Sophia Takal's Black Christmas is the second remake of Bob Clark's 1974 slasher movie of the same name, but it would've been much better as a legacy sequel. As a remake, it's constantly compared to the original, which was one of the most pivotal releases in horror history — it kickstarted the popularity of slasher movies. Takal's Black Christmas contained similar kills, yet drastically altered the plot. In turn, this led to the movie being an overwhelming disappointment in comparison to Clark's. If it had been a legacy sequel, it's likely it would've been far more successful.
Legacy sequels aren't entirely uncommon, as Blumhouse Productions has proven with the 2020 soft reboot of The Craft, Halloween. Blumhouse is even in talks to remake the 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist. While David Gordon Green's reboot of John Carpenter's Halloween was wildly successful for its ability to continue the story of Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, the Black Christmas remake largely failed to impress fans and critics. Despite Blumhouse's low-budget approach, Black Christmas was considered a flop.
The basic premise of the Black Christmas movies follows the urban legend of the babysitter and the man upstairs. While there aren't babysitters in the movie, the plot focuses on a strange man who is lurking in a sorority house and threatening the lives of the women who inhabit it. Both remakes of Black Christmas have gone in drastically different directions while attempting to retain the original's political message, but 1974's reigns supreme. With the knowledge that the 2006 remake already failed, Takal and Blumhouse should've taken the opportunity to create a successful legacy movie rather than a direct remake. Here's how they could have done it.
Clark's Black Christmas follows a group of women who attend college and live in a sorority house. When bizarre phone calls incite fear in Jess (Olivia Hussey), a slew of murders are uncovered inside of the house. After the police trace the calls, they discover that they've been coming from inside the house. Takal's 2019 version took an entirely different route. While the beginning and the phone calls remain somewhat the same, the plot takes a sharp turn when it is revealed that a fraternity composed of misogynistic young men—one of whom sexually assaulted a sorority girl prior to the events of the movie—are being brainwashed by the college's founder to kill women who do not abide by a patriarchal hierarchy.
In this way, Takal added supernatural elements to the movie, which could've been successful had it not been under the Black Christmas name or if it had taken the route of being a legacy movie instead. If the filmmaker connected Billy's killings in 1974 to those in 2019, it could've expanded the series, offering the ability to become a larger franchise with future sequels. The fraternity, Delta Kappa Omicron, uses their pledges to enact their crimes. It's entirely possible that Billy could've belonged to the same fraternity, and his form of initiation may have been to kill the sorority . Considering the fact that the founder of the college advocates for a patriarchal utopia, it would make sense that the Delta Kappa Omicrons pursue their victims during social and political moments where feminism peaks.
The plot of Clark's movie takes place in the midst of the sexual revolution, which, in the 1970s, focused primarily on the freedoms of women in regard to equal pay and reproductive health care. In 2019, Takal's movie has an overt feminist message that depicts the unjust treatment of sexual assault survivors, tactics that women use daily to keep themselves safe, as well as their activist efforts in all forms. If it were a legacy movie, it could've taken the route of The Craft: Legacy by making one of the characters the daughter of Jess or even just by simply connecting the fraternity to the original movie. In doing so, Black Christmas could've had a more concrete reason behind its addition of supernatural elements and the inclusion of the fraternity as a whole.
