An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at the 2006’s Black Christmas the first remake of the 1974 classic Black Christmas
A group of college students at a sorority house learn the house once belonged to an infamous serial killer who killed his family 20 years prior and must survive the night when he returns.
Is Black Christmas (2006) Scary?
Black Christmas has too much going on to be scary because of a huge number of characters all doing their own thing, you never get an effective atmosphere to create horror. There are some effective gory scenes that can be unsettling at times.
Overall you won’t leave Black Christmas scared unless you’re planning to stay in a serial killer’s home over Christmas.
Plot Synopsis:
The film opens on Christmas eve at a sorority house where Clair (played by Leela Savasta) is writing a card for someone named Leigh. As the house plays Christmas music and the rest of the sorority sisters decorate downstairs, Clair is distracted by the clothes in her closet moving. After she checks it we see that someone is hiding under the bed near her.
Clair goes back to writing her letter but discovers her pen missing. Someone then places a bag over her head and stabs her in the face with the pen. So she’s dead and title card!
We open with an orderly at Clark Sanitarium entering a wing of the hospital with a cart of food who doesn’t notice a box of milk fall onto the floor. The carton jams the door preventing it from being locked and a man in a Santa suit walks in. The fuck kind of security is this?
The security guy finally notices a big guy in a red suit walking around a secure floor and stops him. Santa claims that he was looking for the children’s ward and I guess nothing says “Children’s Ward” like several bolted-shut doors in a long grey hallway. Before the guard can kick him out, Santa notices one of the inmates is named Billy Lenz and it’s time for a highly convenient exposition scene.
We learn that as a child, Billy was locked up in his attic until he killed his entire family on Christmas years ago and most believe he died at some point in the intervening years. Every year since his incarceration, he tries to escape just so he can go home.
Cut to one of our main characters Kelli (played by Katie Cassidy) making out with her boyfriend Kyle (played by Oliver Hudson) right outside the sorority house. As Kelli leaves him to go back in the house, Kyle gets a phone call and looks up towards the house. In the house, Kelli starts wrapping gifts and we meet some more of the cast.
Apparently, the sorority has a tradition where, during a secret Santa, someone can end up with Billy’s name and they have to get him a gift. It’s a weird fucking tradition and according to Barbara (played by Andrea Martin), they can’t start giving out secret Santa gifts until they find his gift.
No one fesses up to having Billy’s name but from Heather’s (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) reactions we can tell she got Billy’s name. Meanwhile, Dana (played by Lacey Chabert) just wants to get the gifts over with so she can party but Melissa (played by Michelle Trachtenberg) points out there’s a snowstorm outside.
At the sanitarium, the guard discovers Billy is missing and enters his room. Spotting a large hole where the sink used to be the guard doesn’t call for backup and instead gets closer. Unsurprisingly Billy (played by Robert Mann) was hiding under the bed and emerges stabbing the guard in the neck with a candy cane.
At the sorority house, Kelli heads upstairs to tell the rest of the remaining girls that it’s time to open gifts. Lauren (played by Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe) helps her by knocking on Clair’s door but she can’t hear them on account of her being dead and all. The two then knock on Megan’s door but Megan tells them “fuck Christmas” and refuses to come out of her room.
Turns out Megan (played by Jessica Harmon) isn’t feeling so festive because she’s found a video online of her and Kyle having sex. Since we’ve been introduced to so many characters in a short span of time, I had to check twice and yes, Megan is not Kyle’s girlfriend, Kelli is.
After Kelli and Lauren head back downstairs, Megan hears the song “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” playing and follows it to the attic. There she finds a snow globe playing the song but also a dead Clair positioned on a rocking chair.
Before she can do anything, the killer places a bag over her head and stabs her multiple times with what looks like a crystal icicle. The killer then rips out Megan’s eyeball with their bare hands.
Back at the sanitarium, Santa Claus is still wandering the halls for some reason. Billy grabs him, kills him, changes into his Santa suit, and escapes the sanitarium. Honestly, this place feels like the easiest place to escape from so it’s weird how Billy is only just now able to do it.
At the sorority house, Heather finally admits she got Billy’s name but didn’t feel comfortable getting him a gift because it’s a weird fucking tradition. She said it in a nicer way though. This leads to a debate about Christmas blah blah blah and Barbara decides to tell the girls Billy’s origin story.
Flashback to 1970 and we learn Billy was born with a rare liver disorder that makes his skin yellow. His mother (played by Karin Konoval) hated him because she didn’t love her husband so she took her anger out on Billy. Five years later on Christmas, Billy’s dad puts a gift for him in a secret compartment in his closet. As Billy goes to open the gift he hears his mom’s new boyfriend enters the house.
