Popcorn Kernels: Dumping Out The Net

In which we briefly review two movies produced for Netflix, and one that feels like it absolutely could have been.

Roma

Year: 2018
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey
Run Time: 2 hours 15 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

We spend a year in the life of Cleo, a live-in maid for a rich family in 1970's Mexico City.

Now, I'm gonna front load this one so you know I don't only watch Hallmark garbage. Roma is a frontrunner for Oscar season, because really what else even looks remotely watchable this year? This movie sees celebrated Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón return to his roots, having taken five years to recover from his Earth-shattering, cinema tech-redefining hit Gravity. Roma seems small compared to anything, but especially that. And the crew is pared down too. For this semi-autobiographical piece, Cuarón not only wrote, directed, and produced, but he also shot and edited the damn thing. It's definitely a labor of love and it shows.

Loosely based on the life of Cuarón's beloved nanny, Roma is one of those walk-a-mile-in-my-shoes movies that depicts the everyday life of someone who popular audiences might not have thought about before: a working woman who has just barely escaped poverty and must live constantly under the shadow of people who are freer and more privileged while. It's full of mundane tasks and chores (the way dog poop piles up in the driveway might seem tedious, but sooner or later the sight of it will strike pure terror into your heart), but it builds to grand crescendos of emotion that are captured in those little routine, familiar actions. It's not a question of if this movie will make you cry, it's how many times.

It's a tender paean to the importance of every single life, especially in the way Cleo is weaved into the tapestry of Mexican political unrest of the 70's. She's not necessarily consciously participating, but she's an essential thread just like everybody else around her. But enough with the story (which is great). Roma is a cornea-crushingly beautiful movie. Cuarón knows how to frame a f**king shot, and he uses his patented technique of uninterrupted takes to draw you inexorably into the center of a world that feels entirely real, tactile, and occasionally entirely overwhelming.

There's a lot to devour in the imagery of Roma, so I don't know if I would say it peaked early, but one shot I would like to highlight - and in my eyes it is certainly the single best shot of the film - runs beneath the opening credits. I hesitate to even spoil the image, but what seems at first boring and menial transitions suddenly into a breathtaking display that is at once small, quiet, and profound.

And that sound design. The man knows ears just as well as eyes. The first thing that knocked me out about Gravity was the fully realized sonic world that swallowed you whole, and Cuarón treats the vistas of Mexico City and its environs with all the spectacle and wonder of outer space. Honestly, the whole film is a perfectly sumptuous sensory experience, which makes perfect sense why it's going to be viewed on... millions of people's laptops?

Thank you so much Netflix for making this movie, but seriously, f**k you.

Rating: 9/10

The Princess Switch

Year: 2018
Director: Mike Rohl
Cast: Vanessa Hudgens, Sam Palladio, Nick Sagar
Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

A duchess trades places with a Chicago baker so they can experience each other's lives on Christmas.

Netflix really plumbed a new niche last holiday season when they learned that there is a ravenous audience for crappy Hallmark-level Christmas films, and this year they've pumped out even more of the things. I'd hesitate to say The Princess Switch is the most notable, considering there's a sequel to the smash hit A Christmas Prince and a movie where Kurt Russell plays Santa, but this is the only one where Vanessa Hudgens from High School Musical plays two characters, so which did you think I would watch?

The Princess Switch does exactly what it says on the tin. It's a predictable but charming plot that's not quite good enough to actually recommend, and not quite bad enough to have a great time mocking, but exists somewhere in between being generally sweet. It's like eating a single Hershey's kiss. It'll give you that little kick of sugar, but it'll just make you hungrier for a more substantial treat.

And while I wouldn't say Hudgens is giving a tour de force performance, her distinction between the two characters is always entirely clear, to the point that I imagined Vanessa Hudgens the baker as the lead and the duchess character as being played by somebody entirely different. Though that might be due to the fact that, as a wish fulfillment fantasy, the movie couldn't give half a f**k about how the duchess is liking her normal life, and spends about two and a half seconds with her every other scene. Probing character study this is not.

