trying something totally new, something a little bit more candid and even voyeuristic at times. As soon as Black Christmas dropped it started generating some solid buzz. Not enough to break the box office, but people seemed enamored with this new form of horror. A film that contained nothing at all supernatural. Just a deranged killer living in an attic. The audience forced to be right there along with him, looking through his eyes.
Setting the plot aside for a moment, the way Black Christmas is filmed is especially good, Bob Clark really takes his time and lets certain shots just sit there, allowing the audience to drink it all in, being progressively creeped out by that shadow slowly swaying back and forth in the corner.
In the eyes of 2019, the plot might seem a bit cliche. A series of missing people and murder cases happen around town all revolving around a sorority house. Slowly throughout the course of the film, the killer picks the sorority girls off one by one as the police try their best to find him before it’s too late. We’ve seen situations like this in a plethora of horror movies before, from Scream to Halloween, but Black Christmas executes it in such a way that it still seems so fresh and has been borrowed from in years since. After a couple of watches, I can honestly say it’s an extremely enjoyable watch and can see why it’s lasted as long as it has.
At the start, the movie a tad bit on the slow side. After a few great ‘Kill-o-vision’ shots (Killers Point of View), the film somewhat drags until it finally picks up again in the third act. I feel that’s because of the abundance of character on screen. Yes, the film is about a killer in a sorority house, but so many of the characters were either too similar or somewhat plain; it took me almost the whole film to figure out who the fathers’ daughter was.
After a few of the characters leave the film picks up tremendously. We start to really focus on Jess, our main character. How she’s trying to figure out what’s going on while also having repeated conversations with her boyfriend about not keeping their baby. Along with that, the Police officers quickly become important characters as well, basically stealing the second half of the movie. In the final act, the suspense and creeps we were promised in the beginning finally start showing their faces. Every disgusting oversexualized call the killer makes, the way he huffs and puffs as he’s sneaking through the house; all done without seeing his face, can make any soul the least bit squeamish to shudder.
For me, the shining accomplishment of this movie is in its end. The main police officer is suspicious of Jess’s boyfriend, Paul, and suspects he’s the killer. So they tap the house’s landline and wait for the killer to call. The call comes in and they trace it back to the house, specifically not telling Jess as to not cause panic. But a low-rank rookie, who was set up to not really have all of his marbles, calls Jess and tells her to get out of the house, spilling the beans on the killer being there. So, Jess has a decision: leave and find the cops, or grab the fire poker and run up to save her already dead Sorority sisters. It wouldn’t be a movie if she chose the first.
Next we finally see the killer, or at least his bloodshot eye looking at her through a crack in the door. She stuns him then runs, locking herself in the basement (for some reason) and waiting it out. BUT THEN Paul lurks around the house, tapping on the basement window knowing TOO well that Jess is down there. Paul breaks in and shifts towards Jess who is hunched up in the corner scared for her life, and then it cuts away. The officers show up, hearing Jess’s screams coming from the basement. When they find her she’s passed out, Paul dead beneath her. The next day Jess is sleeping off the trama, the officers agreeing that their suspicions of Paul were right, but, after they all leave, the camera pans around the house taking it’s time and allowing you to feel the devastation that happened here. Then it moves all the way to the attic, where you hear the killers deranged mumbles.
So the ending is good, well done and well built up, but everything else around it drags or feels like it wasn’t handled with the same care as the last act.
I now consider Black Christmas a must-watch, if not for the cinematography or the creeps, then to watch a very unChristmas Christmas movie that helped spawn hundreds upon thousands of films exactly like it.
-Jarvis
