a review of 黑色圣诞节

This wasn't quite the frothy teen horror hijinks that I was expecting, but then again neither was the original. It's not really an exercise in oblique, slow-burning dread like that film, and the updated occult-fraternity baddies feel a bit more like something from one of the better seasons of Buffy, but it's decently executed throughout and handles its tonal shifts well. I thought the formal callbacks to the original worked without seeming too fan servicey, and I was on board for how they took the original's feminist subtext* and turned it into the actual explicitly stated text. Not everyone is gonna dig the post #metoo/Kavanaugh/Brock Turner messaging going on here, but seriously fuck those people, they deserve to feel bothered. I'm glad to see that justifiable rage getting partly channeled into above-average studio horror films that offer something a bit more relevant than just jump scares and haunted dolls. (*Apparently horror host Joe Bob Briggs subtweeted this remake by saying something to the effect of how he preferred it back when horror movies "weren't so political", which is downright laughable when you watch basically any horror from the '60s onwards.)