Five-Legged Iguana

BLACK CHRISTMAS (Review)

I’ve said this before.
Having never seen the original, I can come at this with a clean slate. And on that clean slate, I write…

Glen Morgan is a name I’ve kept an eye on since his days as an X-Files alum. From Mulder and Scully, he went on (along with his collaborative partner James Wong) to Millennium in its sophomore year, giving the show its best season in its three-year run.
Morgan then went on to script feature films which Wong would direct, starting with Final Destination (interesting and effective), and then on to the Jet Li starrer, The One (disappointing), and Final Destination 3 (dull and pointless).
During this time, Morgan also had his directorial debut with the remake of Willard (which I missed seeing).
As the films came and went though, it seemed Morgan was becoming less of an interesting storyteller and just a mild curiosity in my books.
At the tail end of last year, Morgan wrote and directed the remake of the 1974 slasher flick, Black Christmas, coming up with quite possibly the worst film he’s worked on to date (it’s a toss-up between this and Final Destination 3).

We’re trapped (along with a gaggle of annoying sorority b*tches) as psychotic killer Billy Lenz (Robert Mann) escapes from the loonybin and comes home for Christmas; as it turns out, the Delta Alpha Kappa sorority house happens to be Billy’s old home.
General mayhem and much eye-gouging and -yanking ensue as the film unfolds in its bizarrely perfunctory manner, with sections of Billy’s life told to us by different characters. (These flashbacks seem to have been directed by Tim Burton on a really bad day, while in the worst possible mood.)

The visual hi-jinx (an overabundance of skewed, extreme angles which, instead of building mood and tension, just get really annoying, really fast) does nothing to hide the flimsy plot and script, populated by spoiled little princesses who aren’t really characters, but Dead Meat Walking.
Not to sound misogynistic, but seriously, these are sorority sisters you can’t wait to see get iced by the mad killer. And speaking of ice, check out the death by icicle scene. Yeesh.

With a cast of ciphers that includes Party of Five’s Lacey Chabert and Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Michelle Trachtenberg, there is absolutely no one to sympathize or identify with. The only performer to actually register is long-time Morgan collaborator (and real life wife) Kristen Cloke (who played Lara Means, a recurring character on Millennium’s second season, and appeared in Final Destination), as the estranged sister of one of the sorority girls, come to the house to look for her sibling.

Just squeezing past the 1 hour 20 minute mark by a hair, Black Christmas feels interminably long, and is the kind of sad excuse for a horror movie which makes you just want to climb into the screen and help the killer shut these damn girls up.
These are the kinds of movies right wing conservatives should worry about, the ones that are so badly made, they actually promote violent tendencies.
I’m not sure which is more horrendous, this, or the worst examples of pointless masochism that exist within the currently burgeoning sub-genre of torture porn. Believe me, watching Chabert, Trachtenberg, and company natter away about how Christmas and their families suck is sheer, effing torture.

Okay, it’s official. Earlier on I said worst film Glen Morgan ever worked on was a toss-up between Black Christmas and Final Destination 3.
Well, Final Destination 3 wasn’t really bad so much as it was pointless and redundant. Black Christmas however, is bad. It’s the kind of film that eventually killed the slasher movie, the kind of film that wasn’t about suspense or thrills, but about cheering on the killer as he dispatches the next pretty little airhead.
And perhaps its worst offense (in a long string of them) is that it doesn’t even have one sorority sister who emerges from the ordeal as the kick-a$$ Sidney Prescott. Instead, just when you hope one of them will rise to the occasion, they devolve into screaming, hysterical ninnies.
I think it’s safe to say even girls would be annoyed with this pack of hyenas.

So the next time you feel that the worst part about Christmas are the crowded malls, or the traffic, or hearing the same holiday songs over and over, or that dreaded family reunion, think again.
The worst part about Christmas is that it can spawn cinematic dreck like this.

(Originally posted 022407)