Black Christmas (2006) Review

Written by: Bulin   

Ok, I need to go back to the original Black Christmas to tell you a couple of things I did enjoy about the remake before I actually tell you what I disliked about it.  Did you know that Bob Clark, the original Director of Black Chrismas also did Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (remake in pre-production), Porky's (Howard Stern Produced Remake slated for 2007) and most importantly to this discussion, A Christmas Story (I don't think they have decided to desecrate this one with a pointless remake yet)?  Apparently Mr. Clark fough the remake thing for the past few years but finally relented and greenlighted remakes of his most popular films.

The one thing I truly liked in the remake were the nods to the original and what I believe was a little tip of the hat to Bob Clark's Christmas Story.....Andrea Martin who was a sister in the original played Mrs. Mac in the remake and the icecicle death scene, I think was a slight reference to the end after he gets his bb gun and shoots it and the Icecicle hits him in the eye.  (Probably a long shot, but what the heck!)

I felt the movie ended and they edited it and realized they needed another 15-20 minutes so they added the whole hospital ending.  It was, in my opoinion, the most ridiculous part of the movie and took the whole thing down a star in my opinion.  The kills in the film were pretty good although a few were far fetched.  I have no problem overlooking that sort of thing when watching horror although I did wonder for a second what the heck the tree topper, well the whole tree actually,  at the hospital was made of, Titanium?  The acting was decent and the filiming was fairly good as well.  I do think they went a little overboard with the background story and left out a few other things in the current story line that created gaps in the plot.  Like another reviewer pointed out, the placement of the flashbacks, mental institution, etc.  did create some continuity confusion and probably could have been sequenced a little clearer....

All in all, if I were to recommend this film, I'd say it is worth watching but definately a renter and not a movie night out or dvd purchase.  Do yourself a favor and buy the original on DVD instead.  I think the one good thing to come out of all of these remakes is the rerelease of the originals on dvd.  Sadly most do not even realize they are seeing a remake, I was talking to the person I went with while in line and the people in front of us turned around and said "Black Christmas is a remake?!, you're kidding. I had no idea!"