Black Christmas (2006)

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Movie
German title Black Christmas
Original title Black Christmas
Country of production USA , Canada
original language English
Publishing year 2006
length 84 minutes
Unrated 94 minutes
Age rating FSK No youth approval
Rod
Director Glen Morgan
script Glen Morgan,
Roy Moore (Original)
production Marty Adelstein ,
Mark Butane ,
James Wong
music Shirley Walker
camera Robert McLachlan
cut Chris G. Willingham
occupation

Black Christmas (cross-reference Black Christmas ) is an American - Canadian horror film directed by Glen Morgan from 2006. It is often believed that the film is a remake of the horror film Jessy - The Stairway to Death from 1974 (after all, both films also have the same English title "Black Christmas"), in fact the plot of the newer film is only very roughly based on that of the older one.

action

Seven students from the Delta-Alpha-Kappa student association meet with their housemother in their fraternity house to celebrate Christmas Eve together according to the tradition of the association. The rule of tradition wants each member to give a different girl a Christmas present. A girl is supposed to symbolically present a present to Billy , who exactly 15 years ago caused a terrible bloodbath here in the house.

Back to 1970: Because of a hereditary disease that turns his skin yellow, Billy was rejected and hated by his mother as a baby, only his father showed affection for him at a young age. As a five-year-old Billy had to watch from hiding on Christmas Eve as his mother kills his father in an argument. Together with her lover, the mother tries to bury the body in the cellar. The two are also observed by Billy, who, however, discovered by the two and is therefore locked in an attic from now on, in which he has to spend his further life without exception. Seven years later, as a twelve-year-old child, Billy is raped by his mother in order to satisfy her sexual urges and desire for children, which her always drunk lover cannot comply with. On Christmas Day 1991, Billy takes retaliation. He bestially stabs his sister / daughter Agnes out of the eye, then kills his stepfather and strangles his mother. When the police reached the scene of the crime, Billy was enjoying the "Christmas cookies" that he had cut from his mother's meat and then baked in the oven.

Billy is classified by the court as insane and admitted to a closed psychiatric ward. Agnes, who was saved, is now missing one eye and is sent to an orphanage. Like every year, the prison guard tells a visitor who unexpectedly appears in the prison and disguised as Santa Claus, Billy wants to "celebrate Christmas Eve with his family". This time he manages to escape from his cell with a trick. For the surprised prison guard it was his last Christmas, as well as for "Santa Claus", who involuntarily has to give Billy his robe in which he finally leaves the institution.

The solemn mood among the students does not really want to arise. In addition, Clair has disappeared and no one can explain her sudden absence. (Clair became the first victim of a hitherto unknown perpetrator in the opening scene of the film. The viewer assumes - provided that he can assume that the events are told chronologically - that the murderer is not Billy because he is in prison at the time.) When Megan hears a music box playing from the attic, she goes up there, but immediately becomes a murder victim as well. The person always kills according to the same pattern: first they put a plastic sack over the victim's head, stab the head with a sharp object and finally tear out his eyes.

The atmosphere in the house becomes more and more eerie, especially when one after the other, from Clair and Megan's cell phones, mysterious phone calls come in. With Eve, another student joins the (festival) community. Since she is not particularly popular in the group and feels this too, it is assumed that Eve will leave immediately. The tension eases again for the time being when an unknown person in Megan's bedroom reveals himself to be a friend of Kelli, who had sneaked into the house in order to be near his girlfriend. Shortly afterwards, another person, Leigh Colvin, is in the living room, who introduces herself as Clair's sister. She discovers an additional present under the Christmas tree, which Billy gave to Alpha-Kappa and which contains a naked doll. Upstairs in the room, Kelli and Kyle try to check Clair's laptop for a possible message from her, but to Kelli's horror, the screen shows a video of sexual acts between Megan and Kyle, which jealously causes Kelli to throw Kyle out of the house .

To make matters worse, the power supply breaks down, so that the house, apart from the candlelight, is in the dark. So Dana goes outside to look for the fuse box - and, although she struggles, becomes the next victim. Shortly thereafter, Melissa receives the mysterious phone call from Dana's cell phone, with the words "... she's my family now", as always. Kelli, Melissa, Leigh, and Heather go outside to look for Dana. They split up into groups of two, with Heather and Leigh discovering that Eve's car is still in front of the house. When the driver's door is opened, Eve's head falls into the snow, causing the girls to run into the house in panic.

There is now panic again in the living room, because the remaining women now have the certainty that "he" has come home, because they think Billy is the murderer who sneaks around the house. Kelli uses her cell phone to call the police, who, however, can only promise to appear in a few hours due to the prevailing storm. After a brief dispute about how to proceed, the housemother Ms. Mac and Heather decide to get help by car. They still get the engine running, but then Heather is murdered in the car. As a result of the shock, Ms. Mac hits a large gate, whereupon she is stabbed by a falling icicle.

At the same time, Kelli, Leigh and Melissa try to understand why Ms. Mac and Heather are not driving away (since they can see the back of the car, they do not know that the two were murdered at the front of the car, which is out of sight ). While Kelli and Leigh go out to have a look, Melissa stays with the sleeping Lauren on the bed. Immediately afterwards, Melissa is involved in a fight with the killer in the house, in which Melissa defends herself with a ski stick and hits the killer several times. She is murdered in the process. Kelli and Leigh seek protection in Lauren’s room, who lay down some time ago after drinking too much alcohol. From there, they try to call Melissa on her cell phone. But they only hear Melissa's cell phone ring in the attic. Immediately thereafter, Leigh resolutely opposes the supposed killer when the door to the room opens. However, it is Kyle who wants to gain access to the room. In the scuffle, he runs into Leigh on the bed, in which Lauren is supposedly sleeping, but she is now lying there dead with eyes gouged out.

