The first thing you need to know about the newest iteration of Black Christmas is that it shares almost nothing with the earlier versions. In each, a handful of sorority sisters try to make their holiday break merry while being stalked and murdered in their own house. That's where the similarities stop. While the 1974 original and 2006 remake feature the deranged killer Billy (at least, we assume that's him), whose strange obsessions result in festive bloodshed, this new version completely tears away from this tradition. We are now dealing with a cult of masked and robed men, a fraternity seeking to put campus women "back in line." Sure, some of the murders feel vaguely similar, especially the initial icicle stabbing, but by the halfway point we know full well who the killers are, their motives, and their M.O., and so the familiarity is forced out.
The second thing you need to know about the new flick is that it is not a Christmas movie. I mean, it takes place during holiday break, but the holiday setting and decor is purely incidental. What this Black Christmas is is a renewed salvo of the gender-based war on male-dominated horror movies (something I wasn't really sure we were in, but writer/director Sophia Takal apparently thinks otherwise). The frat brothers, led by a misogynistic professor (Cary Elwes) at historically sexist Hawthorne College (and yes, Takal, you did just alienate your literary audience members with the misreading of Scarlet Letter), have discovered black magic and a way to let their founder possess them. It's a cheap and surprisingly stupid ploy to pull, one that lessens the imminent threat of rape culture and gender-based violence on college campuses. These boys are capable of evil all on their own, without adding the bizarre and unspecific dark arts to the mix.
The third thing you need to know about the new flick is that the first half is actually quite entertaining. While the movie's scares aren't generally effective, the comedy and drama are utterly engrossing. Rapid-fire dialogue reveal the woke girls' complete disdain for the boys on their campus, building the culture of Hawthorne College didactically while distinguishing girls based on their experiences. One has a dutifully respectful boyfriend who is quite content supporting these women. One seems happy to flirt boys and leave them cold, knowing they're all trash. One was raped at a frat party recently. They pull together some really strong scenes of sisterhood-building and even perform a hardcore anti-rape version of "Up on the Rooftop" in front of the rapist frat boys in skimpy holiday outfits. It's all quite empowering, until it's suddenly not; that is, when they're home and the boys attack.
The final thing you need to know about this movie is that it's one of the biggest disappointments this year. I loved the dialogue in the early scenes, and I would rewatch these scenes again happily. It's the movie's abysmal payoff I can't stand. By the big middle-of-the-movie turn, consisting of cultish robed murderers invading the sorority house, I had completely checked out. It stopped being a feminist college movie and started being a schlocky slasher with little to no artistic purpose or merit and the gall to be intellectually insulting to boot.
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