Plus, while it's not as relentlessly mockable as some of these other Netflix titles, there's still plenty of cheerily dumb gems lying around to be picked up and dusted off. Like the fact that "getting the coats" and "doing the dishes" are treated as two tasks that take the exact same amount of time. Or that the fictional land of Belgravia consists of one castle, one orphanage (complete with mistletoe for some despicable reason), one arts and crafts Christmas fair, and a huge corporate TV studio. Or the prince having a "meeting with Spain." Or the fact that they literally sit down to watch A Christmas Prince on Netflix at one point (scrolling right past A Christmas Inheritance, which is clearly madness). OK, maybe I love this movie.

Rating: 6/10

Little Italy

Year: 2018
Director: Donald Petrie
Cast: Hayden Christensen, Emma Roberts, Andrea Martin
Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes
MPAA Rating: R (I don't understand it either)

Two hot young things fall in love despite their families being the owners of rival pizza places.

While Little Italy clearly is a branch of the cheesy (pun absolutely intended) family of Hallmark and Netflix original rom-coms, there is one thing I did not expect it to be, and the only thing about it that's unpredictable in any respect: It's also a rip-off of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. There are a lot of clues. For one thing, it's about how a big loud ethnic family can interfere with a modern love life. For another, they literally cast Andrea Martin, whose race is a mystery to Hollywood (she's Armenian by the way) and has played family members from all across the Mediterranean.

Like The Princess Switch, Little Italy has its share of fun dumb moments (I've even got myself a Champion Dialogue: "Best friends gotta eat, right?") that are delightful to rib. But unlike the former, this movie also has a grab bag of jokes that are offensive to just about every minority group on the planet, including Italians. There are two Indian side characters, which would normally be a sign of increasing diversity in a film, but they can not stop making jokes about curry powder, Jai Ho, and magic carpet rides (Aladdin was Arabian, first of all. Second of all, please stop.) At least those two aren't paired off in the end as the display of heteronormative race-matched pair-bonding that these types of comedies can't resist. Tragically, the same can't be said about the film's only gay character (a man who inappropriately gropes his straight friend), who instantly falls in love with the only other Gay in the room, a man who has swished onscreen only about thirty seconds before.

At least the central couple is racially diverse, because while Hayden Christensen is attempting his best, broadest Brooklyn Italian accent (strange, because this film is specifically set in Toronto), Emma Roberts attempts nothing at all. She doesn't even manage to convince us that she's capable of eating pizza, let alone having chemistry with Anakin Skywalker. It's a lazy, slapdash couple for a lazy, slapdash movie (it literally opens and closes with a "nunya" joke) and the only reason it exists is that the director also made Mystic Pizza, so he's got himself a Roberts family connection and people were like "sure, he did it once, we're Hollywood and we love doing things all over again!"

It's all a boring, unpleasant slog that is only redeemed by Andrea Martin who is of course terrific anywhere you put her, and Geri Hall in a one-scene role as a cop who has the hots for Christensen. It's the oldest, creakiest character archetype in the book, and it's definitely a bit more Me Too-y than the producers were probably hoping for, but Hall has an actual sense of comic timing and she manages to squeeze a lot of charisma out of a few lines. So at least there's something? But I'm sure one can find that scene on YouTube, and there's no use digging it out of a 102 minute movie whose single selling point on the DVD cover is that is features the hit Shawn Mendes song "There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back."

Rating: 3/10
Word Count: 1548

It's All Greek To Me

Year: 2016

Director: Kirk Jones

Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes 

MPAA Rating: PG-13

We’re living in such a topsy-turvy media culture of franchise resurrection that Arnold Schwarzenegger has a career again without even lifting a finger. But it’s still insane that My Big Fat Greek Wedding got a sequel. True, a follow-up would have been a no-brainer if it was – say – 2003, because the movie was an exorbitantly profitable indie feature. But fourteen years later, who was still champing at the bit for more Big Fat Greek antics?

Well, Nia Vardalos is probably at the top of the list.

In My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, the filmmakers pop in a DVD of the original film and invert the colors, hoping you won’t notice. Toula (Nia Vardalos) and Ian (John Corbett) are all grown up now and have a teen daughter named Paris (Elena Kampouris), who is a choker-sporting edgy girl straight from the halls of 10 Things I Hate About You. They’re overprotective of Paris, who is struggling to deal with the expectations of her massive Greek family.