Kyle tries to convince the two women to leave the house with him. Leigh, however, with the support of Kelli, insists that the search for Leigh's sister Clair continues, who, the two women suspect, may be in the attic. When Kyle - standing on the ladder to the attic - shines a flashlight into the open skylight, he is forcibly dragged up by someone. Kelli and Leigh also go up to the attic, but too late to be able to help Kyle, who is murdered in front of the two women despite fierce resistance.

The two frightened women now face the murderer, who is extremely strong. The killer tears the eyes out of Kyle's head to eat them with the words "he is my family now". When the murderess tries to light the candles of the Christmas tree, on which the eyes of the dead students hang instead of the usual Christmas balls, Leigh falls from the attic into a lower room because of the rotten floor. It comes to a fight between Kelli and the murderer, in which Kelli manages to free herself and stabs her eye with a pointed fork. This act does not cause the murderer any pain, however, since the gouged out eye is an artificial one, which also makes it clear that the murdering person is Agnes, Billy's sister / daughter. Billy suddenly appears unexpectedly, who has reached the house to pounce on Kelli. While a fire breaks out in the attic, Kelli and Agnes fall into a cavity between two house walls, while Billy follows her there. With Leigh's help, Kelli manages to free himself and at the same time expose the persecutors, who are now stuck in the cavity, to death by fire with additional help from gas.

From here on the events of the uncut and cinema version are different.

Theatrical version: A few hours later in a hospital - the horror is not over yet. Leigh is sitting at Kelli's bedside when she is called out of the room to identify the alleged corpse of Agnes Lenz, but then discovers that her dead sister is in the body bag. When Leigh enters the room again shortly afterwards and speaks to Kelli, Agnes rushes on her from the bed and kills Leigh.

At the same time, the doctors try to keep the badly burned Billy alive, but he succumbs to his wounds. A short time later, Kelli comes back to the hospital room from an examination and lies down in her bed. As she does so, she feels an object below her, Leigh's watch, which her sister gave her as a Christmas present. Kelli wants to flee, but the door is locked and the alarm she has triggered is not recognized by the hospital staff because of the ongoing Christmas party. Thanks to a defibrillator in the room , she can fend off the attack by Agnes jumping out from behind a curtain with an electric shock - Agnes is dead, blood is running from her eyes and nose.

At the end of the film, badly ailing Kelli leaves the hospital with her parents.

Uncut version: A few hours later in a hospital - the horror is not over yet. Leigh is sitting at Kelli's bedside when Kelli is called from the room to have X-rays taken. When Leigh enters the room shortly afterwards and speaks to the supposed Kelli, Agnes rushes on her from the bed and kills Leigh.

A short time later, Kelli comes back from the X-ray room into the hospital room and lies down in her bed. As she does so, she feels an object below her, Leigh's watch, which her sister gave her as a Christmas present. Kelli now sees blood in her ceiling halogen lamp . Kelli tries to escape, but the door is stuck. In desperation she triggers the alarm, which is not heard due to the Christmas party.

Suddenly Agnes comes down into her room from a shaft in the ceiling. Thanks to a defibrillator in the room , Kelli can kill Agnes, but Billy now climbs out of the same shaft in the ceiling that Agnes just came out of. Desperate, Kelli takes an iron rod and breaks the window of the jammed door so that it can be opened from the outside. After she succeeds in this, she storms into the stairwell, but is followed by Billy. A fight breaks out and Kelli threatens to fall into the depths hanging over the railing. Billy tries to stab her with a scalpel, but Kelli catches his arm and pushes him over the railing. Billy lands right on the top of the Christmas tree below him and is dead on the spot.

Reviews

  • Lexicon of international films : remake of a moderate horror film from 1974 as a pre-Christmas snap shot without tension and atmosphere. In order to make itself interesting, the film shows drastic unsavory qualities.
  • The criticism of the online platform Filmstarts.de mentions that the film does not come close to the quality of the original. Instead of taking over the big plus of versatile character design of the original and maybe even expanding it, the remake relies on conventional slasher horror and a moderately successful twist of the original plot . With regard to the acting performance, Filmstarts.de mentions that the hardly differing characters, who do not even differ significantly in the way they die, not only cause little sympathy, but also cause confusion à la “Why is she now? ? can "make dead . In an overall view, filmstarts.de judges that “Black Christmas” has become a rather conventional, technically even poorly crafted slasher who only occasionally scores with bizarre and some funny details .
  • The online platform of TVMovie.de notes that, while the original was particularly convincing due to the gloomy atmosphere and the imaginative camera work, things are now much tougher and the director Glen Morgan is mainly interested in blood, flashy shock effects - and each Lot of pretty girls are seated .

Remake

Another remake of the film was made in 2019 under the direction of the production company Blumhouse Productions and the distributor Universal Pictures . Imogen Poots , Aleyse Shannon , Brittany O'Grady and Caleb Eberhardt starred , directed by Sophia Trakal . The film has a US theatrical release on December 19, 2019.

backgrounds

The film premiered on December 15, 2006 and opened in German cinemas on December 21. DVD sales began on November 8, 2007.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Black Christmas. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ http://www.filmstarts.de/kritiken/42129-Black-Christmas.html
  3. ↑ http://www.tvmovie.de/Black-Christmas.83.0.html?&detail=5634835  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.tvmovie.de  
  4. ↑ Vulture.com: Blumhouse Goes Classic and Reboots Black Christmas With Sophia Takal Directing from June 13, 2019
  5. ↑ EW.com: Imogen Poots to star in Blumhouse remake of horror classic Black Christmas from June 13, 2019
  6. ↑ Variety : Blumhouse Remaking Cult Hit 'Black Christmas' With Imogen Poots Set to Star from June 13, 2019