By Melissa Antoinette Garza
With everyone panicked about the Coronavirus, I decided to venture into a film that would make the end of the world seem like an improvement. Cue the newest remake of BLACK CHRISTMAS (2019).
The movie opens with Lindsay (Lucy Currey) leaving campus to go to her grandmother’s house for Christmas. Her sorority sister Oona (Zoe Robins) calls her saying that she was Lindsay’s Secret Santa. Oona got her a vibrator for Christmas, and comments “now, you don’t even need a man” which sets the tone for the rest of this abomination. Hey, if owning vibes makes you empowered just call me Simone de Beauvoir.
After she hangs up with Oona, Lindsay gets a creepy text message from a number masquerading as the long dead, college founder, Calvin Hawthorne. When the text comes, a pic of Hawthorne’s statue generates on her phone, leading me to believe that the culprit hacks into the contacts, adds their name, number, picture and then texts them. Why, you ask? Well, because the filmmakers are complete morons, that’s why.
“Hawthorne” texts something like, “Imma make you squeal. I’m a man and men are evil, blah blah blah.” Out of nowhere, a dude shows up in a robe and mask. The chase is on – for a few seconds. Lindsay runs to a nearby house but another one of those fuckers in the robe answers. He pounces on her and as he kills her, she makes snow angels. Sure, why the fuck not? That’s a natural reaction, right?
After Lindsay is killed, we shift to a different sorority. Riley (Imogen Poots) is our lead protagonist. She’s an orphan without a Daddy Warbucks, not that she would want one. In her world, all men are disgusting, sexual harassers, who are hellbent on raping and killing. In fact, Riley herself was raped three years prior, by frat boy Brian (Ryan McIntyre). After the rape, no one believed her and the school took his side. Even now, fraternity brothers continue to get enjoyment out of harassing her.
The horrible men are not restricted to students. Professor Gelson (Cary Elwes) is equally detestable, but I like Gelson. Riley’s sorority wenches keep trying to get the teach fired because his curriculum is mostly made up of “white male authors.”
Go start your book burning and leave Westley alone. He’s been thru enough! He fought Andre the Giant! Give that man some respect!
Gelson gets the upper-hand when he has Riley read a book in class that she thinks is by a male writer. Stop with the stereotypes, Riley. A chick wrote that book! What now, mofo?
Gelson calls her out on her bullshit, and then makes a very odd statement. He assures the class that there is no nefarious plot on campus. Without being asked, he states, “there are no covert meetings where men discuss how to bury women.” A bit forthcoming of him, but I’ll take it. Let’s end this shit-show. Roll the end credits!
No? I’m not getting off that easy? Dammit.
So bitch #2, sorority sis Kris (Aleyse Shannon) is standing outside school buildings and harassing people to sign the petition ousting poor Gelson. I swear, Jigsaw treated him better.
This isn’t the first time Kris took a stand against the patriarchy. She also had a statue of Hawthorne moved from outside into a frat house so she didn’t have to see it.
For some reason, Riley and sorority sis Marty (Lily Donoghue) haven’t heard the full story of Hawthorne despite Kris’s passionate and successful campaign to have the statue bust removed. In lazy and tired exposition, Kris tells them that Hawthorne was a racist, sexist, slave-owning, woman-killing occultist who sacrificed those he killed to pagan gods. I feel like I just filled out the world’s longest and worst Mad Libs, but sadly that’s the plot.
Meanwhile, Riley is romantically pursued by boring Landon (Caleb Eberhardt). I hate Landon. Fuck that guy. He’s supposed to be the anti-alpha male. He’s a caricature of what man-haters claim they want to see in men.
He’s a geek. He has no opinions of his own. He is silent unless spoken to. When he sees Riley bloodied and attacked, he softly says “May I help you? What can I do to help you?” like a goddamn customer service rep. If a female character was written the way Landon was, people would assume she had Battered Wife Syndrome. Maybe that’s it. Maybe, Landon was in an abusive relationship with some whack-job and he hasn’t learned to love himself yet. If he didn’t suck so hard, I’d feel bad for him.
Later in the evening, Riley decides to attend a Christmas frat party. Kris and Marty offer to skip it since Brian will be in attendance. To put it mildly, Riley’s response is surprising. She says, “it was 3 years ago. What’s the worst thing that can happen?” Umm….what?
If a friend of mine came to me and said, “Hey, there’s a party tomorrow that I want to go to, but I was raped by the host a few years back.” I would say, “We’ll go there to castrate the motherfucker, but we are NOT staying for refreshments.”
Her sisters have a different approach. They dress in sexy Santa costumes reminiscent of the ones from MEAN GIRLS (2004), and are ready to party.
When Riley notices their friend Helena (Madeleine Adams) is missing, she ventures into the frat halls solo to find her. Her girlfriends let her! Super Feminist, Kris sits on her ass as her sorority sister and best friend who was raped wanders the house she was raped in, alone! Kris is a hypocritical wench without a working brain cell.
All of the past and present fraternity presidents have portraits on the wall. Riley gets unnerved when she sees Brian’s picture up, but keeps going. She opens a door to find the new pledges being sworn in. On the table is Hawthorne’s bust that is leaking black goo. I don’t know. At this point, do you even fucking care? It’s black, hypnotic goo that gives men headaches when they’re not sexist. Fucking hell! Bob Clark is rolling in his grave right now!
Riley abandons that door and instead goes into the room where Helena is about to be date raped because OF COURSE she is. The frat boy goes thru the laundry list of everyone’s favorite LIFETIME Movie insults. He calls her a “tease,” and says “you’re all the same” etc. etc. God, this movie is bad.
