Black Christmas (2019)
December 25, 2020 12:39 PM - Subscribe
Hawthorne College is winding down for the holidays, yet one by one, sorority girls are being picked off. Riley Stone (Imogen Poots) a girl dealing with her own trauma, begins to notice and tries to save her friends before they too are picked off.
CW: sexual assault, PTSD from sexual assault.
Streaming in the US on HBO Max. Directed and co-written by Sophia Takal.
CW: sexual assault, PTSD from sexual assault.
Streaming in the US on HBO Max. Directed and co-written by Sophia Takal.
I honestly wish they had not tried to brand this as a "remake." I love the original Black Christmas and this is not it. If it had tried to make it on it's own as a feminist slasher, I don't think I would recommend it either but I would find it less awful.
posted by miss-lapin at 8:09 PM on December 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by miss-lapin at 8:09 PM on December 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
I honestly wish they had not tried to brand this as a "remake."
Indeed. As I have remarked about the previous remake-in-name-only, when doing a remake of the 1974 original — the ur-source of so many tropes of the genre — filmmakers face the choice between being faithful to the source material (and thus making a movie that seems a collection of clichés) or striking out and doing something entirely different (in which case why call it a remake?). It’s like sinking fifty million dollars and several months of many people’s lives into a project you know is going to be a failure, and all you can decide is what kind of failure it will be.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:44 AM on December 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
Indeed. As I have remarked about the previous remake-in-name-only, when doing a remake of the 1974 original — the ur-source of so many tropes of the genre — filmmakers face the choice between being faithful to the source material (and thus making a movie that seems a collection of clichés) or striking out and doing something entirely different (in which case why call it a remake?). It’s like sinking fifty million dollars and several months of many people’s lives into a project you know is going to be a failure, and all you can decide is what kind of failure it will be.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:44 AM on December 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
In rare cases, like the Fright Night remake, the writer(s) are able to come up with a very clever re-imagining, which manages to keep some of the key elements. I love both the original and the remake in different ways. However, Marni Noxon, who wrote the remake, had a lot of experience doing that as she also was a writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But such a film is an exception that proves the rule.
posted by miss-lapin at 1:46 PM on December 27, 2020
posted by miss-lapin at 1:46 PM on December 27, 2020
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The last act, with the women banding together is satisfying, and the different ways the men all end up shitty were well-observed.
It really walks a line between being exploitative and ham-fisted and having enough flashes of satire and empowerment to flirt with cult movie status. I don't want to diminish what Sophia Takal is going for (and sometimes achieves) but it misses the mark enough that I can't recommend it. YMMV.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:48 PM on December 25, 2020 [2 favorites]