‘Christmas is more about warding off evil spirits than Halloween…’
Glen Morgan is best known in horror circles as the writer of the best two Final Destination movies (the original and the third entry) and he has also written a bunch of episodes of The X-Files too. In the director’s chair, however, his only contribution to the world of cinema is a curious-looking 2003 Crispin Glover vehicle in which Glover’s character can control rats and this 2006 loose remake of Bob Clark’s festive classic Black Christmas. Based on this movie, Morgan should stick to writing…
Many years after a series of grisly murderers, Billy Lenz (Robert Mann), the lunatic behind the crimes, escapes from an insane asylum and starts stalking the girls that live in his childhood home – now a sorority house. On the receiving end of Billy’s frenzied attacks are a bored-looking Michelle Trachtenberg, Lacey Chabert from Mean Girls and Mary Elizabeth Winstead who frankly looks faintly embarrassed to be there at all. The Final Destination connection is further strengthened by the appearance of Crystal Lowe (set on fire by a sunbed in Final Destination 3) and Kristen Cloke (pulls a set of knives onto herself in the first movie).
Sadly, however, this isn’t a Final Destination movie, and while it’s not quite as bad as the worst moments within that franchise, this is still a bad film. Morgan’s direction is bland and workmanlike but it is the script that really hobbles this movie. A 90-minute Black Christmas remake does not need seemingly hundreds of characters and numerous timelines. What made the original so good was its simplicity. Here, we have an absolutely insane backstory involving jaundice and incest and all sorts of other nonsense and none of it ever threatens to hang together.
This is also a fairly dull film. I was never invested in any of the characters which is fair because neither were any of the actors. The dialogue is forgettable and clunky. The characters are indistinguishable from one another and thinly drawn. Even the death scenes, so often the saving grace in say the Wrong Turn franchise are uninspired and repetitive. You can only see so much eye trauma before it becomes deadening.
In the end, there aren’t loads of Christmas horror films to choose from so this one will endure on some level, but I beg of you, if you haven’t seen the original, watch that one instead. It’s far superior.