The new boyfriend and Billy’s dad argue which ends with the boyfriend killing Billy’s dad by placing a bag over his head and beating him with a hammer. Billy sees the whole thing happen while he peeks under the door.
Later Billy spots his wife and her boyfriend burying his dad under the house but his mom sees him and a chase begins. Billy escapes them by running into secret compartments in the walls and eventually makes it up to the attic where his mom locks him in.
Back in the present, the story is interrupted by a phone call that Kelli believes is a prank call from Kyle but quickly realizes it’s someone reenacting Billy killing his family. Kelli puts it on speaker and the voice tells the girls to “get out of my house. I’m going to kill you”.
Seems chill.
Melissa checks the caller ID and sees the call was coming from Clair’s cellphone DUN DUN DUNN. But also no one decides to check in on Clair or try to find her cellphone, they all just see this and are like “weird… anyway”. Except for Heather, she decides to pack and get the fuck out but is stopped at the staircase by yet another character Eve (played by Kathleen Kole).
Eve gives Heather her present which is wrapped in newspaper. Heather opens it revealing a crystal unicorn that looks similar to the thing that the killer used to kill Megan. Heather thanks her and then heads upstairs to pack.
We flashback to 1982 and see Billy’s mom having sex with her boyfriend but he falls asleep halfway through. Billy’s mom then heads to the attic where she rapes Billy and nine months later has a daughter named Agnes.
Back in the present, the movie is trying really hard to hint that Eve is Agnes as we transition from the image of Agnes in the past to Eve standing there in the present. Feels like a red herring though but does this mean that one of the girls in the house is Agnes?
Before Barbara can give Eve her secret Santa gift Eve leaves the house and we learn from the others that Eve has no family so it’s weird that she’s leaving. Meanwhile, the girls get another phone call, this time from Megan’s cell. Melissa puts it on speaker and the voice threatens them again.
Apparently the girls like Megan more than Clair because Kelli immediately goes to check on Megan in her room and Melissa calls campus security.
Approaching Megan’s door, Kyle opens it and gives some vague excuse of wanting to see Kelli so he snuck in through the window. The rest of the girls think he made the weird phone call and as Kelli goes to check if Megan is in her room, Kyle decides to tell the rest about Billy since he’s lived in town his whole life. Also, he randomly calls them all “spoiled bitches” so he’s really coming off like a dick right now.
Flashback to Christmas 1991 and we see Billy’s mom give a 9-year-old Agnes a doll as a gift and it’s pretty clear Billy’s mom actually loves Agnes. Billy’s mom then heads into the kitchen to have a cigarette and gets a phone call from Billy telling her “she’s my family now.”
Billy’s mom realizes this means Billy is going to kill Agnes and rushes to the living room where Billy has placed a bag over Agnes’s head, ripped out her eyeball, and eats it in front of his mom and her boyfriend. That last part felt unnecessary but every killer needs a gimmick.
The boyfriend lunges at Billy but Billy stabs him through the eye with a crystal spike. Billy then strangles his mom with Christmas lights and drags her to the kitchen where he beats her to death with a roller.
Probably because an eyeball isn’t a full meal, Billy uses a cookie cutter and cuts pieces out of his mom’s back to make some Christmas cookies. A short time later police arrive and find Agnes alive and Billy in the kitchen eating mom-skin cookies.
Kyle ends the story by stating that Agnes was taken to a mental asylum and placed in an orphanage where she hasn’t been seen since. The girls; Melissa, Heather, Dana, and Barbara, hear the door slam and rush downstairs as Kyle heads into Megan’s room where Kelli is still looking for Megan. It’s not that big of a room so I’m not sure how she hasn’t given up yet.
Turns out that earlier when Kyle receive that phone call at the start of the movie, it was Megan telling him about the video of them having sex. Kyle then does his hardest to distract Kelli from looking at Megan’s computer where the video is still up.
Meanwhile downstairs Clair’s sister, Leigh (played by Kristen Cloke) has arrived looking for Clair as she has gone missing. After several questions to verify who she is, Leigh spots a gift to Billy from the sorority under the tree wrapped in newspaper which Barbara says wasn’t there earlier.
Barbara opens it and it’s revealed to be the same doll that Agnes got from her mother in the same box that Billy got from his dad. Leigh doesn’t give a shit about any of this and loses her patience demanding to see Clair’s room. She and Melissa head into Clair’s room where Leigh finds a gift Clair left her. Downstairs Lauren throws up from constantly drinking.
Meanwhile Heather realizes the newspaper the doll was wrapped in, is dated the same date as the newspaper Eve’s present to Heather was wrapped in and decides to check her room. There it’s revealed that Eve’s room was Billy’s old room and Heather finds a hidden box of Billy’s stuff including newspaper clippings of the murders.
