As the foundational link between Italy's lurid thrillers and the modern slasher, Bob Clark's 1974 classic Black Christmas understands the importance of characters better than most of the subgenre it would birth. Stripping the giallo of its gloss, the horror invading relatable slice-of-life drama, the film hinges its slasher terror on the tragedy of everyday lives cut short.
Did Black Christmas need a remake? Did its unknown murderous stalker need an elaborate history and motivation? Did 1970s horror need an update of 2000s gore and vapid characters? Absolutely not. And yet...Glen Morgan's Black Christmas was entertaining as hell. And also mean, weird, and bloody as hell, like to an extent that most other '00s horror remakes don't come close to touching. Black Christmas '06 isn't Bob Clark's holiday horror. It's an entirely different beast.
While Rob Zombie's Halloween remake (released a year later) demystified Michael Myers and drowned Carpenter's classic in trashy sleaze, Morgan's reimagining worked surprisingly well for me. This is Zombie-esque grotesque couched in a demented whimsy that directly recalls the bizarro Psycho riff of Morgan's Willard. The framework is your stereotypical '00s horror, the kind that replaces the original's relatable and humanized sorority sisters with unlikable paper-thin cutouts who seem to actively abhor each other. The only saving grace with this cast lies in its who's-who of that decade's horror: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, and more.
Around that bland but competent core, Morgan wraps layer after layer of genre strengths. A deranged garish palette from the same production designer and art director as Trick R Treat, gifting Black Christmas with a similar reverence for horror-ified holiday iconography. A killer with a nightmare backstory that could have been ripped from a batshit '80s slasher, as gleefully bizarrely twisted as a Burton campfire tale. Buckets of practical gore and shockingly mean-spirited kills and such an abundance of nasty eye trauma that Fulci would be proud. A ripping pace that makes the lack of characterization sting less because there's always another creative Christmas-themed set-piece around the corner.
The end result was the best kind of Xmas gift: a complete surprise. I totally get why people could detest this remake. I love the original, its terrifying dread, its character-driven bridge between giallo and slasher. But damn, Black Christmas '06 was a blood-soaked blast once I accepted that this wasn't trying to be the original. 1974 and 2006 offer vastly distinct yet equally enjoyable flavors of its premise: the former classy and subdued, the latter as if Argento and Fulci collabed on an episode of Tales From the Crypt
Did Black Christmas need a remake? Did its unknown murderous stalker need an elaborate history and motivation? Did 1970s horror need an update of 2000s gore and vapid characters? Absolutely not. And yet...Glen Morgan's Black Christmas was entertaining as hell. And also mean, weird, and bloody as hell, like to an extent that most other '00s horror remakes don't come close to touching. Black Christmas '06 isn't Bob Clark's holiday horror. It's an entirely different beast.
While Rob Zombie's Halloween remake (released a year later) demystified Michael Myers and drowned Carpenter's classic in trashy sleaze, Morgan's reimagining worked surprisingly well for me. This is Zombie-esque grotesque couched in a demented whimsy that directly recalls the bizarro Psycho riff of Morgan's Willard. The framework is your stereotypical '00s horror, the kind that replaces the original's relatable and humanized sorority sisters with unlikable paper-thin cutouts who seem to actively abhor each other. The only saving grace with this cast lies in its who's-who of that decade's horror: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, and more.
Around that bland but competent core, Morgan wraps layer after layer of genre strengths. A deranged garish palette from the same production designer and art director as Trick R Treat, gifting Black Christmas with a similar reverence for horror-ified holiday iconography. A killer with a nightmare backstory that could have been ripped from a batshit '80s slasher, as gleefully bizarrely twisted as a Burton campfire tale. Buckets of practical gore and shockingly mean-spirited kills and such an abundance of nasty eye trauma that Fulci would be proud. A ripping pace that makes the lack of characterization sting less because there's always another creative Christmas-themed set-piece around the corner.
The end result was the best kind of Xmas gift: a complete surprise. I totally get why people could detest this remake. I love the original, its terrifying dread, its character-driven bridge between giallo and slasher. But damn, Black Christmas '06 was a blood-soaked blast once I accepted that this wasn't trying to be the original. 1974 and 2006 offer vastly distinct yet equally enjoyable flavors of its premise: the former classy and subdued, the latter as if Argento and Fulci collabed on an episode of Tales From the Crypt
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