Simply Men
Bob Clark’s 1974 horror masterpiece Black Christmas has been remade twice: once in 2006 by Glen Morgan and again in 2019 as a collaboration between Blumhouse and Sophia Takal. The latter remake was advertised as an explicitly feminist take on the original and adheres to Blumhouse’s ongoing feminist horror aspirations. In an interview, Takal described the film as “fiercely feminist” and said she fought hard to achieve a PG-13 rating so the film could be seen by younger audiences.
Takal’s stance and the film’s overall marketing seem to privilege overtness over the subtlety that made the original so compelling. In addition to serving as a cynical ploy to attract paying customers, it assumes that younger audiences aren’t watching anything rated beyond PG-13, which is not the case (and hasn’t been for some time). For example, a study conducted by Dartmouth researchers in 2003 found that over 10% of children between the ages of 10 and 14 watch R-rated films.
The original Black Christmas has been praised for the complexity of its female characters. From Barb (played with exquisite gusto by the late Margot Kidder) to Mrs. Mac (played by Marian Waldman), the characters function as more than just a simple symbol that drives the plot. Even the supposed hero, Jess (played by Olivia Hussey), is presented as flawed. By the end of the film, the audience is left wondering whether her actions contributed to her uncertain fate.
In Takal’s version, the main character is Riley (played by Imogen Poots), whose defining characteristic is that she is a victim of sexual assault. There isn’t much nuance to her character beyond that. All of her actions throughout the film are posited in relation to her initial assault. Like Green’s Laurie Strode, the entirety of Riley’s identity is centered around her trauma. There’s even a song and dance number that serves to reinforce the trauma.
Like the original Halloween, Clark’s film localizes its horror in the unknown. The audience never gets a clear image of the killer, only fragmented instances of their shape and pathology. In the instance of both Blumhouse pictures we have examined so far, the danger is an explicitly corporeal being. This localization renders each film’s ideological message more apparent.
Takal’s film reveals its killer as an entire fraternity. In one of the film’s least subtle moments, they are described by their leader (played by Cary Elwes) as “Not insane. Simply men.” Similarly to Blumhouse’s Halloween, the film presents men as the cause of a trauma that can only be cured by female solidarity. Sadly, the film’s push for female solidarity is overshadowed by its shallow obsession with trauma. This push renders its female characters as flat caricatures instead of complex individuals with their own histories and intersections.
The next scene exudes Avengers: Endgame vibes as all the women team up to face off against what the film has posited as a universal threat: Cary Elwes and an army of frat boys. This “Us vs. Them” dichotomy does little to interrogate the habitual and essentially reinstills the same structural social divisions, albeit from a female perspective. Consequently, the film seems to inadvertently suggest that people, including women, need to find more creative ways to write about women.
