Black Christmas (2006)

Trailer: 

Check out my review of the original Black Christmas here!

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: A sorority house is being terrorized by a crazed lunatic on Christmas Eve. Where is campus police when you need them?!

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• Good ol’ Dimension. We don’t tend to pick too many Dimension flicks during Schlocktoberfest. 
• Christmas?! But it’s Schlocktober!
• Random Sorority chick gets stabbed in the eye by her own calligraphy pen.
• Now we’re inside a sanitarium for the criminally insane and as the orderly is handing out milk and cookies to the inmates, he is being followed by some black boots who was able to get out of his cell/room when a carton of milk left his door ajar.
• HAHAHAHA. The orderly is going around saying “Merry Christmas” as he hands out the treats but at one door he says, “Happy Birthday” and as the slit for him to hand the treat into the cell opens we see a guy dressed as Jesus who then starts to speak in Bible verses and this shocks or disgusts the orderly who quickly shuts the slit again.
• Oh, it was a guy dressed as Santa Claus who was wearing the black boots. Says got lost on the way to the children’s ward.
• Now the Santa, the orderly and another security guard are discussing about the infamous Billy Lenz who killed his family on Christmas. 
• Billy has excessive jaundice apparently.
• Hey, it’s Goldie Hawn’s son!
• These sorority gals sure do know how to decorate a house for the holidays. No, seriously, kudos.
• This movie is a who’s-who for hot actresses in 2006. Michelle Trachtenberg, Lacey Chabert, Mary Elizabeth Winstead…Andrea Martin!
• Security guard isn’t very good at his job. 
• “Just fuck Christmas! Fuck it!” Attagirl.

Simply having a wonderful Black Christmas time.

• I’m assuming that grainy video footage of Megan (I think) getting railed by some dude is revenge porn. Otherwise this Christmas-hating young lady is kinkier than my garden hose.
• This brutal eye-gouging death (really nice by the way) was brought to you by fuck Christmas.
• So Billy escaped his sanitarium and made it all the way back to his home already? 
• Alright, enough of this lame sexual innuendo from the guy dressed as Santa and one of the nurses at the sanitarium flirting with him. Just get a room already!
• Now I’m confused. Someone killed Megan in the house earlier and now someone killed the guy in the Santa suit. Not cut and dry this movie is.
• The sorority has a yearly tradition to get a Secret Santa gift for Billy since he used to live in the house. Very awesome and macabre.
• “Billy Edward Lenz was born with a rare liver disease that gave him yellow skin.” They have a technical term for that and it’s called Jaundice. Just say he has Jaundice.
• Why do all these remakes insist on showing flashbacks to the killer’s origins or fleshing out the killer’s motivation more than the very well-made originals did. The less-is-more approach back in the day was and still is a better option for terror. I don’t need to see a yellow baby and his mother telling Billy that Santa ain’t coming to see him this year. I’m not a gambling man, but I have zero doubt that I will care no more than two hot shits about Billy’s bad upbringing.
• Although, someone just barged in Billy’s house (sometime in the 70s) and killed his dad by placing a plastic bag over his head while Billy watched when he was hiding under his bed. The same way Megan just died in the present time. Ooooh, foreshadowing. Also, his mom was complacent in the murder because she’s fucking the killer.
• WAIT! There’s ANOTHER remake of Black Christmas made in 2019?! Why don’t I recall this happening? It was only a few years ago.
• Should I also watch that?
• And I watched the Hulu produced Hellraiser last night and I shan’t be reviewing that. Long story short: It was terrible.
• Nice nod to original Black Christmas director Bob Clark by having the infamous leg lamp in the sorority house. 

I’ll be home-icidal for Christmas. You can count on me.

• I always found it fascinating that Bob Clark made two excellent and notorious Christmas movies from two opposing genres. Kudos Mr. Clark.
• Why are all these sisters bitchy to each other?
• Why can’t horror movies have their red herrings be more subtle? Like we all know that this new face, Eve isn’t the killer but the picture is trying hard to paint her as one with extreme close-up of her unusual smirking face, slow-talking speech saying things like “You’re my family now” and brooding menacing music. Just stop it. We all know she’ll probably be found dead in the next 25 minutes.
• Eve the weirdo also wrapped a gift in common newspaper like a weirdo.
• Eve? As in Christmas Eve? Cute.
• How does a misfit like Eve even get pledged into a sorority anyway? Doesn’t the elder sorority sisters have to except them? This reminds me of Terror Train where the oddball Kenny was in a fraternity even though the rest of the frat hated him. How’d they get in if they were not liked? Baffling.
• More flashbacks to young Billy. Apparently his rotten mother had him locked up in the attic.
• Ummm. Well if incest is your thing, look no further than this Black Christmas.
• Now Billy has a younger sister named Agnes. Billy still gets to be interned up in the attic.
• Ah. Eve’s mother was a legacy. Just like Flounder.
• I’m a little baffled as to why most of the girls living at this sorority house are still there and not home with their folks for the holidays. It’s Christmas Eve for Chrissakes!
• Like the original, the house mother (played by Andrea Martin, who was a sorority girl in the original) gets the gift of lingerie. Are the girls trying to tell her something?
• Also like the original, the girls keep getting obscene phone calls from the killer. Luckily for this flick being made in 2006, cell phones were still kinda rare.

Jingle bell, Jingle bell, Jingle bell Schlock!

