(2006)
Director: Glen Morgan
Writer: Glen Morgan
A group of sorority sisters are terrorized during Christmas break by an escaped mental patient named Billy that used to live in their house.
Okay, so as a general rule I don't usually expect remakes to be good. There are exceptions and I have been surprised by quite a few. And let's not forget that some modern horror classics like The Thing (1982), Little Shop Of Horrors (1986), The Fly (1986), and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978) were all remakes. When a remake is bad, it's usually harmlessly bad. Just because the remake of Prom Night or The Fog was terrible, it takes nothing away from the original because the original is still there and is still entertaining. The Black Christmas remake (which I will henceforth refer to as Black X-Mas) is one of the few examples of a remake whose very existence taints the original film. The thing that made the original Black Christmas great is the fact that it left questions unanswered and it was up to the viewer to fill in the blanks for themselves. Black X-Mas immediately explains everything that was left up for interpretation in the original. Terrified that the audience will become enraged at the possibility of having to use their brains, Black X-Mas meticulously spells everything out for the viewer and leaves no room for interpretation. This can be harmful because if someone sees the remake before the original, their mind is automatically going to jump to the insanely dumb explanations provided by the remake when presented with questions. Black X-Mas, like many of it's mid-2000's horror remake peers, also contains some of the most two-dimensional characters put to screen. While almost every character in the first film has a unique personality that shines through regardless of the quality or quantity of screen-time they are given, the characters in Black X-Mas seem mostly devoid of any personality whatsoever. And the actors cannot be held solely responsible for that. It's obvious that Black X-Mas was made by people that not only didn't understand what made the original a great film, but who didn't like or hadn't even seen the original.
But should we be comparing Black X-Mas or any other remake to the original? Shouldn't we judge the film on it's own merit without preconceived notions of how it should or shouldn't be? Well, no. When a film uses an already established franchise as a basis, it's practically begging to be compared to it. The entire foundation of a remake is saying "Hey, remember this thing? Well here's a shiny new version of it that's better!" You're meant to be comparing the two because the new one is supposed to be superior. If it was never intended to be an improvement in some way, what would be the point in making it in the first place? Let's say, for example, that I remade Citizen Kane and in my version I revealed that "rosebud" was in actuality R.O.S.E.B.U.D., a crime-fighting robot from the future. While it would certainly be an amazing record-setting piece of cinema history, I couldn't possibly use the argument that my film stands on it's own and shouldn't be compared to the original. If that were so, I would have just made my own film about a crime-fighting robot from the future and called it something entirely different. Black X-Mas could easily have been just another dumb slasher about a killer with yellow skin and a flimsy back story, but instead it decided to ride on the tails of an already established horror film that it could never hope to live up to. If I could erase one film from history, it would be Black X-Mas. Not because it's the worst film I've ever seen, but because it's the most insulting; both to the film it's leeching off of and to the fans of that film as well. Your best bet would be to just stay away from Black X-Mas all together. 1 out of 6 beers.
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