This Christmas we will be hit with Blumhouse’s PG-13 remake of director Bob Clark’s classic seasonal slasherBlack Christmas. And today we’re hearing from director Sophia Takal that her film is very, very loosely based on Clark’s original movie and that the plot is extremely different, being more inspired by the feeling of the original film that reflects our time and what it feels like to be a woman in 2019. On top of that, she also adds that, at the end of the day, she thinks of her remake as a fiercely feminist film.
Specifically,Sophia Takalsays this about her movie.
“You know, this movie, even though it’s very,very loosely based on Black Christmas, I’d say the plot is extremely different. It’s more inspired by the feeling that Black Christmas made me feel watching it, this idea of misogyny always being out there and never totally eradicable. So that was the jumping-off point for how I came up with this plot. I’d compare it more to how Luca Guadagnino remade Suspiria than to a straight-ahead remake … I wanted to make something that reflected our time right now, drawing more from what the original evoked for me rather than great plot points. For me, it was about what does it feel like to be a woman in 2019?”
She adds this.
“I feel like another part of why I kind of shifted the direction that this version took was because, in 2019, I didn’t just want to make a movie about abunch of women getting slaughtered. It just gave me a pit in my stomach. This is not to say that a man might want to see that. I just think I felt very much a responsibility not to perpetuate this idea of disposable female characters, because of how it makes me feel when I watch that. I call this movie a fiercely feminist film…”
Personally, even though this is the second remake of Bob Clark’s Christmas classic (yeah, you read that right) and even though Blumhouse decided to edit it down to a moreteen-friendly PG-13 rating, I still can’t help but look forward to this film. And the main reason is director Sophia Takal. Not only was her New Year’s additionNew Year, New Youto Blumhouse and Hulu’s holiday horror anthologyInto The Darkone of the top entries in the so-so series, her first feature filmAlways Shinewith Mackenzie Davis and Caitlin FitzGerald blew me away the first time I saw it last year.
So, yeah, even though most of my horror movie brethren like to give me endless amounts of flack, I still keep Takal’sBlack Christmasremake near the top of my must-see horror movies of 2019 list. Making friends be damned. Hopefully, in the end, my excitement is justified and Blumhouse and Takal deliver us a killer new Christmas classic. I guess we’ll find out when the film is unleashed into our local multiplexes on July 15, 2025. As mentioned above this newBlack Christmassports a teen-friendly PG-13 rating for “violence, terror, thematic content involving sexual assault, language, sexual material, and drinking.” This story comes to us fromEntertainment Weekly.
