Black Christmas (2006)

I'll never underplay how much I love the original Black Christmas, so when this remake was announced, I was not interested in the slightest. To the point of being offended that they were even bothering to try. I turned my nose up at the mere thought of it for years.

I am now older and wiser (well, older at least, etc etc) and realise that boycotting for these reasons - especially 11 years later! - is pointless , because y'know what? Sometimes remakes are all right.

That's a good word to describe this movie: alright. It's an interesting watch for fans of the original, and it's certainly got gore aplenty (which is a complicated aspect, as I'll explain later) but it never becomes anything more than an explicit and un-scary rehash of a classic.

Let's break it down...

The Good:

• An actress who played one of the 1974 sorority girls plays the 2006 house mother.

Andrea Martin was Phyllis in Black Christmas (1974).

• There's a moment where the sound of Billy slurping down prison food is overlapped with the slurping of a couple making out in a car.
• Visually, it looks great, drenched mostly in a colour palette lifted straight from Christmas lights.
• There's a really awesome shot that pushes through the branches of a Christmas tree, to reveal Billy lurking behind it. Really well done.

• Someone dies by having a giant icicle fall on their head.
• In amongst some pretty pedestrian eye violence, there's a moment that made me say "oh, jesus" 👀
• This shot:

The Bad:

• The drunk/lush character is truly awful. Even without comparing her to Margot Kidder's Barb, she's the worst.

• I have never enjoyed Lacey Chabert in anything.
• This is an incredibly early 2000's version of this story...
• ...Meaning almost all of the cast are sarcastic ad-campaign-pretty sorority girls (did anyone else have trouble telling them apart?).
• ...And cell phones are EVERYWHERE. I want to watch this again and do a shot every time someone is shown with a flip phone. #motorolarazrlife
• It's light on suspense, heavy on jump scares and splatter (the studio demanded extreme gore: the director didn't want that. Always a winning recipe - see below).
• Billy's backstory is told - often through clumsy exposition - in full. It's really messed up, which is pretty cool, but it also eradicates any sense of a terrifying unknown threat.

Oh, and he's yellow.

• Being a sorority house, they hammer away at the sisterhood thing like mad, but it never really sticks. There's no sense of love or bond between this group of women, despite their insistence otherwise.
• Billy is obsessed with ripping eyes out?! The one thing they don't explain about him.

You see, this movie doesn't make it easy to sit back and attempt to judge it on its own merits. Even though there's a lot added to the story, there are just too many things either lifted straight from, or heavily nodding towards Black Christmas (1974). I honestly tried to take it at face value, but it ultimately suffered from my knowing the original so well.

It's not worth actively avoiding, but considering its roots, it's an unremarkable, predictable stalk and slash.

The making of Black Christmas (2006) and what happened afterward, seems complicated and rather sad. Apparently director Glen Morgan was good friends with Bob Clark (director of the original) and had him come aboard as an executive producer, remaining on set for shooting. Clark saw the finished product before his death, and even though IMDb doesn't state what he thought of it, this interview suggests he was at least very happy with the backstory elements that were introduced here.

However, as mentioned above, the extreme gore was a matter of some dispute between Morgan and producer Bob Weinstein. Bizarrely, the film was marketed using multiple shots that weren't - and were never going to be - included in the final film. Morgan reportedly stated he stayed attached to protect as much as he could about the original idea, but Weinstein "urinated" all over the movie, trying to cash in on the torture porn craze. The end result is what we see today. Morgan never made another film after this one :(

A damn shame, all of it. I wonder what the intended film would have been like?

Raw (2016)

We're looking at my favourite so far this October. I really loved Raw. Tell me, what's not to love about an awkward, coming-of-age drama with some cannibalism thrown in?

Justine (Garance Marillier) is following in family footsteps by attending a prestigious veterinary university. Her parents met there, and her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) already goes there. Justine's got a lot to live up to; but for this quiet, "average" (her word) girl, that doesn't initially appear to be too much of a problem. 

That is, until "rush week" gets underway, where Justine and her fellow rookies are put through some fairly intense initiation ceremonies. She's nervous but doesn't falter, not until there's one involving eating raw meat. All of her family are strict vegetarians, she says, she can't do it. But under threat of being outcast this early on in her student career and with pressure from Alexia, she caves.

At first, her only reaction is a really nasty skin allergy that appears almost overnight. She visits the nurse who diagnoses it - and then lights a cigarette right there in the examination room, gotta love the French! - and gives Justine some cream.

But the sense of something being off... of feeling itchy and not right deep down in her skin doesn't go away. And gradually, tiny moment built wonderfully upon tiny moment, Justine starts to realise with growing fascination and horror, just what it is she's yearning for.

WHERE do I start with this? It looks beautiful.

Everything looks beautiful. And it has big wide shots with nothing happening in them for a couple of beats, until a little car or a little person appears on the edge or the horizon. This is something, for some reason, I absolutely adore in films - and even replicate in my own photography, a lot of the time.

That this was written and directed by a woman (Julia Ducournau) comes as no surprise. Justine and Alexia are interesting, human, flawed, and beautiful characters. They bicker like sisters do, but they make up quickly like sisters do. Alexia tries to guide Justine and open up her worldview, but also protect her at the same time. It's such a lovely, real relationship.

Including a blackly comic home waxing scene.

Much of Raw's dark comedy comes from the bond between these two, and it's the subtle moments of humour, along with a fantastic performance from Marillier, that coat the plot in a warmth you aren't expecting.

Additionally, can I get three cheers for the normalisation of female body hair, please!

This would make a great companion for Teeth for a double bill, I think (and both are on US Netflix now, at time of writing!). With its depiction of a young woman discovering herself, both in a normal sense, ie: being of Justine's age where she's suddenly thrust into this un-parented world of boys and parties - and this playing out alongside the more extreme, fantastical changes the young woman is noticing in her body, too.

A shy, weird, late-bloomer who's simultaneously terrified of her urges and wanting desperately to indulge them. Justine even fucks her roommate to try and calm the storm boiling inside her. It doesn't work.

It never gets old when female sexuality is represented as well as this in horror. There's so much power in it and it's a monumental task to try and understand that power. Adding something gruesome on top of an already pretty fucking scary time is just the cherry on top of the sundae.

Cannot recommend this one enough.

Bonus: It has one of my favourite Blood Red Shoes songs on the soundtrack, as well as some pretty amazing other stuff to check out.