Editorials
[Remake Fever] Where Did the ‘Black Christmas’ Remake Go Wrong?
The horror genre is nothing if not cyclical. Horror films are frequently picked apart and reassembled again in new packaging for new audiences. Sometimes this results in modern classics. Other times it results in a blasphemous product that defaces the legacy of the original. Remake Fever is a series that compares and contrasts an original horror film and its remake to investigate how the new film is reimagined, as well as what works and what doesn’t.
In 1974, Canadian Bob Clark made a slasher film about a sorority house under siege by a madman who makes threatening phone calls and stages secret murders. Black Christmas starred Olivia Hussey, Andrea Martin and Margot Kidder. The film originated many of the tropes that would go on to become defining conventions of the slasher subgenre, though a delayed release in the United States meant that John Carpenter’s Halloween received much of the credit. Over time, the original Black Christmas has been embraced by the horror community as a beloved slasher film and it is without question the best holiday horror film (come at me in the comments).
In 2006, writer/director Glen Morgan (of The X-Files fame) mounted a remake of Black Christmas. He directed from his own script, fleshing out the backstory of central villain Billy (played by an uncredited Albert J. Dunk in 74), modernizing the technology for the prank calls and upping the gore. Despite these efforts – and in spite of some missing scenes – the film was a critical and commercial flop, grossing only $16M in the US.
So how do the two films differ and what went wrong with the remake? Let’s dig in!
**Spoilers for both Black Christmas films follow, as well as The People Under The Stairs, Scream 4, The Pact, Housebound, and The Boy.**
Like many of the remakes of the 2000s, Morgan’s Black Christmas channels its predecessor in both narrative and character. Morgan’s most significant change involves spending considerably more time on the backstory/psychology of Billy, but the remake also replaces a lot of the drawn-out nuance and atmosphere of Clark’s original in favour of increasingly gory violence. This was the style at the time, though enthusiasts of the original text did not take kindly to these alterations.
In the original Black Christmas, the emphasis is firmly on Final Girl Jess and her sorority sisters, Phyl (Martin), Barb (Kidder) and a few others. The gothic house that they share is mostly empty for the holidays (a plot point that conveniently helps to delay the discovery of the murders since it is assumed that the other girls have simply gone home). The remaining women are a motley crew: Jess is presented as the responsible good girl and Phyl is mousey and unassuming. Kidder’s Barb is a foul-mouthed alcoholic mean girl while the house mother, Mrs. Mac (Marian Waldman), is secretly squirreling away booze in every nook and cranny of the house.
Clark’s original is a deliberately paced whodunnit. In addition to the murders themselves, Black Christmas ‘74 dedicates a substantial amount of screen time to competing subplots, including the police’s attempt to trace the location of the prank calls, the (red herring) search for a missing local child and Jess’ struggles with her boyfriend (Keir Dullea)’s 70s-era toxic masculinity regarding a secret pregnancy.
That final element is one of the reasons that the film remains so highly regarded: not only is abortion a weighty topic for a slasher film to address, the subplot fleshes out Jess in significant, meaningful ways. Clark makes a real effort to ensure potential sorority caricatures become three-dimensional characters by providing them with interesting backstories and defined attributes. The result means that the sorority sisters are the film’s focus, not its mysterious killer.
The balance of power shifts in Morgan’s 2006 update, which dedicates significantly more time to Billy Lenz’s backstory. In the remake Billy (Robert Mann) is born with a liver-disease that leaves him looking jaundiced, which results in an abusive relationship with his unloving mother (Karin Konoval). A series of flashbacks include adultery, incestual rape, sibling defacement, murder and cannibalism; in this way Morgan’s film not-so-subtly places the blame for Billy and his sister Agnes (Dean Friss)’ homicidal behaviour on their mother. This is in stark contrast to Billy in the original film: not only is the original killer’s backstory never revealed, his motivation is barely speculated upon and never clarified.
There are instances of voyeurism in both films. Unbeknownst to the sorority girls, the house has been infiltrated by Billy – and Agnes in the remake – and they are constantly being watched. Both films feature repeated close-ups of eyes watching the sorority girls, though this is significantly more sexualized in the remake, including a scene when Lauren (Crystal Lowe) is spied upon while she drunkenly showers.
Morgan cast a range of up-and-comers to medium-profile actresses – several of whom he had worked with on The X-Files and the Final Destination films (Konoval, as well as Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Kristen Cloke). Meanwhile, Lacey Chabert had Mean Girls and Michelle Trachtenberg had Buffy under their respective belts, while Katie Cassidy was on the cusp of breaking out on The CW.
Despite the talented cast, however, none of the characters make much of an impression. The lack of screen time to beef up the sorority sisters, in particular, is problematic because it renders the girls indistinguishable from one another. Aside from Lauren (the remake’s stand-in for Barb), few of the girls have a unique personality (Cassidy is…nice? Winstead is…vaguely religious? And Chabert and Trachtenberg don’t even have that). Also, due to the compressed timeline of the remake – the events of the film take place over several hours as opposed to days in the original – no one has a character arc. One other (small) nitpick: despite being familiar with all of the actresses, their hair and costumes are styled so similarly that it is surprisingly easy to confuse or blend them together.
The emphasis on Billy, the lack of characterization for the sorority sisters and Morgan’s fixation on eye trauma (so.many.plucked.eyeballs!) are routinely cited as drawbacks in critiques of the remake. There is, however, a small camp of fans who praise the film for its amped-up bitchy dialogue, faster pace and ridiculous deaths (including one by icicle, one by figure skate and even an impaling via Christmas tree). In this regard, Black Christmas ’06 would pair nicely on a double bill with Sorority Row (itself a remake of The House On Sorority Row).
Intriguingly, both versions of Black Christmas can lay claim to a host of imitators. While the original Clark film is a known inspiration for Carpenter’s Halloween and other slashers of the eighties, the remake’s “killer in the walls” plot point precedes the twist endings of 2012’s The Pact, 2014’s Housebound and 2016’s The Boy (the exception is Wes Craven’s underrated 1991 film, The People Under The Stairs, though that film doesn’t use the trope as a twist).
The other imitated aspect of the ’06 remake is its protracted hospital ending. Following a bloody battle that claims nearly even character, Cassidy’s Kelli is attacked by Agnes in her hospital room and must defend herself using a defibrillator. This scene looks eerily similar to the (also protracted) ending of 2011’s Scream 4 when Sidney is attacked…in the hospital…by the killer (her niece Jill)…who is eventually killed using a defibrillator.
Comparing the original Black Christmas with its 2000s era remake is an unenviable task. The original has taken on near-mythic status as a classic of the genre (particularly evident at this time of year). Even on its own, Glen Morgan’s slasher remake isn’t a particularly great film, though it has a fun camp appeal and some really enjoyable kills. Billy’s backstory is arguably the least successful aspect of the film: it feels rote and unnecessary, disrupts the flow of events and lends the modern-day attacks on the sorority house a pervy, misogynistic vibe.
Thankfully Black Christmas ’06 is a quick 84 (or 94 unrated) minute watch which means you can easily give it a look while you wrap holiday gifts! Just be sure to leave a little something for Billy under the tree.
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Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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