When Toula’s parents Gus (Michael Constantine) and Maria (Lainie Kazan) discover that they’re not legally married, the family enters a state of emergency. Maria wants Gus to re-propose, but Gus doesn’t feel like he has to, because… oh, who cares. At least this movie has some semblance of a conflict.

But the intervening years have not helped to disguise the grotesque age gap between these two characters.

Remember all those jokes you liked so much in My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Well, so does My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, and it can’t wait to tell them to you again. It’s like a slightly drunk uncle milking his limited repertoire of party tricks for all they’re worth. But there’s only so many times you can watch a massive herd of Greeks pouring through a doorway like it’s a clown car before you begin to suspect that it’s not actually funny. And that Windex running gag was never funny, so no luck there.

The new material isn’t much better. The gags have a tendency to sputter around the room like a deflating balloon, more often than not flinging themselves into an absurdist tone that the low-key family comedy can not support. One that especially weighs heavily on the film is the business with aged great-grandmother Mana Yiayia (Bess Meisler), who becomes a sort of anarchist gremlin, boldly performing the weirdest act or emerging from the least expected place whenever the camera pans to her, like a heat-seeking wackiness missile. These antics reek of sequelitis, and they have no business in a movie operating in this register.

But then again, as a college-aged person, neither do I.

Like I said, the plot has a little more conflict than the blissed-out, loosey goosey original, which is always nice. But that doesn’t mean the structure is any good. Once again, the first act is a sprawling disaster, and the film focuses more on family tomfoolery than pacing. It worked last time, but the jokes were fresh last time. Now we’re just stuck with a pile of stilted dialogue (like John Stamos – of course he’s f**king in this movie – arriving to ask if he can bring his wife and child into the restaurant with him, something nobody has done in the history of the human race, just to set up a particularly insipid reveal) and crudely compacted incident (the movie exists in one of those fictional universes where kids get all their college letters on the same day).

Also (spoilers in this paragraph, I guess), can we talk about how My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 has the most vigorously useless gay reveal this side of Star Trek Beyond? Joey Fatone’s character is revealed to be a hommasexual (you know, those dudes who stare longingly at other dudes but never embrace, kiss, talk to, or otherwise interact with them in any way?) just so the family can nod sagely and prove their open-mindedness in a scene so hilariously maudlin you’d think he just told them he had cancer. I know Hollywood’s not great at this sort of thing, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count as having a gay character if someone breathes in the direction of another man.

I literally can't find a photo of them together. A romance for the ages.

In short, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is an epic waste of your time. It highlights the many flaws of the original film by stripping away every last thing that made it good. I’m genuinely impressed they got the entire cast back, and Elena Kampouris is a lovely addition, but when you spend time with people you liked a decade ago, sometimes they’ve changed. They have in this instance, and it was definitely for the worse.

TL;DR: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is the worst kind of sequel, endlessly repeating gags and in the process exposing the flaws of the original.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 844

Reviews In This Series
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Zwick, 2002)
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (Jones, 2016)

New Year's Resolutions: Everything Else

OK, not all my mini review collections can have cute little themes. Here’s the rest of the less relevant viewing I’m clearing off my slate from 2015.

Source Code

Year: 2011

Director: Ducan Jones

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A helicopter pilot wakes up on a train in a different body, forced to keep reliving a terrorist bombing until he catches the culprit.

A movie doesn’t need to be complicated to be great. Source Code gets in, lays out its plot, wraps up, and jams the hell out of there. It’s a swift, exciting 90 minutes that triumphs by cutting the fat and delivering the gods. Just like Wes Craven’s Red Eye, it’s a stellar genre exercise for the very reason that it’s sleek and taut, using tropes the audience is already familiar with to bypass the exposition bottleneck and immediately begin pouring gasoline directly onto the flames.