Helena goes home after getting sick and Riley takes her place in a strange singing routine they do which is about the frat boys being rapists. It really wouldn’t have worked had Riley not been in the number, so I don’t know what the hell would have happened had Helena not mixed vodka and tequila. Nothing makes sense in this! I hate it and this is only thirty minutes in! It feels like I’ve been watching this for ten years.
At least, the deaths start accumulating – not that we see them. PG-13, ladies and gents. Enjoy it.
Other than Gelson, there is one other solid character in this film. There’s a white kitty and she’s adorable. Imma love it. I want to pet and cuddle it. I wish that cat was the killer and went nuts on the skanks because she got sick of their shit.
I’d watch a movie called Bad Kitty: Sorority Bitch Killer with the tagline, “She’ll Claw Your Eyes Out.” I wish I was watching that now. Someone make it for me.
Meanwhile, in the atrocity I did watch, nothing happens in the second act. Nothing really happens in the first or third either though, so at least it’s consistent.
The girls debate whether to report their sorority sis missing just as Riley starts getting texts from “Calvin Hawthorne.” She goes to a cop who is a complete asshole. After all, the officer is a man and if this movie has taught us anything it is that all men, unless absolutely boring and useless, are douche-bags.
They even tried to make Marty’s boyfriend Nate (Simon Mead) into a bad guy. He’s supposed to be a representation of toxic masculinity, but he’s legit the only person in the film that talks any sense. He’s just a nice guy who gets sick of Kris’s bullshit. He helps them from jump. He even records their stupid little song and dance. Then, he gets jumped on for merely suggesting that not all men are rapists. Kris yammers “Did you just ‘not all men’ me!” I yelled at my TV, “yeah ya’ bitch, he did and good for fucking him!”
Seriously, Marty is an idiot. She should have ran off with Nate and far away from that goddamn sorority, but instead she throws a tantrum because he tells her to calm down. She needed to calm the fuck down. Kris was 100% in the wrong. She trivialized his frustration and feelings, wouldn’t let him get a word in edgewise and scoffed at his opinions. Rather than standing up for her man and telling her friend to back the fuck off, Marty folds like a blanket and jumps on Nate too. Nate deserved so much better. In his next life may he find a sexy, smart fem with big tits and a killer disposition.
Marty kicks Nate out after he calls her “hysterical.” She was. He could have called her far worse and been justified, but for those who don’t know, hysterical is a code-word. Many women who misunderstand feminism, feel that phrases like “calm down” or “you’re hysterical” are used to diminish the emotions of women. Honestly, some scumbag men do use words like that to push their spouses down and likewise some awful women will say horrendous things to discount men. I’ve seen women poke fun at their partners’ opinions, call into question their manhood and say every snide remark that they can think of. Some people, regardless of gender, suck. That said, sometimes bitches are hysterical and Marty was one hysterical bitch.
Of course, the movie can’t admit that. Women do nearly no wrong (except for one who is a sellout) in this flick. Instead the film’s logical explanation is that Nate was essentially hypnotized by a nefarious group into having an opinion, wanting to keep his girlfriend safe and standing up for himself. The message is that those qualities are both sexist and negative. Real life spoiler alert, they’re not.
Now, men are not obligated to defend their fem’s honor. Not every gal is a damsel-in-distress, but I will not pretend that honorable actions are dishonorable because some shitty ass movie that doesn’t understand feminism says so. BLACK CHRISTMAS 2019, you can go fuck yourself.
When the group of sorority sisters are attacked, I want them all to die. I don’t like any of them. They’re all do-nothing, soap-boxers that make the lives of everyone around them miserable. Riley wouldn’t be so bad if she chose a better group of fems to hang with, but she is complicit. She doesn’t stand up for Nate at all. She jumps on all of Kris’s bandwagons regardless if they have merit or not.
Sadly, the girls don’t all die. They fight back hardcore because someone somewhere said that women can’t and this movie wanted to prove that notion wrong. They could have focused on just making a good film with strong female protagonists, but then they couldn’t enlighten that one dude with a Confederate Flag bumper sticker and the ‘make me a sammich, bitch‘ t-shirt. How very noble of the filmmakers!
BLACK CHRISTMAS (2019) is tedious and pointless. The conclusion is laughably absurd.
Shame on Sophia Takal and April Wolfe for this bullshit! Any horror fan with a brain in their head can see that the original BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) was a progressive and feminist film. The women were strong, smart and decisive. Margot Kidder’s character Barb was a sassy, foul-mouthed drunk who didn’t give a fuck. Olivia Hussey’s Jess stood up to her boyfriend at every turn and had serious conversations regarding her rights to an abortion.
The difference is that Clark’s BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) didn’t feel the need to make men evil to show that women are strong. He understood that the amazing qualities of women shined completely independent of men, and took nothing away from them. Takal and Wolfe’s approach is backwards and regressive. If the only way you can depict self-sufficient, powerhouse fems is to insult, degrade and humiliate men, you’re doing feminism wrong. Taking constant potshots at guys isn’t enough to make a cohesive statement, never mind a cohesive movie. I’m glad this failed as badly as it did.
God how, I miss Bob Clark. Don’t even waste a free rental from REDBOX on this noise. Just throw on the original and enjoy Olivia Hussey! That’s what I want to do.
Scared Stiff Rating: 1/10
(1 point for Cary Elwes and the kitty)
