BLACK CHRISTMAS
US/New Zealand, 2019, 92 minutes, Colour.
Imogen Poots, Aleyse Shannon, Lily Donaghue, Brittany O' Grady, Caleb Eberhardt, Cary Elwes.
Directed by Sophia Takal.
No one seems to have liked this film very much. While it has nods to the 1974 classic horror by Bob Clark, and the remake of 2007, this is not a remake.
In the climate of 2019, it might have been called Me# Too Vengeance.
It is set in an American college sorority, focusing on a group of friends, one of whom, Riley, Imogen Poots, has been assaulted by a jock and no one, including the police, has believed her complaint. In her group is an active campaigner gathering petition to remove one of the professors, Cay Elwes, branding him as misogynist and racist. There are some scenes of his lecturing, picking on Riley, later conversations with her.
Early in the film, one of the students is walking home and is assailed by a hooded and masked male and murdered.
There is an entertainment evening at the men’s house and Riley happens to see a ritual, looking like hazing, connected with the bust of the founder of the College, black ooze coming from the statue and initiates being signed on the forehead with the ooze. This will be explained later, in their building, the group is terrorised by a number of men, robed and hooded in black, masked, with bow and arrows – even killing the sympathetic male friend who is help the girls to buy their Christmas tree.
At the evening’s entertainment, the girls, in Santa Claus suits, sing the song with militant Me# Too lyrics – and angry men at the back of the room.
Riley and Kris, the campaigner, escape from the building, clashing and Riley getting out of the car, going to the men’s house to confront them and find out the truth. In the meantime Kris picks up a number of terrorised girls from another sorority house.
Riley is deceived by a girlfriend who has been brainwashed to support the men. Needless to say, the Professor is there, and gives a long speech, highlighting the misogyny of the founder of the College and his dabbling in the occult, the belief of male supremacy and women accepting their subsidiary place in roles.
Just as Riley is about to succumb, and the bespectacled young man that she has befriended, Landon, who has been overcome by the group, breaks free as Kris and her girls come, armed with bow and arrows and there is the Me# Too vengeance.
It is a show for a militant audience for respect for women – and is a challenge and irritant, to say the least, to a male chauvinist audience.
