Black Christmas (2019) by Sophia Takal

Director: Sophia Takal

Year: 2019

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Slasher

Plot:

After a series of strange disappearances, the students at a college sorority try to find out the connection to everything going on involving the abusive members of a neighboring fraternity that are being controlled by a special goo derived from a misogynistic owner and must stop their plans.

Review:

This was an immensely problematic and barely worthwhile genre effort. The only real factor that tends to be of much use here is the solid and far more enjoyable stalking scenes than expected. The central concept of the evil fraternity coming under the influence of the special goo that turns them into raging misogynistic killers and striking back against the sorority to install a long-forgotten notion of male-dominance in the school works as a plausible enough reason to get everything started off here. While that works nicely enough, there's also the series of encounters that take place with the full-on out-of-control beings that are in place here, with a solid sequence along a general suburban street decorated with plenty of lights and lawn ornaments, a couple of attacks in the sorority house that makes for some admittedly tense moments, and the interesting shenanigans that take place in the finale involving the sorority group fighting back against the cult offer up some frenetic sequences. These offer up the main likable factors.

There are a multitude of issues here holding this one down. One of the biggest drawbacks is an absolutely asinine and illogical storyline that never manages to be anything more than a thinly-veiled attempt at misguided toxic masculinity. The entire notion of their skits and outbursts through the film is based on attempts to condemn males for their traditional values and standing in the community being able to do what they please at the expense of women who are just supposed to take it, but it does so as angry and confrontational in the approach as it can. Lumping all men together regardless of their intention, upbringing, or background and arguing for the sake of putting forth this combative form of feminine power is the completely wrong way this type of mindset should work as the supernatural exploits trying to pull off this wrong-headed gender politics makes for an utterly maddening time.

That ties into the other big overriding issue with the film is that there’s so much time spent on this political mindset being bombarded into the viewer that it refuses to be a genre effort for much of the running time. Far too much of the film consists of the group making grandiose speeches about the evil nature of men or browbeating anyone over the head who disagrees with them to make the group appear right but instead come off as irritating busybodies with how they approach everything that the film has such few encounters with the killers it can feel quite dull. Very little of this one has anything to do with the original that there’s no reason for the turtle connection, and with these few encounters all generating so few scares, a sanitized sense of gore or bloodshed, and such dark lighting as to make most of what’s going on immensely difficult to tell what’s happening all combine together to be an absolutely useless genre effort.

Overview: 0.5/5

A generally worthless and misguided genre effort, there’s very little about this one that’s worthwhile amid a host of issues that utterly cripple the most irreparably. Those who don’t mind these factors and are curious about them will want to heed caution here while most others out there should outright avoid it.