Black Christmas (2006) and Character Depth

One of the most enduring genres of film is horror. Much like haunted houses, people find catharsis in sitting in a dark room and watching a spooky story. The fear raises their adrenaline. They release some of the pent-up emotions they’ve been feeling as they’re scared into, in a perfect world, their base animal instincts. Fight or flight, all from the safety of a couch, a theatre chair, or a car at the drive-in. Horror is that release.

In order to care about what happens on screen, the audience needs to care about the characters. The audience needs to be invested in what unfolds, and that comes down to how well the characters are written. If there’s no development to any of the characters, the scares, deaths, slashes, and all that horror fun will fall flat. It will feel hollow. The lack of character depth will make it feel like the story has no depth. When a character gets placed into a life or death scenario, the audience just won’t care.

Much of the character depth in horror movies was satirized in Cabin in the Woods. There was the whore, who is the promiscuous character from most slasher style horror movies. The athlete was the tough guy who should be able to fend of the bad guy but rarely ever does. The scholar was the nice guy. This character would typically be the love interest for the final girl. The final girl was classified as the virgin, who is the holier, more virtuous character. Typically, this would be a female, and she would make it to the end of the movie. Hence, the term final girl. Rounding out the pack was the fool. This character tends to be the outcast of the group. Where everyone else seemed like the popular people, the fool was the one who felt a little out of place. A stoner among the preps. That sort of thing.

These character types help to deepen the characters in horror films. Mostly slashers, if those specific character types are the norm. To make good characters, though, there needs to be a little more than those basics. The base types are a jumping off point to make audiences care about the characters. The scholar could be someone who has been pining for the main character for a long time without any reciprocated feelings. The athlete could have problems at home like an abusive father or something. The virgin might be applying to different schools and be hesitant to tell people she’s moving away for college. They still fit with the character types, but they add another layer.

The payoff to these elements with the characters can make the audience struggle with the death and destruction happening in front of them. The scholar’s love for the main character might have him sacrifice himself to get her to safety. The athlete could snap in a tight situation because of the abuse. The virgin may have to reveal her school intentions partway through the movie, which ends up tearing the group apart. Character arcs like these make a horror movie more entertaining for an audience. They don’t want basic characters that have zero depth being killed off one by one without consequences or feelings of any sort.

That brings everything around to the 2006 remake of Black Christmas, which lacked the character depth needed to make the horror entertaining. Billy (Robert Mann) was a tortured murderer who escaped a mental institution and headed back to his childhood home. A sorority now lived there. Billy began killing them off one-by-one leading to a bunch of terror for the sorority sisters. The cast included Katie Cassidy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert, Crystal Lowe, Michelle Trachtenberg, Oliver Hudson, and Andrea Martin.

The only character in Black Christmas that got any real depth was Billy, the killer. This was in stark contrast to the 1974 original where Billy was the least fleshed out character. Some background was given to Billy in the remake. He had an abusive childhood home. His mother hated him because he reminded her of his father. She murdered Billy’s father while he watched. She sexually abused Billy to get pregnant, when he was 12 years old. She locked Billy in the attic. All of this led to Billy snapping. He disfigured his sister before murdering his mother and her lover. He then cooked his mother’s flesh and ate it. That was his backstory.

Having the backstory in no way made Billy a sympathetic character. The audience was expected to sympathise with the sorority sisters who were being murdered. Yet, none of the sorority sisters were given a background whatsoever. They were one note characters where the most depth was that one of them liked to drink.  There was the main character, the one who hinted at religion but never really showed an inclination one way or the other, and the den mother. As for the rest of the women, there was no way to differentiate them.

This lack of character depth created a problem in the story. Without the characters feeling developed, there was no tension when they were getting killed. They didn’t feel like real people. They felt like fodder for an unsympathetic serial killer. Sometimes having fodder for the killer to pick off can be fun. That could be seen in pretty much any slasher flick. There are people who don’t matter who are only a part of the story to have sex and/or be murdered. But they also usually have a main character or two who have a story arc. And that story arc usually involves more than trying to survive.