A sci-fi reimagining of the Groundhog Day format, Source Code tells the bulk of tis story through subtle changes in the repeated formula, letting character and theme organically build off from that constant structure. Jake Gyllenhaal easily navigates the ever-shifting goals of his character, giving a breezy performance that reliably sells anger, humor, fear, and angst, sometimes sandwiched within seconds of each other. There’s a little slippery CGI and Jeffrey Wright’s performance as a shadowy government figure slips a little to often into honey-baked hamminess, but overall Source Code is a dazzling jolt of genre electricity.

Rating: 8/10

The Day After Tomorrow

Year: 2004

Director: Roland Emmerich

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum

Run Time: 2 hours 4 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A scientist races to save his son, who is trapped in New York during a world-shattering superstorm brought on by global warming.

Here’s one of my favorite anecdotes about The Day After Tomorrow: Director Roland Emmerich screened an early cut for a group of scientists to get their opinion on its accuracy. They said it was laughably incorrect, but they still enjoyed the heck out of it. That’s a pretty accurate descriptor of the Emmerich style. Where he goes wrong in depicting hard science, viable survival techniques, and human emotion, he goes right in delivering an inimitable popcorn disaster movie experience.

Emmerich must have a really strong glasses prescription, because he sees everything bigger than anybody else can. He sees storms and story beats as grand, operatic measures, a parade of bold images and sounds totally devoid of detail or nuance. Characters that we’re never asked to care about will suddenly burst forth with a monologue about a wasted future of humanity’s hubris, because Emmerich will never subtly develop a theme for his audience when a sledgehammer will do.

Frankly, his style works. The man knows how to frame himself some elegant destruction. His commitment to capturing the most instantly iconic images possible does come at the expense of character, plot, and (occasionally) pacing, but since when does a disaster film need those things? When it comes to characters we actually know, he plays it annoyingly safe with their fates, but his destruction of inanimate objects and nameless extras is beyond compare. He does indulge a bit in his 2012 habit of “people outrunning improbably finite weather patterns,” but not enough to cause any lasting damage. All in all, The Day After Tomorrow is a fun, incredibly realized disaster flick with a message. It might be burned across the film in gasoline, but it means well.

Rating: 7/10

The Descendants

Year: 2011

Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Matt King’s wife has an accident and winds up in a coma, giving him the job of telling friends and family that she’s going to die. People can be unhappy even in Hawaii, see?

The Descendants is a movie for actors. A setting that’s a major vacation destination, a big ensemble cast that allows oodles of free time, and plenty of opportunities to cry? It’s a paradise! It’s not necessarily a movie for viewers, unless you want to see screensaver gorgeous B-roll of Hawaiian vistas. The drama provides some intriguing food for thought, but its relatively straightforward story is stretched on the rack until it can fill the two hour run time. Luckily, some laid-back comedy meanders its way into the proceedings so it’s not such an unbearable slog.

The movie is essentially composed of Big Cry scenes that stack like Tetris blocks until they create a big enough whole. Not a single actor slips, even young ingénue Shailene Woodley, though they do tend to run together by the end. Curiously, the film’s one true standout is comedy actress Judy Greer, whose character’s breakdown comes from many different directions, each of which she acknowledges with full sincerity. It’s compelling work, and it’s a same we don’t get to see more of her actually acting instead of just playing superheroes’ ex-wives. All in all, I’m not leaning toward recommending The Descendants, but if you happen to get trapped with it, it’s not the worst time at the movies.

Rating: 6/10

Titanic

Year: 1997

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane

Run Time: 3 hours 14 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Jack and Rose fall in love on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. It won’t work because she’s rich and he’s poor. Also, the boat sinks.

The reason Titanic survives such an unsustainable runtime is that, in all actuality, it is two distinct movies. The latter of these is markedly superior, which also helps to keep audience interest from sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic. Split pretty neatly about the middle, Titanic is first a star-crossed love story, then a high octane action vehicle on a sinking ship.

Let’s tackle that behemoth love story, shall we? One of the true classic romances of modern cinema, it turns out to be just as clunky and frustrating as the true classic romances of early cinema. The character of Rose is anachronistically progressive to the point that she’s practically Rose-tradamus, expressing interest in artwork, psychology, and philosophy that wouldn’t be relevant for decades or more, in the hope of endearing her to modern audiences. This unbelievable character is shunted into a haphazard romance that is sold exclusively by her sizzling chemistry with young panty-dropper Leonardo DiCaprio rather than by actual plotting or dialogue, which feel like they were penned by a highschool playwright. Luckily, most of the talking is drowned out by the endless orchestral reprises of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” Frankly, it’s kind of a mess.

Luckily, James Cameron suddenly remembers that he’s an action filmmaker and all hell breaks loose. An iceberg T-bones the Titanic, sending crushing sprays of water through the engine rooms, splitting the boat in half, and tipping it almost vertical while people frantically board lifeboats and generally try to have a good time. It’s an explosive, adrenaline-pumping thrill ride that slams our young lovers through setpiece after freezing, flooded setpiece. For nearly an hour, it totally forgets about that wan romance nonsense and careens into blissful action oblivion. It’s the nearer my God to me, alright. Where the first half is dully adequate, the second is the ride of your life, full of state-of-the-art effects, bombastic emotions, and generally excellent filmmaking. Titanic is about as backloaded as the actual ship, but the means are totally justified by the end.

Rating: 7/10

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Year: 2002

Director: Joel Zwick

Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

A Greek woman wants to marry a white man, against the wishes of he loud, proud, enormous Greek family.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is one of the most profitable indie movies of all time, so basically anything negative I have to say about it can just f*ck right off. Luckily, there’s almost nothing to complain about with this film, which kind of puts me out of a job. MBFGW is a charming romantic comedy filled with love for life, the world, and the people living in it. Essentially a diary of writer-star Nia Vardalos’ experience growing up Greek in a white world, its comedy almost exclusively derives from culture shock (and the extent to which the Geeks – still technically from a European nation – differ from the hyperbolically bland, WASPy Caucasians in the film is surprisingly vast) and the wacky antics of her herd of family members, a perfectly cast ensemble that for some reason has Joey Fatone in it. Remember when he was a thing? Yeah, me neither.

The biggest black mark on the film is that it has essentially no conflict. Sure, it has plenty of contrast, but the plot pretty much glides serenely forward without a hitch. The family has hangups that they quickly get over by repeating platitudes, Vardalos’ Tula has a teaspoon of internal struggle, and John Corbett’s fiancé character continues to be as boringly compliant as Silly Putty. Almost nothing actually happens, though when you’re spending your time in the company of a talented group of actors largely underserved by Hollywood (especially Andrea Martin, the film’s secret weapon), it’s difficult to find much of a problem with that. Opa!

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1556

Reviews In This Series

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Zwick, 2002)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (Jones, 2016)

Just Like The Ones I Used To Know

For our podcast episode about this very film, click here.

Merry Christmas! Once again, Santa Claus has snuck down our chimney to deposit a bloody good holiday shocker under the tree. I hope you left out cookies, because at Popcorn Culture, Santa gets a little axe-happy.

Year: 1974

Director: Bob Clark

Cast: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

1974, man. In a year nowhere close to the landmark dates of slasher history (roughly 1960 with Psycho, 1978 with Halloween, and 1980 with Friday the 13th), two enduring classics of the genre came into fruition. I, of course, have already spoken at length about the former, Tobe Hooper’s sweaty masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But our second proto-slasher is one that gets significantly less admiration but deserves perhaps even more: Bob Clark’s Canadian thriller Black Christmas.

Now, before you ask, yes that is the same Bob Clark who directed the seminal holiday classic A Christmas Story.

Isn’t film history fun?

In Black Christmas, the Phi Kappa Sigma sorority is beset by obscene phone calls from a menacing stranger, whom we the audience have just seen climbing the trellis into the attic via a nifty POV shot, four years before Halloween officiated the marriage between slashers and Steadicam. One of the sisters, Clare (Lynne Griffin) is shortly smothered with a plastic bag and dumped in the attic the day before the girls leave for Christmas vacation.

