A Black Christmas (1974 / 2019) DOUBLE-FEATURE!!

The Christmas Horror-Thriller Advent Calendar:
December 1

This article is part of my virtual Holiday Horror Film Advent Calendar, where every day from December 1st to December 24th readers can open a new virtual Advent Calendar window to discover a hand-selected, must-watch Christmas-themed horror thriller film.

🔪 The Enduring Terror of Black Christmas (1974)

In the chilling pantheon of holiday horror, one film stands as the undeniable, trailblazing pioneer: Bob Clark's Black Christmas from 1974. Often overshadowed by the films it inspired, this original Canadian production is not merely a horror classic, but a profound piece of cinema that set the genre in motion. It's the first of what would become a complex lineage, spawning multiple versions, including the notable remakes Black Christmas (2006) and Black Christmas (2019). A less-known short film remake, Black Christmas (2021), also exists, and an original take on the premise, A Black Christmas directed by Avi Singh, has been reported to be in post-production. But it is this distinct original, with its subtle style, deep ambiguity, and chilling conclusion, that deserves our focus. A review of the more action-oriented Black Christmas (2019) will follow this article in our series.

Black Christmas (2019) Official Trailer

The Beginning of the Slasher Blueprint

Long before Michael Myers took his first step in Haddonfield, Black Christmas established many of the tropes that would define the modern slasher genre. Released four years before Halloween (1978), the film laid the groundwork by utilizing the unseen, unstoppable killer, the single-location setting (a sorority house), and the proto-Final Girl archetype in the character of Jess (Olivia Hussey).

Director Bob Clark, who would later ironically direct the quintessential holiday film A Christmas Story, expertly crafts an atmosphere of psychological dread rather than relying on jump scares or excessive gore. The killer, simply known as "Billy," is terrifying precisely because he is unseen and unexplained. Much of the film’s tension is built through point-of-view (POV) shots from the killer’s perspective—a disquieting technique that places the audience directly in the shoes of the stalker as he moves silently through the house, often mere feet away from his oblivious victims.

Beyond the primal terror of the unseen killer, the film presents a more pervasive and insidious horror: misogyny.

The Icy Juxtaposition of Christmas Horror

The film's most potent thematic device is its use of the Christmas season as a backdrop for terror. The holiday provides a perfect, yet jarring, contrast. The sorority house is adorned with festive lights, tinsel, and carols—a visual and auditory representation of joy and warmth. This façade of holiday cheer is brutally shattered by the obscene, terrifying, and often barely audible phone calls from Billy, and the cold reality of the murders happening right under their noses.

The season also serves a crucial plot function: most of the campus is empty, and many of the girls have left for the break. This isolation is what amplifies the horror, making the sorority house a literal island of vulnerability. The police's initial, dismissive response to the missing girl and the disturbing calls also plays into this, as they—and society—are perhaps too distracted by the season to take the women's fears seriously.

The True Horror In This Film Is Misogyny

Beyond the primal terror of the unseen killer, the film presents a more pervasive and insidious horror: misogyny. The killer's escalating phone calls are not random; they are fueled by a deep-seated hatred of women, featuring vile, obscene rants and crude remarks about their sexuality and bodies. This violence, initially verbal, quickly becomes physical, suggesting a continuum of male aggression. Crucially, this threat is echoed by the very authorities who are supposed to help. When the girls report the disturbing calls and a missing friend, the male police Sergeant repeatedly dismisses their concerns with sexist remarks and condescension, viewing them as hysterical young women easily prone to exaggeration. This indifference—the real-world danger of not being believed or protected—amplifies the sorority sisters' isolation and suggests that the danger is not just the maniac in the attic, but the broader societal structures that fail to take women's safety seriously.

A Haunting Ambiguity: The Distinct Ending

One of the most defining characteristics of the 1974 original, and the one that separates it most distinctly from its remakes, is its bleak and ambiguous ending.

Throughout the film, the killer's identity is obscured, leading both the characters and the audience to suspect Jess's volatile musician boyfriend, Peter. In a moment of intense climax, Jess kills Peter, seemingly stopping the murders. The police arrive and, convinced they've closed the case, leave Jess alone to recover.

For a look back at a key piece of the original's groundbreaking use of terror and atmosphere, you can watch this clip:

Black Christmas (1974) - Clip 1: Someone's Watching

This clip shows how the killer's unsettling presence is established early on, building tension through perspective and sound rather than explicit violence.

However, the film then delivers its iconic, gut-punch of a final scene. As Jess lies sedated in her bed, a slow, creeping camera moves back up the attic stairs, culminating with the ominous, heavy breathing of Billy on the phone line as the final shot closes on the chilling, ringing telephone. The original Black Christmas refuses to offer catharsis. The killer is real, he is not the person they suspected, and the "Final Girl" is left in mortal danger, utterly unaware that the true threat is still right above her. It's an ending of profound dread that leaves the audience with a horrifying realization: the monster is not defeated, and sometimes, no amount of fighting can save you from an irrational, unknowable evil.

The film's minimalist approach, chilling atmosphere, and refusal to provide a neat resolution solidify Black Christmas (1974) not just as a holiday horror gem, but as an essential, deeply unsettling milestone in the history of cinema.

❄️ Sisterhood and Scrutiny: Re-Examining the Bold Reinvention of Black Christmas (2019)

After dissecting the original 1974 masterpiece, we turn our attention to its most recent and, arguably, most daring successor: Sophia Takal's Black Christmas (2019). While the term "remake" implies a close retelling, this version—co-written by Takal and April Wolfe—is a re-imagining so distinct in its characters, plot, and ultimately, its ending, that it stands perfectly on its own. You could easily enjoy the ambiguous terror of the 1974 original and immediately follow it up with this feminist-fueled action-thriller.

Black Christmas (2019) Official Trailer

A New Generation, A New Kind of Horror

Where the 1974 film excelled in slow-burn, psychological dread and an unknowable killer, the 2019 version takes a radically different, far more contemporary approach. The setting is the same—a sorority house on a deserted college campus during Christmas break—but the stakes are explicitly redefined.

The film stars Imogen Poots as Riley Stone, a student still reeling from a sexual assault that was dismissed by both the campus and the authorities. This real-world horror of misogyny and institutional indifference is the film’s central thematic engine. The "killer" is no longer a solitary, unexplained psychopath. Instead, a masked gang of murderers from the nearby fraternity, Alpha Kappa Rho, begins systematically targeting the sisters of the MKA house.

The horror shifts from the voyeurism of a lone maniac to a chilling allegory about systemic toxic masculinity and the danger women face in spaces meant to be safe.

🩸 Christmas as a Thematic Weapon

The Christmas setting, much like the original, provides an icy juxtaposition, but with a new layer of thematic depth.

• Isolation and Dismissal: The college is emptying out for the holidays, making the sorority sisters highly vulnerable and underscoring the police's initial disbelief and inaction. They are cut off, both literally and figuratively.

• The Façade of Tradition: The film uses traditional, all-male college institutions—like the fraternity and a revered professor—as the source of the evil, suggesting that the problem is rooted in longstanding, patriarchal systems. This idea is perhaps best encapsulated when the sisters sing a defiant, re-written Christmas carol at a talent show, publicly challenging the men who have wronged them.

The film makes the holiday setting feel less like a backdrop for a random act of violence and more like a time when the pressures and hypocrisies of the male-dominated college environment reach a breaking point.

The Power of Sisterhood and a Definitive Ending

The most significant departure from the original is the film's shift from a singular Final Girl to a collective of empowered women.

• Characters as Warriors: The remaining sisters, including the fierce Kris (Aleyse Shannon) and the initially cautious Marty (Lily Donoghue), band together with Riley to stop being victims and start fighting back. They use makeshift weapons, Christmas ornaments, and their combined wits to defend themselves.

• The Supernatural Twist: In a major narrative swing, the film reveals the killers are not just ordinary men, but have been empowered through a supernatural, occult ritual performed beneath the fraternity house—a manifestation of "toxic masculinity" itself. This choice was highly divisive among critics, exchanging the original's gritty realism for a clear-cut, mythological enemy.

• A Triumphant Finale: Unlike the original's hauntingly ambiguous ending where the monster survives, the 2019 film is an explicit story of defiance and victory. The women confront the killers in a blaze of Christmas lights and fire, shattering the cult and literally burning down the source of their oppression. They emerge together, bloodied but unbowed, reinforcing the film's core message: sisterhood is the ultimate weapon against patriarchy.

Directed by a woman and centered on the perspective of survivors, Black Christmas (2019) is a bold, energetic, and highly intentional feminist slasher. It sacrifices the subtlety and slow-burn terror of the 1974 film to deliver a direct, cathartic punch—a true cinematic reflection of the anxieties and defiance of its time.

You can hear from the director herself about the film's intentions in this clip: Sophia Takal Interview: Black Christmas. This video features an interview with director Sophia Takal where she discusses the film's feminist themes and how she wanted to create a movie that reflects women finding strength together.

Black Christmas (2006)

The 2006 version of Black Christmas serves as another, though far more divisive, attempt to remake Bob Clark’s 1974 slasher classic. Unlike the thematically rich and action-oriented 2019 film, this iteration leans heavily into extreme gore and an overly complex, unnecessary backstory for the killer, Billy. It transforms the original’s psychological terror and ambiguity into a standard, if exceptionally bloody, 2000s slasher flick. While it offers a few stylish kills and features some recognizable stars like Michelle Trachtenberg and Katie Cassidy, its decision to fully unveil the killer and detail his disturbing childhood completely undermines the chilling "unknowable" evil that made the 1974 film iconic. Lacking the taut suspense of the original and the empowering social commentary of the 2019 version, the 2006 remake feels like a missed opportunity that prioritized visceral shock over narrative substance, ultimately making it a less compelling watch than its 2019 counterpart.

Black Christmas (2006) Official Trailer

Black Christmas (2021)

The 2021 short film titled Black Christmas, directed by Shane Anthony, represents a lesser-known, low-budget attempt to revisit the material. Lasting only about twenty minutes, this version attempts to streamline the premise, focusing on a group of friends gathering for a Christmas party that is interrupted by a familiar, unseen menace. While it captures a measure of the isolation and phone-call tension that defined the 1974 original, the short format severely limits its ability to develop characters or build sustained dread. It is essentially a technical exercise in replicating the initial setup of the original film without being able to explore any of the thematic depth or narrative complexity that made the 2019 film a refreshing update. While a curio for dedicated fans of the franchise, the short film’s constraints prevent it from ever achieving the impact or relevance of the full-length 2019 remake.

It's Me, Billy: A Black Christmas Fan Film (2021)

The fan film It's Me, Billy: A Black Christmas Fan Film (2021), found on YouTube, is two-part shot of pure nostalgia that serves as a focused spiritual successor to the 1974 original. Made by filmmaker Dave McRae, these 2 shorts intentionally discard the over-explanation of the 2006 remake and the overt thematic overhaul of the 2019 version, choosing instead to focus entirely on recreating the suffocating, ambiguous dread of the first film. Opening with the simple, yet chilling, phone call—"It's me, Billy"—the films rely on classic slasher techniques like claustrophobic camerawork and the return of the iconic, disturbing voice of the killer to deliver a swift, effective dose of holiday-themed terror. As a loving homage, they successfully remind viewers why the unseen and unknowable killer of the original remains one of horror's most enduring figures, proving that sometimes, less is truly more..

It's Me, Billy: A Black Christmas Fan Film PART I

It's Me, Billy: A Black Christmas Fan Film PART II