Movie Review: Black Christmas

Black Christmas (2006) 

Directed by Glenn Morgan 

Written by Glenn Morgan

Staring Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Oliver Hudson, Lacey Chabert

Release Date December 25th, 2006

Published December 25th, 2006

In 1974 Black Christmas shocked audiences with a Christmas based, blood soaked massacre. The film was only notable for its Christmas horror setting and was soon forgotten. 32 years later a pair of shock masters, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who know a good marketing hook when they see one, acquired the remake rights and rushed out new version of Black Christmas just in time for the holiday season.

Crafted by one of the minds behind the Final Destination series, Glen Morgan, Black Christmas is, once again, only notable for its release date. Though soaked in bloody, horror film tradition, Black Christmas is simply yet another rehash of horror movie cliches.

Michelle Trachtenberg, of Buffy The Vampire Slayer fame, heads a cast of pretty faces as a sorority sister who finds her self stuck on campus for Christmas. Along with her sisters played by Katie Cassidy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Final Destination 3), Lacey Chabert (Party of Five) and their house mother Mrs. Mac (Andrea Martin, star of the original Black Christmas), she is exchanging gifts and trading stories when a strange phone call sets off a series of horrifying deaths.

It seems that the girls sorority house was once the home of a serial killer who killed and ate his mother on Christmas day; some 20 years earlier. Now, having escaped from a mental institution, Billy (Robert Mann) has come home and is ready to make the sisters his new family. Billy isn't alone, the daughter he had by his own mother is also home to get in on the carnage.

It's a creepy idea but in execution, Black Christmas is little more than a collection of horror movie cliches. Nubile flesh is modestly displayed. Girls run upstairs when they should run outside. Cops are incapacitated and the killers make their murders more elaborate and gruesome when a simpler approach might save some time and work more effectively.

I was surprised to find this collection of cliches was directed by Glen Morgan who with his producing partner James Wong worked on the X-Files TV show and created the clever, if over done, Final Destination series. Morgan's direction of Destination 1 & 3 was, at the very least witty, if not all that frightening. Going for classic slasher movie scares in Black Christmas, Morgan loses the wit in favor of more blood. He should have stuck with his wits.

The cast of Black Christmas reads like the rejected casting for the WB teen drama One Tree Hill. Michelle Trachtenberg, former Harriet The Spy and Buffy The Vampire Slayer alum, Lacey Chabert, the forgotten member of the Party of Five cast, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, star of Final Destination 3 and....nothing else, and Oliver Hudson who knows his way around a teen drama, he guest starred on Dawson's Creek as a wrong side of the tracks bad boy.

This Clearasil approved cast is pleasant to look at but their acting leaves much to be desired. Not that Black Christmas calls for much acting beyond run, scream and die painfully. Though the film does carry an R-rating, the fresh faced cast is not called upon for the kind of nudity that might give a slight erotic charge to all of the carnage. There are glimpses of a naked back in the shower, but only hints of the kind of exposure we are used to in the slasher genre.

Black Christmas pales in comparison to the creepy 1974 original, though that film isn't all that great either. Too weak kneed for a typical exploitation film, but too bloody for the dull PG-13 lot that has been stinking up the horror genre, Black Christmas inhabits an unhappy middle-ground between enjoyable crap and just plain crap. Any less interesting and Wes Craven would have slapped his name on it as producer.

Movie Review Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) 

Directed by Mark Waters 

Written by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore 

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Breckin Meyer, Lacey Chabert, Robert Forster, Emma Stone 

Release Date May 1st, 2009 

Published April 30th, 2009 

In this day and age of mass media marketing it is almost impossible for even the most objective of critics to not form some opinion of a movie before having seen it. Featurettes, commercials, and film trailers and posters are splattered over every inch of the internet and TV. Movie Stars appear on TV talk shows with clips and follow that with a podcast and an audio trailer.

Thus, I was exposed to the terrifically awful trailer for the Matthew McConaughey movie Ghosts of Girlfriends past more than 6 months ago and the stream of promotion has been unfailingly ever present  ever since. The subsequent clips, commercials and trailers have been as bad or worse than that first trailer and I must be honest and admit that I was bracing for a disaster when I finally saw the movie.

These many promotions for the film offer a seriously dopey series of rom-com clichés pitched to the plot of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and a super generic pop soundtrack. Matthew McConaughey's recent track record of bad movie after bad movie does the film's reputation no favors either. So, imagine my surprise when first I chuckled and then laughed out loud and was eventually kind of taken in by this admittedly cheesy but undeniably compelling romantic comedy. Don't get me wrong, this is not a really good movie but it succeeds for not being nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

Connor Mead (McConaughey) is a world famous photographer whose string of sexual encounters would cause Wilt Chamberlain to advise a nap. Having lost his parents when he was just 7 years old, Connor and his younger brother Paul (Breckin Meyer) were raised by their playboy uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas). It was Uncle Wayne who taught Connor to treat women as he does and it will be Uncle Wayne who will teach him the error of his ways.

Conor is attending Paul's wedding to Sandra (Lacey Chabert) where he encounters the one girl who really ever got to him, Jenny (Jennifer Garner). The encounter sends Connor on a bit of a binge and soon he is seeing ghosts. First, it's the ghost of his late Uncle who lays out the plot: Connor will be visited by three other ghosts, each representing the women who Connor's womanizing ways have victimized.

Say, doesn't that three ghosts thing sound familiar? Of course it does, it's Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Instead of the miserly money grubbing Scrooge we have the sex addicted misogynist Connor. In place of his late partner Marley and his rattling chains we have Connor's mentor Uncle Wayne with his glass of whiskey with ice clinking in the glass. The copied plot offers the opportunity for the film to be lazy and at times it is, especially when establishing a timeline for Connor's life. However, thanks to the committed and forthright performance of McConaughey, a lot of the film's troubles go by the wayside.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a little coy about exploring what a bastard Connor truly is, the best and lamest example has him breaking up with three girls at once over a conference call while his next conquest watches from his bed. The scene is played for awkward laughs rather than an ominous sign of Connor's troubled soul and the conflict fails to develop. Much of the first act struggles this way but once Emma Stone arrives as the first of three ghosts and Connor is forced to see the wreckage of his life things take a surprisingly compelling turn. Also helping things along is the chemistry between McConaughey and Garner as the one woman who ever to called Connor on his garbage.

Romantic comedy convention will require Connor to be reformed and for he and Jenny to fall in love. What director Mark Waters does well is keep the typical roadblocks thrown in front of them believable enough to distract from the inevitability. Then it becomes the job of the actors to make us want to see them together and McConaughey and Garner pull that off splendidly. Garner's Jenny is just the kind of girl to make a bad dog go good and McConaughey's believable turn from scumbag to reformed good guy is shockingly plausible.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a highly flawed film but, by the standard of your average romantic comedy, it's not that bad. Low expectations based on the awful marketing campaign have certainly helped me to this relatively positive conclusion, but nevertheless, I can't pretend I didn't enjoy Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.