The remaining sisters are Barb (Margot Kidder), the lascivious drunk; Phyllis (Andrea Martin), whose perm is her most dominant character trait; and Jess (Olivia Hussey), who is pregnant and wants an abortion despite the objections of her angsty pianist Jim Henson-haired boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea). As the girls and the police search for Clare (nobody thinks to look in the attic because the movie needs to reach feature length), the phone calls and murders continue, much to the chagrin of Lt. Ken Fuller (A Nightmare on Elm Street’s John Saxon, already well on his way to being typecast as a cop).

I guess it’s better than being typecast as a garbage man.

The things that make Black Christmas a classic are almost the exact opposite of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Where Hooper’s film was unpolished dynamite, Black Christmas is a tensely coiled, glistening piano wire. Where TCM was a visceral gut punch populated by cardboard archetypes, Black Christmas is a sophisticated slow boil filled with characters that aren’t exactly complex, but at least shaded and human. And while Chain Saw remains my favorite with is raw brutality, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Black Christmas is a better made film by such a margin that it puts wide-ruled notebook paper to shame.

Actually focusing on story rather than torturing the audience, Black Christmas is a much more layered film. The tension it creates is built around characters, who are forging a path through a story that is still deviously simple but has quite a bit more drive than TCM’s nonentity. It’s the Range Rover to Hooper’s Prius. There are plenty of unique features of the plot, but two stand out above all else, the first being the film’s genuinely fun sense of humor. It’s not often that a slasher film elicits chuckles on purpose, but Black Christmas does so with aplomb, peppering the door murders with sweet holiday mayhem that makes the transitions between the two even more jarring. I hate to give jokes away, but let’s just say you’ll never look at your pet turtle the same way ever again.

The second key element of the script is that, piggybacking off the already extreme (for the time) nature of the horror material, Black Christmas seizes the opportunity to weave in a very controversial discussion about abortion and how it affected men and women in the 70’s. The film brings with it a stunningly solid sense of female reproductive rights while presenting a chilling parallel to the ironic viciousness of radical pro-Lifers in the unhinged Peter (who stalks around sulking, hair all in a tizzy).

Tell me this guy couldn’t star in a Davy Jones biopic.

But even more than the plot, the film is a masterfully crafted piece of cinema. The cinematography and editing are superb, but the truly striking feature of Black Christmas is its sound design. Eerie nondiegetic tunes and dissonant in-scene sounds overlap and interplay in an exquisitely composed aural tapestry. In my favorite moment, the sound of Peter angrily smashing his recital piano becomes the score for the next scene, providing a crackling current of unhinged fear. There are dozen of innovative, chilling moments like this suing everything from electric generators to repurposed Christmas carols as an integral part of this sonic puzzle.

Partially because of the soundscape, partially because it’s just overall a damn good film, Black Christmas still has the juice to tingle the spine. Though there is some semblance of backstory for the killer stuffed in the cracks, he remains unexplained. Plus, the more we see of his actions, the more we learn that he’s utterly unpredictable, which lends the film an extra frisson of tension because it’s truly impossible to predict what he’s going to do or say next. His kills are filmed with kinetic artistry, so despite their lack of gore (a typical complaint for films of this vintage) they still strike a nerve with their visceral impact and the unsettling juxtaposition of their sheer beauty, especially in a pivotal scene with a glass unicorn-cum-impaling device.

Black Christmas is a nasty, unrelenting film that actively fights the cheery festivity of its set design and soundtrack. The combination of Christmas and bloody murder would be made again and again to varying degrees of success, but never would there be a holiday horror flick so admirably crafted as Black Christmas. The yin to Texas Chain Saw’s loud, rusty yang, Black Christmas is a deranged masterpiece that make me proud I chose to live my life within the slasher genre. After all, there’s no place like home for the holidays.

Body Count: 7

1. Clare is suffocated with a plastic bag.
2. Mrs. Mac has a winch hook swung into her face.
3. Janice is killed offscreen.
4. Barb is stabbed with a unicorn figurine.
5. Officer Jennings has his throat slit.
6. Phyllis is killed offscreen.
7. Peter is beaten to death with a poker. 

TL:DR: Black Christmas is a chilling, stunning holiday horror classic.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 1074
Reviews In This Series
Black Christmas (Clark, 1974)
Black Xmas (Morgan, 2006)