The power then goes out and Megan’s computer shows an alert that catches Kelli’s attention and she sees the video of Megan and Kyle having sex. Kyle tries to explain that it was from before he met Kelli but she flips out on him. Kyle becomes irate and curses everyone out leading to him being kicked out of the house by Barbara.
Melissa then takes Lauren to the bathroom where she throws up once again. While vomiting she accidentally kicks up a piece of tile from the floor which reveals a hole although she doesn’t notice it.
Lauren gets into the shower but before she does, she kicks up another tile and we see someone watching her from the hole underneath. Has no one ever accidentally kicked up any of these tiles before? After the shower, Melissa puts Lauren to bed and leaves her alone so she’ll be dead the next time we see her.
Meanwhile, Leigh and Dana console Kelli and notice that the sorority house is the only house without power and Dana elects to go outside to flip the main breaker. Crawling under the porch, she’s attacked and dragged in by Agnes, although we don’t see her face. The two struggle and Dana is able to reach for a trowel and stab Agnes in the side.
Agnes pulls the trowel out of her side and stabs Dana in the back of her head, killing her. She then climbs back into the walls and into the house.
Inside Kelli, surrounded by the rest of the cast, except for Lauren who is asleep (or dead), gets a call on her cell from Dana’s cell. The voice on the other end sounds like Dana screaming and Leigh tells the girls that Dana went out back to flip the breaker. Kelli and Melissa go around the back of the house while Heather and Leigh notice that Eve’s car is still parked outside the house.
Kelli spots bloody scratches on the wood paneling under the house but, along with Melissa, they’re unable to remove it to search inside. With the snowstorm, Heather can only make out that Eve is still in the car and opens up her front door. Turns out Eve is there but not in one piece as her head rolls out and onto the street.
Heather and Leigh scream alerting Kelli and Melissa who rush back to them. Kelli then realizes that Billy has returned which makes sense cuz of all the dead people. The girls rush back inside to a confused Barbara as Kelli calls 911 but due to the storm, they let her know they won’t be able to reach them for 2 hours.
Heather and Barbara decide to go risk the drive to the police while Leigh, Melissa, and Kelli decide to stay behind as they think Dana, Clair, and Megan may still be alive somewhere in the house.
While Melissa goes to check on a surprisingly still alive sleeping Lauren, Heather and Barbara get to the car but Barbara is forced to go back outside to remove the ice from the windshield. This doesn’t go well for Heather who is still inside the car.
Shocked by all the blood, Barbara falls backward and bumps into the garage door which causes an icicle to fall and go through her head. The icicle fell like four feet and penetrated her skull, so it better have been made of metal or I’m never going outside in a snowstorm again.
Realizing the car hasn’t left yet, Kelli and Leigh go outside to check on Heather and Barbara. Meanwhile, Melissa is attacked by Agnes but she’s able to fight back and run. Unfortunately, she runs to an adjacent room and not somewhere like, outside or further away.
Agnes follows her to the room where she finds a pair of ice skates and throws them at Melissa’s head. The ice skates chop the top of Melissa’s head off killing her instantly, so add ice skating to the list of things I’ll never do again.
In Lauren’s room, Billy starts to fondle a sleeping Lauren who wakes up and attempts to stab him with a unicorn statue. She misses and is attacked by Agness who kills her. Outside Kelli and Leigh find a lot of blood on the other side of the garage door and hear someone turn off the car.
Believing it’s the killer, they run back inside to Lauren’s room to look for Melissa while we see someone enter the house and follow them upstairs. Kelli attempts to ask Lauren where Melissa is but thinks she’s sleeping. She calls Melissa’s cell and sees its light coming from a hole leading to the attic.
The door is kicked open and it’s fucking Kyle who for some reason doesn’t announce he’s there before violently kicking the door open. Not realizing it’s Kyle, Leigh attacks him but he pushes her back and she bumps into the bed revealing that Lauren is dead.
Kyle says he saw two dead bodies outside and came in to investigate. Though Leigh at first accuses him of being the killer, Kelli shuts that down when she calls Melissa’s phone again and all three see the light coming from the attic.
The three decide to investigate with Kyle going up the attic first like they don’t know there’s a killer in the house. Kyle is grabbed and lifted into the attic by Agnes. After a brief struggle, Kelli and Leigh finally get into the attic just in time to see Kyle get a glass unicorn to the head.
Kelli and Leigh attack Agnes but she easily throws them to the side. They then watch as she removes Kyle’s eyeballs and eats them. So I guess serial killer gimmicks are hereditary. Agnes then lights several candles around a Christmas tree surrounded by all the dead girls, complete with their eyeballs hanging as ornaments– or snacks for later.
