Black Christmas (2006) – DVD

*/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C+
starring Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Andrea Martin
screenplay by Glen Morgan, based on the screenplay by Roy Moore
directed by Glen Morgan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The worst thing about Glen Morgan’s Black Christmas is that there’s too much of it. The original, by the tragically late Bob Clark, was a small masterpiece of economy, relying on little more than its one major set (a dormitory), an unseen killer, and some sorority sisters. But that was 1974, when nobody was paying any attention: by 2006, Hollywood had exchanged the cheap and the grungy for the overwritten and over-produced. The industry now demands rounded character arcs, and for this reason alone we’re given a backstory for the film’s slasher that nobody needed in addition to a padding-out of the action with forced cynicism and phoney characterizations. It’s an overstuffed mess that fails miserably to evoke the fear and melancholy of a spectacularly defiled Christmas.

Genre fans the world over know the tale of a doomed sorority, invaded at Christmastime by a psycho-killer determined to pick off the residents one by one. Where Clark’s film never made that much fuss over the murderer or his beginnings (beyond subtly dropping clues through the device of obscene phone calls that have become iconic in the annals of horror), Black Christmas ’06 is determined to matter more by providing a wholly unbelievable rationale for his actions–and somehow winds up being far more misogynist than the original. It appears that Billy Lenz (Robert Mann as an adult) was abused by his mother (Karin Konival), bore witness to her murder of his father, and wound up fathering his own half-sister. Once again a harridan matriarch (shades of Hitchcock) is responsible for loosing a slasher upon the world, and this fact alone makes Black Christmas ’06 seem less fair than the free-floating angst of the earlier film.

Another problem with this origin story, incorporated into the picture as flashbacks, is that it repeatedly distracts from the main event: the Ten Little Indians-style dispatching of the sorority sisters that ought to be the movie’s bread-and-butter. Worse, the sisters in question–caricatures like Lacey Chabert’s daddy’s-girl princess Dana and Michelle Trachtenberg’s relatively normal cipher Melissa–aimlessly editorialize whenever possible about the Christmas season’s superficiality, its pagan roots, and how much family get-togethers suck. Where the first film found its emotional center in the bitter disappointment of people dying during the holiday season, this one flails wildly without ever hitting a thesis and bogs things down with the un-scary and the not-resonant.

I suppose I wouldn’t be complaining if anyone had actually pulled off said intrigues, but there’s no design to the piece. Black Christmas ’74 was relentlessly paradigmatic in its delineation of murders, evasions, and distractions, whereas the remake is an amorphous mass that never quite gets at anything. Gorehounds might be pleased to note that this version (at least in this apparently unrated incarnation) is miles bloodier than its predecessor, but somehow it doesn’t pack the same punch: Clark was acutely aware of the gravity of death and its attendant disappointments; Morgan and company are cartoonish to the last. It’s no surprise that the film ends its onslaught at around the 75-minute mark only to restart for a lame second climax: with no sense of structure, Black Christmas is merely a series of failed bids for credibility.

THE DVD
Sony/TVA’s Canadian import DVD acquits itself only semi-admirably. The 2.34:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is oversaturated to the point of obscuring fine detail. Because of this and an overzealous application of DNR, it never looks like film. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is less complicated than one would expect from a jump-shock movie, but the audio on this presentation is sharp, seamless, and manages to insinuate itself through all the speakers for a pleasant surround hum. Needlessly shucked onto a second platter, extras begin with “What Have You Done?: The Making of Black Christmas” (28 mins.), which is overlong to the extent that it gives the cast and production team enough rope to hang themselves. Writer-director Morgan and his crewmembers each have screwball rationales for their absurdly obvious remake, such as “social issues” that aren’t there and the usual trumping up of “haunted house, things-that-go-bump-in-the-night” archetypes. Although the length allows for certain welcome technical explanations, they’re overshadowed by the blather.

On a more human note, “May All Your Christmases Be Black” (26 mins.) deals with Morgan’s fear that after the flopping of his Willard remake, this might be his last picture ever; from there it explores focus puller Dean Friss’s unlikely rebirth as an onscreen boogeyman and the family atmosphere on set. It’s rather sadly moving in spots, even if it deals with a director who cites Raiders of the Lost Ark as a movie with great, vivid characters. Seven deleted scenes are largely filler, mostly run-on conversations or superfluous anecdotes; still, gore fiends will appreciate the so-called international cut of Michelle Trachtenberg’s death scene and its extra-gruesome chaser. No fewer than four alternate endings also grace this section, including a semi-poetic coda that was probably what the filmmakers wanted (no context is on offer)–a reasonable variant on the finished film’s knock-down/drag-out that I definitely prefer to the one that made the cut–and another where Billy is pronounced dead only to vanish from his sickbed. A trailer for Black-Eyed Dog begins on startup of Disc 1.

91 minutes; Unrated; 2.34:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English DD 2.0 (Stereo), French DD 5.1, French DD 2.0 (Stereo); CC; DVD-9 + DVD-5; Region One; TVA/Sony