Black Christmas (2019)

I like what they've done here in this clever remake of the 1974 horror, taking the original movie with its classic story of women beseiged from inside, not outside, a safehaven (a sorority house) and injecting into the story a metoo generation commentary, a context that was discernable in the original movie but not wholly intricated into the plot like it is here; but while I think the remake makes a strong and important and relevant point and makes it well about the privilege boys hold, handed to them in pretty much supernatural fashion from their white male forebears, the glossiness and smarts and the beautiful teens as well as the unrestrained finale that elicits a momentary yee-haw but then doubt and dismay at the derailment of such strong feminist commentary, render the movie a mere glossy teen slasher with good intentions, not a horror classic.

★★★☆☆

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Black Christmas (aka 'Stranger In The House') (1974)

This 1974 movie starring Margot Kidder continues a long tradition of suspense movies about women (usually one, but here a whole sorority houseful) threatened by - but safe inside from - a lunatic, eventually realising the danger comes from inside, not outside, the safehaven (The Spiral Staircase, When A Stranger Calls, for example) and it is an exceptionally effective, intelligent horror thriller: well-acted, with a large number of characters all fleshed-out and strong; rich in detail, and with some good humour which helps make, by comparison, the last twenty minutes especially deranged and terrifying!

★★★★★

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Dead Again (1991)

Kenneth Branagh's vanity project - he directs and self-consciously stars - concerns a mute amnesiac (Emma Thompson) who doesn't remember who she is but inexplicably remembers, in black-and-white scenes that recall Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, a historical murder case involving a piano composer and his wife; it turns out these past characters have found each other in the present day, which is the convoluted and really quite ridiculous supernatural means by which these present-day characters - Emma Thompson's mute amnesiac and her carer, Branagh's detective - come to know about and investigate and are able to reveal that historical murder mystery's obvious culprit.

★★☆☆☆

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