Agnes then tells them “you’re my family now” as she approaches Kelli and Leigh with a bag.
Leigh falls down through some loose floorboards in the attic and gets knocked out as Agnes attacks Kelli. In the struggle, Kelli knocks a candle onto the ground that starts a fire. Agnes places a bag over her head but Kelli is able to fight her off, find a meat fork; cuz everyone has one in their attic, and stabs Agnes in the eye.
Unfortunately, she stabs her in the fake eye seeing as how Billy ate her real eye in 1992. Billy then appears as Agnes wraps Christmas lights around Kelli’s neck. She once again fights her off and is able to avoid Billy but, she and Agnes fall down into the space between the walls. Agnes falls to the bottom and gets knocked out momentarily as Kelli hangs on and calls out to Leigh.
Leigh is able to break through the wall and save Kelli before Agnes and Billy reach her. Meanwhile, the fire has spread to the Christmas tree and when Leigh pulls Kelli through the wall, it pulls the fire Christmas tree down into the walls directly on top of Billy. Kelli quickly grabs some paint thinner and spreads it around causing fire to engulf the walls and the room.
Kelli and Leigh escape the house and we transition to them in the hospital a short time later. In the hospital’s morgue, a still alive but badly burned, Billy unzips from a body bag and kills the doctor. He then unzips Agnes’s bag revealing that she is also still alive. The two then head into the hospital ceiling to search for Kelli and Leigh.
In Kelli’s room, Leigh opens the gift Clair left which is revealed to be a watch. The nurse enters and takes Kelli for some x-rays as Leigh puts on the watch. She then starts to hear something in the ceiling and she’s attacked and killed by Agnes.
A short time later Kelli and the nurse return and Kelli finds a piece of Leigh’s new watch with blood on it in the bed. Somehow this doesn’t alert her that Leigh has been attacked or killed so she calls out to her.
Kelli then hears something in the walls and hits the emergency button but the front desk is too busy listening to Christmas carols to help. Agnes climbs down from the walls and Kelli tries to run but the door is jammed. Seeing a defibrillator, Kelli charges it and shocks Agnes in the face, killing her.
Billy then climbs down from the ceiling just as Kelli is able to escape the room. As Billy exits the room, Kelli beats him with a crutch and runs. He catches up to her at the staircase and the film ends as she flips him over the railing causing him to be impaled by a Christmas tree below.
Review:
Black Christmas is okay. It has some good acting, good dialogue, and an interesting premise but its biggest problem is tone. Parts of the movie feel like an attempt at a serious horror movie and the other parts feel like it’s bordering on a comedy horror. The way Barbara and Melissa die feels like it comes from a movie that isn’t taking itself seriously, Barbara gets an icepick through the skull by accident, and Melissa’s head is chopped off by an ice skate.
The movie also has a lot of playful Christmas music playing in the background and I don’t mean the music that the characters play, I mean the music playing during serious scenes. When Billy kills the guard and when he escapes after killing Santa, the background music is playful. This happens at other points of the movie and is distracting from the horror. It’s not Lantern’s Lane bad but it’s noticeable, especially with the choppy tone.
Black Christmas does do a great job of making all its characters feel like real people which was surprising. With such a huge cast throughout Billy’s escape, the flashbacks, and all the sorority girls, you would think some characters would just be there for a body count but every character felt like a real person with their own distinctive personality. Even Clair who is murdered first retroactively gets some character development when Leigh shows up.
But this is detrimental whenever the movie tries to create a creepy atmosphere. You can’t build an air of suspense if you’re constantly cutting to a different character doing something not scary.
For example:
- Dana is heading outside to find the breaker box, this one-minute scene starts to build suspense.
- Cut to Heather finding some doll eyes in a box, this random 6-second scene breaks the tension because it has nothing to do with Dana.
- Cut back to Dana to try again and build suspense but for 10 seconds as she continues to head under the porch.
- Cut back to Leigh looking for Clair and cursing out Santa Claus decor, this completely ruins tension as it comes off as slightly comedic.
- Finally cut back to Dana where she gets killed. It’s hard to be scared when all the suspense and tension have been sucked out.
To add to the “too many characters” problem, I know Kelli is supposed to be the main character but she never felt like the main character until the end. Because the film is over-bloated with characters, she doesn’t get a character arc throughout the movie and things just happen to her until she finally takes charge (sort of) in the last 5 minutes.
Overall I recommend Black Christmas (2006) if you have nothing to watch, you don’t want to watch something that’s actually scary but you want some gore, and you need something Christmas-y.
Cast IMDB