Respond to these rapid questions in our Black Christmas quiz and we will tell you which Black Christmas character you are. Play it now.
Disclosure: I am friends with co-writer April Wolfe and have previously collaborated with her on projects for Voice Media Group.
“Black Christmas,” directed by Sophia Takal (“Always Shine,” “Into the Dark: New Year, New You”) and co-written by April Wolfe, is a PG-13 horror film for general audiences—it never really needed to be R-rated, especially since the 2006 “Black Christmas” remake is gory enough for two movies—that follows realistic characters who find themselves trapped in a genuinely disturbing situation. In other words, while not everything in “Black Christmas” works, it’s the stuff that does that ultimately matters the most.
Using her smartphone, Mu Kappa Epsilon sister Riley (Imogen Poots) receives mysterious and potentially dangerous private messages. Despite the fact that the messenger claims to be Calvin Hawthorne, the founder of her slave-owning college, she does not immediately block him for some reason. However, as you might expect, the real danger to Riley comes from the male community that has rallied around her cyber-stalker, whether tacitly or directly. Riley and her fellow sorority members, including Kris (Aleyse Shannon) and Marty (Lily Donoghue), are attacked by a group of masked men before they can escape.
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There’s never any doubt about who these men are: frat boys from Delta Kappa Omicron, whose former president Brian (Ryan McIntire) sexually assaulted Riley, but they don’t believe her because they’re from Delta Kappa themselves. Even so, knowing who is behind the masks—not to mention the “Eyes Wide Shut”-inspired masks that these creeps wear—only serves to heighten the viscerally upsetting stalk-and-slash sequences in the film, which are already horrifying.
Black Christmas Quiz
But it’s part of what makes this year’s “Black Christmas” not only immediately satisfying, but also a fitting companion to the bleak 1974 horror film of the same name, in which young women are targeted and picked off by a deranged killer, which was released the same year. A common theme connecting these two slashers is fear of women, though the new “Black Christmas” is understandably more concerned with the way women are treated when they accuse men of complicity and wrongdoing than the original. When Takal and Wolfe juxtapose Riley’s hopeless interactions with Gil (Mark Neilson), a convincingly uncooperative security guard, and Professor Gelson (Cary Elwes), a condescending frat sponsor, with the sudden and periodic dispatch of Riley’s fellow MKE members, it is difficult to dismiss Riley’s feelings of exasperation and panic.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this Black Christmas quiz.
When we get to the middle of “Black Christmas,” we get to see a group of women who have been trapped by macho hostility and indifference. This is the most unsettling part of the film, the part in which a plausible conspiracy, fueled by a sense of superiority, begins to take shape. Riley and her friends are targeted in a variety of ways, including a portrait of Brian that hangs in his fraternity’s hallway; Gil’s childishly defensive response to Riley when she asks him to assist her in finding one of her missing friends (mayonnaise has never looked so gross); Gelson’s passive-aggressive dismissal of Riley’s accusations (made all the more credible by the fact that his disdain for Riley is based on his nostalgia for Hawthorne); This film successfully drew me into Riley’s and her friends’ minds, a group of realistic characters who are messy and frightened without being diminished or condemned for their anger and insecurities. Takal, Wolfe, and the rest of their generally strong ensemble cast (especially Poots) did an excellent job of drawing me into Riley and her friends’ minds.
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Neither the threatening DMs nor Landon (Caleb Eberhardt), Riley’s nebbish-y, nice guy love interest, were scenes that I found particularly compelling (his aw-shucks, millennial Clark Kent mannerisms do nothing for me). A supernatural explanation for the fraternity-related violence that Riley and her friends are subjected to is also provided, which isn’t really a spoiler because the “supernatural” connection is explicitly implied at the beginning of the film, which begins with a quote about Hawthorne students’ special talents. However, while these scenes may broaden the appeal of “Black Christmas,” they are also distracting and don’t do much to enhance the devastating mood of the film’s best scenes, which are largely grounded in Riley and her friends’ lived-in stress. In other words, while none of the film’s more unbelievable plot elements are necessarily wrong-headed, they do come across as tacked on in a way that the rest of “Black Christmas” does not.
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To their credit, Takal and Wolfe’s remake is mostly personal and urgent, thanks to some atmospheric scare scenes and some sharp dialogue that reflect the world outside the movie theater in ways that most other studio-distributed horror films do not, and that helps to make the film feel more personal and urgent. I’m hoping there’s a lot more where “Black Christmas” came from than just this one song.
For more personality quizzes check this: Panga Quiz.
