O LITTLE TOWN OF DEATH-LEHEM: Movie reviews, with spoilers for Black Christmas. Or, really, a quickie review and a bit of a rant.

Terror Train: “Featuring Jamie Lee Curtis and David Copperfield.” Fo’ reals, yo. This is so much fun!!

Look, it’s a bog-standard “frat/soror prank gone wrong–>bullied victim wreaks serial-killer havoc” plot. But it’s briskly paced. JLC brings, as always, a sense of interiority to an otherwise blank character–you always feel, with Our Jamie, that she’s thinking. There are some really nice moments hitting the theme of homosocial friendship gone wrong: We all know frat pranks are a horror movie staple, but it’s really good to see a horror movie actually try to figure out why. And the bit parts are individualized, the way they tend to be in older movies (my constant example for this is The Manchurian Candidate)–the scene where the one train guy explains that he’s a Free Will Baptist is by itself worth the price of (Netflix) admission.

Black Christmas: This one… I have more to say about.

First of all, it got there first, and respect is due. Its camerawork is intense, scary, the pans and cuts and shakycam coming at the exact right places. And it’s more or less impossible to make a bad Christmas-themed horror movie–the pretty lights and spooky carols are right there in front of you!–especially if you have Margot Kidder playing a hard-drinking, kinda slutty sorority girl. She’s hilarious and came near to stealing the movie. …Moreover, there are plot elements where Black Christmas was an innovator, although to say more would be to give it all away.

But you guys know me–I don’t always like the first-place finisher. I had two basic problems with this movie, one minor and one major.

The minor is that this ’70s flick was trying too hard for an edgy tone. I didn’t buy–and didn’t want to watch–scenes where the sorority-boyfriend Santa cussed and insulted women in front of little children. I didn’t buy that no child would even giggle (am I wrong? I wasn’t paying the kind of attention to this movie that I would have given, you know, a Kurosawa flick), let alone tattle or hide. I didn’t buy that no sorority girl would get sentimental about innocent ears and step in to protect them. I didn’t like that actual child actors were used in a scene that was entirely about the “edginess” of the lame soror/frat people and the edginess-by-transitivity of the filmmakers.

But that really is minor. There were several “edgy” scenes I liked–the drunk house mother, the “It’s a new exchange–FE” shtik.

The bigger thing is that I felt like the symbolic elements weren’t used for more than set dressing.

Look: This is a horror movie that takes place at Christmas. This is a horror movie, taking place at Christmas, in which an abortion storyline is really important. Why are neither of these elements used symbolically?

Christmas is used aesthetically (spooky carols and colored lights, plus obviously the movie’s brilliant title). But I don’t otherwise know why the movie takes place then. I mean… no joke, I love spooky carols and colored lights! But what is Christmasy about this movie??

Take Gremlins for a counterexample: Not only do you have Billy’s girlfriend’s story about her father in the chimney, but you have the themes of consumerism (Japan fear) and greed (Mrs. Deagle)–fellow-feeling vs. Chri$tma$$, family vs. a toy store full of Gremlins. That isn’t actually getting at particularly deep issues, but… I totally know why the movie is set at Christmastime. It isn’t just for the (amazing) effect of Silent Night, Holy Night wafting over the fire-strewn, devastated town. The aesthetics play into the movie’s symbolic language.

Black Christmas not only fails to make Christmas a symbolic element–it also adds abortion, basically the rejection of or contrast to Christmas symbolism (I mean, look, think about this as a writer and not as a political person and you see what I mean), and yet that doesn’t become a symbolic element either. Jess’s plan to abort her baby is a huge plot element (it’s part of why the police suspect Peter), it’s a huge characterization element (it shows her admirable determination [and her “good girl” status, I think] and Peter’s controlling cruelty), it’s an audience element (we get on Jess’s side because we see her being humiliated when she has to explain her situation to the cops–and yes, of course this made me sympathetic to her as well, how could it not?)… but it’s never a symbolic element.

I don’t know why you’d make a movie where such obvious, interesting, supercharged symbols never get to go off. What do you gain by making Christmas a decoration, abortion a macguffin? I have no idea.

Am I wrong?? Did I miss the thing where Black Christmas actually let these two ferocious, opposed elements send up fireworks? I’d love to think so, since Margot Kidder is everybody’s good-time girl, and totally makes up for Olivia “She’s No Mercutio, I Tell You What” Hussey.


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