One example is the movie Sleepaway Camp. Most of that movie involved seeing despicable people at a summer camp being killed by an unknown assailant. Yeah, there were some fodder characters. But the main character had a storyline. She was trying to come out of her shy shell at summer camp, while the other campers were picking on her. Her cousin was trying to defend her honour and keep her safe. She was the outcast just trying to find a place to fit in.

Another example is Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. Sure, it was another movie where Jason went around killing people. This time it was on a boat and in Manhattan instead of around Crystal Lake. There were obvious fodder characters who only entered the story to be killed. That happens a lot in the Friday the 13^th movies. But the main character had a story arc. She grew up with an overbearing family. She was going on this trip and was going to spread her wings. She was coming out of her shell. This is a pretty similar storyline to Sleepaway Camp. It’s a storyline, though.

With Black Christmas, there was no real storyline for the main character. The closest the movie ever came to that was the reveal that the main character’s boyfriend had a sex tape with her best friend. The main character didn’t know about that sex tape until the final third of the movie, and by that point, it didn’t matter. She found out and immediately had to fight off Billy. She never really processed the sex tape. There was no fallout. It didn’t matter at all. Nothing mattered at all to the main characters aside from trying not to be killed. There was not extra depth.

The 2006 remake of Black Christmas fell flat because the characters weren’t fully realized. They were there to die and that was it. They had no other storylines to them outside of dying or trying not to die. It made them hard to relate to. There was no immersion into their world because their world was only death. It’s tough to invest in characters who have no depth, no development, and no secondary motivations. As flimsy as some b-plots are in slasher movies, having them can elevate the movies above a showcase of gore effects.

A good horror movie is effective through bringing an audience into the world. A close connection to what happens on screen can scare a person more than watching mindless death. It’s like going to a haunted house. When a person walks through a haunted house, they are more scared than hearing about a haunted house because they are in it. They are immersed in the experience. Horror movies need to immerse the audience to satisfyingly scare them. Good characters, good stories, and good atmosphere can do that. Bad movies sometimes forget that these elements are key. And that’s how we end up here.

Now let’s get through a few notes and head on out for the week:

• Sleepaway Camp (week 150) and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (week 294) were mentioned in this post.
• Black Christmas featured Michael Adamthwaite, who has been a part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies a few times. He was previously in The Marine 3: Homefront (week 30), Repeaters (week 62), Skin Trade (week 146), and In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220).
• Cainan Wiebe became a three-timer this week, after already appearing in Air Buddies (week 270) and Snow Buddies (week 270).
• Leela Savasta is another three-timer for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Her three movies were The Craigslist Killer (week 17), Santa’s Little Helper (week 315), and Black Christmas.
• The final three-timer was Aaron Pearl, who had already shown up in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220) and Far Cry (week 364) before Black Christmas.
• Jessica Harmon was in Black Christmas. She was also in The Marine 3: Homefront (week 30).
• One of the sorority sisters in Black Christmas was played by Lacey Chabert, who was in Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3: Viva La Fiesta! (week 70).
• Black Christmas saw the second appearance of Anne Marie DeLuise, who had previously appeared in Iron Eagle IV (week 90).
• Karin Konoval returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies this week. She had first shown up in Alone in the Dark (week 152).
• Finally, Ron Selmour, an actor from In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220), popped up in Black Christmas.
• Have you seen Black Christmas? What did you think? Were the characters as non-existent as I said they were? Do you think slasher movies should have some sort of simple arc for the characters? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• If you want to, you can also use Twitter or the comments to let me know about the movies I should be checking out for future weeks of the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m going to start working on the next bunch of the schedule soon, and you can sneak some suggestions in there by letting me know now.
• If you have time, give the Sunday “Bad” Movies Instagram account a look. There’s some fun stuff there.
• