Plot
An escaped maniac returns to his childhood home on Christmas Eve, which is now a sorority house, and begins to murder the sorority sisters one by one.
Release Year: 2006
Rating: 4.3/10 (13,065 voted)
Critic's Score: 22/100
Director:
Glen Morgan
Stars: Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert
Storyline In the 70's, the boy Billy is born with yellow skin due to a lever disease and his dysfunctional mother rejects him. Later he witnesses his mother and her lover killing his beloved father and burying him in the basement of their house, and he is locked in the attic alone along his childhood. When he is a teenager, he is sexually abused by his mother and she has a baby girl called Agnes. During Christmas, the deranged Billy escapes from his imprisonment, kills his mother and stepfather and blinds one eye of Agnes. He is declared insane and his sister is sent to an orphanage. In the present days, Billy escapes from the Clark Sanatorium to spend Christmas with his family. Meanwhile, his former house is the Delta Alpha Kappa sorority house in the campus of the Clement University, and the housemother and the sisters Kelli Presley, Dana, Lauren Hannon, Megan, Heather, Megan Helms, Melissa...
Writers: Glen Morgan, Roy Moore
Cast: Katie Cassidy
-
Kelli Presley
Michelle Trachtenberg
-
Melissa
Mary Elizabeth Winstead
-
Heather Fitzgerald
Lacey Chabert
-
Dana
Kristen Cloke
-
Leigh Colvin
Andrea Martin
-
Barbara 'Ms. Mac' MacHenry
Crystal Lowe
-
Lauren Hannon
Oliver Hudson
-
Kyle Autry
Karin Konoval
-
Billy's Mother
Dean Friss
-
Agnes - 16 & 22 Years
Robert Mann
-
Billy Lenz - 20 & 35 Years
Jessica Harmon
-
Megan Helms
Leela Savasta
-
Clair Crosby
Kathleen Kole
-
Eve Agnew
Cainan Wiebe
-
Billy Lenz - 5 & 12 Years
Taglines:
This Christmas, He'll Treat Them Like Family...
Filming Locations: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Box Office Details
Budget: $9,000,000
(estimated)
Opening Weekend: £367,743
(UK)
(17 December 2006)
(232 Screens)
Gross: $16,235,293
(USA)
(11 February 2007)
Technical Specs
Runtime:|
(unrated version)
Did You Know?
Trivia: Amanda Seyfried auditioned for the lead role of Kelli, but lost to Katie Cassidy.
Goofs:
Revealing mistakes:
When Billy stabs his stepfather in the eye, the blade comes out of the back of his head with the eye facing pupil-out, although that could not happen if the blade went through his eye.
Quotes:
[Leigh walks around the living room looking at the presents by the Christmas tree]
Leigh Colvin:
I see you're still buying presents for Billy.
[She pauses and looks closely at a present wrapped up in newspaper]
Leigh Colvin:
I see you're doing something different this year. Instead of getting a persent for Billy, you're getting a present from Billy. Ms. Barbara MacHenry:
That wasn't there before.
[They open the present. It was an eyeless baby doll]
User Review
enjoy, but don't take seriously!
Rating: 7/10
Earlier this year, I tore the re-make of When A Stranger Calls apart,
and said at the time, that if Hollywood won't bother making new horror
movies, but instead simply re-make old or foreign ones, then just stop.
I stand by that.
However...
Black Christmas actually surprised me. First, it was actually a lot
more brutal and violent than I was expecting, considering it's 15
rating (UK). The other, was the way it re-worked the original.
The original, which I haven't seen for awhile was as much a whodunit as
anything else. Here we're spared that. We know pretty much from the
start who is killing here.
What the makers have done, is simply turn the story into a stalk and
slash movie, which as I said is quite brutal in areas. For me a movie
of this type stands or falls not on the killer or how they kill, but on
the potential victims in the story. If you care about them, then you
feel bad they are killed. If you don't, then give me an axe, I'll do it
myself!! Black Christmas does enough to make you care about each
character, by making each one a little different, but yet, having
enough in character to make you believe they could get along normally.
So when the killing starts, you do care about them, and begin to wonder
who, or how many will make it to the end alive.
The death scenes are well set up and done, which isn't surprising
considering the makers also did Final Destination 1 & 3. If I have a
problem with them is that the film is maybe a little over-edited so at
times, you aren't sure if certain characters have been killed or not.
This movie has been getting a critical mauling in certain areas. But I
found on watching it, that it's fun, enjoyable, with a black(!) sense
of humour, some very nice looking actresses in it!, and for it's
(admittedly short) running time very entertaining. And when I go to see
a movie like this, that's what I want.
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