When Remakes Go Wronger Than Fruitcake
There are bad horror remakes, and then there’s Black X-Mas (2006), Glen Morgan’s attempt to update Bob Clark’s 1974 classic. The original Black Christmas was subtle, moody, and chilling—a proto-slasher that helped define the genre. The remake is… well, it’s like someone put Christmas lights on a rotting corpse and called it festive.
This is a movie where backstory is crammed down your throat like eggnog spiked with cough syrup, every death is a gory cartoon, and the killers look like they wandered out of Sesame Street’s goth phase. Released on Christmas Day (because nothing says “peace on Earth” like incest and cannibalism), it manages to be both over-the-top and underwhelming—a cinematic fruitcake that no one asked for and everyone regrets.
Billy Lenz: Yellow Is the New Black
Let’s start with Billy, our killer. In the original, he was mysterious, terrifying, and largely unseen. In this version? He’s a jaundiced Oompa-Loompa with a skin tone that screams “banana left too long in the fridge.” Born with liver disease, abused by his psychotic mom, and locked in the attic, Billy’s origin story plays like a parody of misery porn.
And then there’s the infamous scene where his mom, unable to conceive with her impotent boyfriend, climbs into the attic and assaults twelve-year-old Billy to produce Agnes. Yes, you read that right. Merry Christmas from Glen Morgan! Forget mistletoe—this is a movie that hangs incest trauma over the fireplace with care.
Billy eventually kills his mom, bakes her into Christmas cookies, and eats them. If you’ve ever wanted The Great British Bake Off: Cannibal Edition, here’s your chance.
Agnes: One-Eyed Wonder of Awkward Villains
Then there’s Agnes, Billy’s daughter/sister (try not to think about it too hard). She grows up to be a hulking killer with one eye, because apparently subtlety was left out of the script. In this movie, not only is the killer backstory spelled out in neon lights, it’s also doubled. Billy AND Agnes stalk the sorority house like a homicidal holiday tag team.
The result? Instead of one terrifying boogeyman, we get two villains who look like rejected mascots for a haunted Christmas hayride.
Sorority Girls: Deck the Halls With Dumb Decisions
Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert—yes, the cast list looks impressive. And yet, not even this collection of final girl royalty can save the script.
The sorority sisters exist purely to die in increasingly ridiculous ways. Characters have all the depth of a snow globe: shake them up, watch them scream, and then wait for them to get stabbed with a candy cane. Lacey Chabert, bless her heart, is given the honor of being impaled with an icicle. Somewhere, Mean Girls’ Gretchen Wieners is still whispering, “Stop trying to make festive kills happen.”
Every time one of them makes a stupid decision—wandering into the attic, splitting up during a snowstorm—you’ll find yourself rooting for Billy and Agnes. At least they’re consistent.
The Gore: More Stuffing Than the Turkey
You know how the original Black Christmas built tension with silence and shadows? This remake crams gore into every stocking like a desperate parent overspending at Walmart. Eyes are gouged out, heads are ripped apart, people are baked into cookies—it’s like the director mistook “holiday spirit” for “mutilation.”
And sure, gore can be fun. But here it’s so constant and so cartoonish that it stops being shocking and just feels exhausting. By the third eyeball munching, you’re not recoiling in horror—you’re checking your watch.
Festive Failures: Death by Icicle, Death by Cookie
The movie tries to be “creative” with Christmas-themed kills, but most of them play like rejected Home Alone traps. A character is impaled by a falling icicle. Someone else is stabbed with a candy cane sharpened into a shiv. Billy bakes mom cookies. It’s holiday horror by way of a third grader’s edgy Christmas wish list.
And let’s not forget Mrs. Mac, the sorority housemother, who gets killed by—you guessed it—an icicle. Yes, the icicle budget was apparently half the production.
The Hospital Finale: Paging Dr. Ludicrous
Just when you think the sorority house showdown is over, the movie tacks on a hospital sequence so unnecessary it feels like a DLC pack nobody wanted. Billy survives the fire (because of course he does), Agnes shows up for a final round, and Katie Cassidy gets to kill them both in a series of increasingly stupid fights.
Billy’s ultimate death? Falling onto a Christmas tree and getting impaled by its star. Yes, he’s literally killed by holiday décor. Somewhere, Clark Griswold is nodding in approval.
The Tone: Festive Trash Fire
What makes Black X-Mas so baffling is its tone. It wants to be shocking and edgy, but it ends up feeling juvenile. It wants to be scary, but the killers look like they belong in a SyFy Channel original. It wants to be funny, but the only laughter it inspires is accidental.
The original movie whispered horror. This one screams it in your face with candy cane blood splatter, like a drunk mall Santa yelling “Ho Ho Horror!” after one too many peppermint schnapps.
The Weinstein Fingerprints
Part of the disaster came from behind the scenes. Glen Morgan reportedly fought with Dimension Films (read: the Weinsteins) about tone and reshoots. And it shows. The film feels stitched together like Frankenstein’s stocking—one part grim incest drama, one part campy gore-fest, one part slasher paint-by-numbers. Instead of a cohesive vision, we get a cinematic fruitcake: dense, hard to swallow, and full of things no one wanted.
Final Judgment: Lump of Coal for All
Black X-Mas isn’t the worst holiday horror movie ever made—but it’s close. It takes a beloved classic and strips away everything that made it terrifying, replacing suspense with gore, mystery with incest exposition, and characters with cardboard cutouts waiting to die.
It’s loud, dumb, and as subtle as a flashing Rudolph nose. If you want to laugh at absurd kills and jaundiced cannibals baking Christmas cookies, maybe you’ll enjoy it as unintentional comedy. Otherwise, watch the original, drink some eggnog, and pretend this remake was just a bad dream.