• Megan’s boyfriend, Kyle (played by Oliver Hudson) somehow snuck up to his girlfriend Megan’s bedroom and was caught but the other girls sneaking around when she wasn’t there. Another red herring.
• Back in 1991, Billy was gifted a very nice telescope for Christmas. Which is weird considering they hate him so much and locked him up in the attic.
• I mean, telescopes ain’t cheap. They could’ve easily gave him Play-Doh or a book.
• Agnes, opening gifts in the living room with her mother, hears Billy rustling in the attic and asks if that was Santa’s reindeer. Instead of her mom just going along with the gag, she tells her that there’s nothing up there. Not the easiest gaslighting but sure.
• Despite Billy living most of his young life living in the attic he knew exactly how to make a phone call from within his own house on the same line.
• Billy then slaughters his step-dad and mother. He also takes out Agnes’ eye. C’mon Billy it’s Christmas! 
• He then makes Xmas cookies with his mother’s flesh. Season’s Eatings.
• “Billy was declared insane.” That’s what seeing your father killed in cold-blood, living all your childhood up in the attic and getting raped by your mother will do to a person.
• Now we meet Clair’s older sister looking for her. This movie already has too many shady people.
• Hahahaha. This flick is going to make us suspend the disbelief that someone is spying on Kelly and Kyle in Megan’s room by pushing out a pushpin that was holding up a corner of a poster and that hole is large enough for them to peer through. What the fuck, there’s no way the pushpin needle was long enough to go all the way through the drywall much less through the whole wall! Ridiculous!
• Dun-Dun-Dun! There’s a gift not TO Billy but FROM Billy! And it’s Agnes’ old baby doll.
• Leigh, Clair’s sister, is quite the bitch. She’s gotta be a Republican.
• Dun-Dun-Dun. The same wrapping paper that Billy’s baby doll gift was wrapped in was the same old newspaper that Eve’s gift was wrapped in!
• So the house loses power for a short moment and when the power returns it turns on Megan’s laptop where she was still watching the hidden camera footage of Kyle fucking Kelly that somehow Megan found on the net. Busted!
• The girls discover that weirdo Eve has a stash of Billy paraphernalia in her room. I’m sure that will all amount to nothing.
• It’s like, how much more black can this Christmas be and the answer is none. None more black.
• Kyle is rightfully kicked out because he’s a sexual predator. 

Slay bells ring aren’t ya listenin’?

• Also, I guess I should mention that one of the girls has been not feeling well and have been vomiting constantly. I don’t think this matters much except that the film made a point to show her feet dislodge some of the flooring tiles as she was kneeling down puking in the toilet.
• And of course someone is peering through the hole in the floor from one of the missing tiles. I’m not even going to go into how ludicrous this is.
• Hey some naked tush. Finally after a half-dozen flicks this month, there’s some nudity. Even the sex web cam in Toolbox Murders didn’t have nudity.
• There’s more holes in this sorority house than the plot of The Dark Knight Rises!
• I’m assuming those are fake eyes.
• A very red-faced Santa!
• Not sure why Lacey Chabert went snooping in the crawlspace under the front porch but someone just stabbed and killed her with a small garden hoe.
• Did Billy leave that girl’s severed head (I really can’t keep up with who’s who for some reason) in her car for the other girls to find?
• I get that the girls want to call the cops and get help but they could also try to leave unless the film is implying that the weather is so bad that the roads would be a no-no.
• Ah. Yes, bad weather and bad road travels. Plus Leigh refuses to leave in case her sister Clair returns. Noble but stupid.
• Of course Andrea Martin drives a beat-up shitbox.
• As Martin clears the ice off her car windshield, Billy kills Mary Elizabeth Winstead while inside the car. How he got in the car undetected is a great question.
• Hahahaha. Andrea Martin gets killed by a falling icicle impaling her skull. So goofy yet so good.

• So the movie just revealed that not just Billy (or maybe not Billy at all), is doing the killing since Agnes is the one ripping gout the girls’ eyeballs.
• Why is Kyle back? No seriously, why did he return?
• Look, I know we don’t really know how Billy or Agnes got into the attic but how about, instead of going up there to investigate (especially when you have a 99% assurance that someone is up there) you try your damnedest to lock the attic or seal it up and wait for the cops?
• Somehow Agnes was able to bring up all her victims to the attic without making a peep in the last few minutes and arranged them around a Christmas tree.
• I was right. It’s both Billy and Agnes! Shouldn’t Agnes hate Billy? Why are they working together?
• For some strange reason this house’s attic has a gap between the walls that go all the way down to the first floor and now Kelli fell down and is stuck instead the living room wall.
• Somehow this dumb hospital lost trace of Agnes body, which they assumed was dead and Agnes somehow swapped her body in the morgue with Clair’s body. This makes very little sense.
• Why is Agnes so hell-bent on killing these sorority girls? Is it revenge for Billy who died in the house earlier from burning alive?
• Wait. That’s it? Agnes attacks Kelli and Kelli quickly kills her using a defibrillator? So lame.

Final Thoughts: Not too much to comment on this flick. It’s very middle-of-the-road in terms of entertaining and scares. Mediocre is the best word to describe it. Bob Clark’s original was very well made and creepy as hell. This remake feels like a Scream-era version. It manages to not improve on the original’s premise as well as homage it too much. The gore was ramped up like most contemporary horror movies but the suspense was dampened. I didn’t hate this movie but I’ll most likely never see it again either. Very meh and drab. I’m mildly curious how the other remake from 2019 is but I’m starting to get Schlocktoberfest fatigued at this point.

Score: 5 Christmas Cookies Made Out of Human Flesh (out of 10)

Which was Better?: Bob Clark’s original is one of the best slasher/thrillers of all time. Hell, A Christmas Story is better than this Black Christmas remake.