Review by RCR entertainment reporter, Eric Szymanski, follow him on Twitter at @ecmanski
I’m making a list and checking it twice. What films this year have been naughty and nice? Black Christmas, you just made the list. By that, I mean as being one of the worst films of the year. A weak film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. A remake of a remake that doesn’t even resemble the 1974 original aside from the fact it takes place on a college campus.
Where do I begin? We open with a girl walking home getting creepy, unsolicited texts. Paint by numbers sequence where the girl falls to her demise and is dragged away making a snow angel with a trail of blood. Cool visual, right? Really establishes tension, right? Wrong. Cut to the sorority house where we’re introduced to the rest of the group whom I will care less about throughout the entire 1 hour and 32-minute runtime.
I’m not going to reveal any of the nonsensical twists of this film but I will say for a horror movie, this is just flat out boring. Not one scare was had. Not even a jump scare. As far as the violence and gore, this one clearly was afraid to push its PG-13 boundaries. A girl gets discovered with Christmas lights around her neck and you think we the viewer would see the end result of the killers’ handiwork? No, we just get the reaction, poorly acted mind you, of her sorority sister that finds her. Where was the blood and terror in this movie?
Marketing team, if you’re reading this, you are all a bunch of liars. You fooled me for sure thinking this was gonna do what Michael Myers does for my favorite holiday of the year. In fact, there was a point my inner monologue thought “I really wish Krampus would show up and wipe out this entire campus”.
The only fun I had during this screening was turning it into a Mystery Science Theater 3000 segment. The credits rolled, a couple of faint claps were heard but I just wanted to give the screen the middle finger. I mean Cary Elwes, Westley from the Princess Bride and the man that kicked off the Saw franchise, even he couldn’t save this mess. There’s one talent show song that looks like it was ripped off from Mean Girls that was kind of fun but that 2-minute bright spot in this movie won’t justify me recommending it.
Even the mighty Blumhouse productions which consistently pumps out solid entries like Get Out and Halloween (as indicated on the poster) can deliver coal in your stocking. It happens. If I had a choice between sipping on a sour egg nog while listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks on loop for 90 minutes or watching the 2019 Black Christmas again, I’d say dust off that record and pass me a mug Cousin Eddie.
1/5 stars ⭐️
Find out more about this film by watching the trailer! Let us know what you think.
