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2006 - 84m.

In 2003, 'X-Files' alumni and Final Destination co-writer Glen Morgan made his directing debut with a remake of the 1971's Willard. It wasn't a box-office success but it still managed to be a decent little time with Crispin Glover giving one of the nuttiest performances of his career. And since the movie was pretty obscure the "remake haters" didn't unleash their venom. But Morgan better be prepared for a whole lot of venom, as his sophomore film is a remake of Bob Clark's well-loved 1974 slasher, Black Christmas.

Given that the original is considered one of the sub-genre's trendsetters, you automatically have a strike against you. But taking said film and ramping up the bloodshed, gore, nudity, and camp wasn't really a good thing. The original was a fairly serious murder-mystery that just happened to have a psycho killer at the center of it; this is a dumb, tongue-in-cheek outright 'kill 'em all' movie that even lifts the main thing that sets its plot in motion from Halloween.

It's this Christmas holidays and at a local college sorority house the girls are getting ready to spend the vacation with their families, are exchanging gifts, and just taking a break from their classes. It turns out their house was once the home of notorious serial killer Billy Lenz (Robert Mann), who was abused as a child by his alcoholic mother and ended-up murdering them on Christmas day (and proceeding to make portion's of his mom's flesh into cookies). It's such a town legend, the even the sorority's house mother (Andrea Martin, who had a role in the original) has made it a tradition to leave a present under the tree for Billy.

And here's where the movie riffs on Halloween as we see that Billy is locked away in a nearby asylum. He's generally a placid inmate, but around Christmas we're told he always tries to escape to return to his childhood home. Well, wouldn't you know it, this year's he's sharpened up a candy cane, jammed it into the neck of a guard, and gotten away to return home and wreak some holiday havoc.

Morgan has filled his re-do with many nods to the original film (Martin's presence, the fact one of the murder weapons is a glass unicorn figurine), but he's forgotten to retain the suspense of it opting instead to keep things bloody and moving at a quick pace while his cast members (of which Katie Cassidy is tossed into the heroine role also at random) deliver some weak dialogue and scream their lungs out.

Granted, some of the gore effects are pretty good and there's some truly demented moments (looks like our killer has an obsession with eyes, even munching on one in extreme close-up for us), but this Black Christmas is the kind of garbage that gives slasher movies a truly bad name. It's so mean-spirited and needlessly violent that my patience ran thin early on. Plus Morgan makes the mistake of giving his killer too much back story (there's a truly tasteless explanation for his sister Agnes) when the 'lack of' in the original just helped to make it all the more effective.

As the last horror movie of 2006, Black Christmas is also one of the worst and it looks like all the belly-aching by religious groups surrounding it's Christmas day release (and use of "Silent Night" in the trailer) didn't matter as this failed miserably at the box-office not even cracking the top ten in its opening week. (Chris Hartley, 1/4/07)

Directed By: Glen Morgan.
Written By: Glen Morgan.

Starring: Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert.