Starring: Katie Cassidy, Michelle Tratchenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert, Crystal Lowe, Kristen Cloke, Andrea Martin.
Director: Glen Morgan.
So, this is a new addition to my Holiday traditions: the well-cast but deeply mediocre remake of a true classic. Basically, I love Katie Cassidy. I have ever since I saw Harper's Island and that unrequited love affair continued through this, the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and TV series Supernatural and Arrow. The lovely Ms.Cassidy is hardly the only one loved in this film: the entire main cast is a wonderful group of young, beautiful actresses. Unfortunately for all of them, and for all of us watching it, it's an awful film. But, we'll give it another spin. After all, it IS Christmas, which is a time for charity and...
....this is gonna hurt.
Been on for thirty seconds and I already take issue with the director's choices: using upbeat Christmas music and adding snow to the proceedings: I'm not one to bitch about changes being made when doing a remake-and I don't hate remakes, I really don't-but...I dunno, this story seems to be made more for quiet, stillness, and isolation. Adding snow flurries...well, uh, it makes it a White Christmas, does it not?
Ugh, why is Billy yellow? Seriously? I hate this movie. But we cut to the beautiful Katie Cassidy and suddenly I feel better...except she's making out with someone who isn't me, so...and he just said "I'm your family now" which just seems, I dunno, weird and creepy. Of course, he's cheating on her.
Interesting choice to make every girl in the house a cold-hearted bitch. It's tonal dissonance, get it?! GET IT?!
Anyway, housemate Megan apparently has decided to spend her Christmas Eve watching the video of Katie Cassidy's boyfriend doing her from behind. Over and over again. That's...some pretty holy jolly stuff. The original had likable, interesting people in it...this one has these people all rolling their eyes at each other. I will say the movie has no fear of a fast pace: body count is already at three and we're not even at the twenty minute mark yet. The kill scenes are kinda lazy and trying to be extra aggressive...but it just feels flat and hollow.
The attempts at comedy, too, fall flat. If I hear one more Santa-related sexual innuendo I'm probably going to scream and throw myself out a window.
Oh, god, the flashback. I just can't deal with the flashback. I don't need a backstory for Billy any more than I needed him to break out of a mental institution or any of the horror cliches the screen writers wanted to throw in. I especially don't need incest, yellow skin or any of that stuff. Some of the cinematography isn't so bad, though: good use of the space and off-lighting makes it all look very...weird. That's not a bad thing because, well, it's a weird movie. It does make me feel like someone had a case of Tim Burton-envy but...I mean, who'd want to imitate Tim Burton?
Crystal Lowe as Lauren is pretty fantastic, actually: she's carrying the obvious torch that Margot Kidder left behind. It's no easy feat: Kidder left big shoes, for one, but also Lauren is given some awkward dialogue. Her speech about the pagan origins of Christmas stuff is a tough bit of stuff, and...well, it's also not particularly great. It's not that it's untrue-most of the origins she mentions are accurate-it's just kind of annoying. She's easy on the eyes, too...while basically wearing a t-shirt and pajama pants.
I had forgotten about Agnes and all that nonsense. Bleh.
Kelli's boyfriend is busted. Hugely busted. Caught sneaking into the other girl's bedroom...and Kelli now sees his extracurricular exploits. I wish these characters were given more than a single character trait, though: Kelli is nice, Lauren is drunk and crass, Mary Elizabeth is uptight, Chabert is...well, I dunno what she's supposed to be. Vain? Michelle Tratchenberg is, well, she takes care of Lauren. It's a great cast and they're capable of so much more character work than this script allows. Might have been a better idea to cut a character or two and flesh out the remaining ones with more than a one sentence description. Hell, you devoted this much effort to fleshing Billy out (for some reason), so why not the actual characters?
Oh, ha. ha. movie. Billy makes cookies out of his dead parents or whatever. Hilarity. Coulda spent that time making Kelli and the others more interesting. Or even give some sort of larger plot or...anything. At least the film gives Cassidy some opportunity to emote when she discovers her Boyfriend is kind of a dick. He's a real prince, and we get our first glimpse that there may be SOME sort of unity among the characters when they band together to toss the shitheel out. I would have liked to have seen more of that, really: it wasn't a bad scene at all.
It's odd: the movie begins with a lot of quick kills, which you'd think would promise a fast pace. But the movie has slowed to an absolute crawl. Takes twenty minutes for Lacey Chabert to crawl under the house to switch the main breaker(which seems like a poor place to put a breaker). Chabert is summarily dispatched(after about four scenes, which makes me wonder why they cast a name actress like Chabert for the role), but it still feels like they took the long way around. Not a lot was actually done in any of that time besides some brief speeching by Clares older sister who showed up(replacing the great Mr.Harrison) and the stuff with the boyfriend.
Even now, when they found corpses and the like, things just seem to be...well, stagnant. The music is telling me a bunch of urgency, and Cassidy gets some time to freak out but it still feels inert somehow. I mean we get some arguing, and House Mom and uptight girl are off to get help and Cassidy gives a "we're sisters, time to act like it" that could have been better punctuated by the cinematography but is still okay.
Well, okay, now we're just wiping cast members out. Hell, House Mom isn't even killed by Billy: she gets a icicle through the head. Tratchenberg gets to put up a good fight, which I'm glad to see...but it still just seems like kind of a messy scene. I really do blame poor pre-production for this movie: the script is a mess, it's poorly conceived and the director really isn't doing much to make things better: his camera moves are too absurd to really work(this absurdity could have worked if the script was a bit more fun and wacky, but it can't seem to decide on a what kind of story it wants to be).
Man, I really did not need Billy to molest Lauren while she was sleeping. I get that the equivalent scene-Barb's Death in the original-had some creepy molesty undertones but...they're better as undertones. The molestation ends with Lauren attempting an offense, and then her being pinned down and stabbed with the unicorn like the original film...but it still just feels gross. Not in a good way.
Things do start to get more kinetic once we're down to two characters, but at this point it seems like too little too late. While I appreciate an exciting climax, it would have been nice to have some sort of strong build to it, especially (and I can't say this enough) given the rather extraordinary cast they gathered for the film. I always thought Katie Cassidy could have been a fantastic scream queen(and in some ways she is, considering that she did star in two different big name horror remakes) but she's Black Canary now so I guess she's doing pretty okay for herself.
At least I got to spend some of my Christmas Eve with Katie Cassidy.
Final Thoughts: What a mess. Poor scripting, scattered direction, and laborious pacing are just a few of the numerous problems plaguing this film. It should have been a slam dunk-remaking a film like Black Christmas shouldn't have been tough-but somehow, someway, they managed to botch nearly every aspect of production along the way. This is, of course, exempting the casting agent, who did an excellent job gathering a very talented group of young and interesting actresses to ultimately be poorly utilized and under supported. It's a shame. Really is.
Final Rating: We'll go with Two Stars for the cast alone. Merry Christmas, Katie Cassidy!
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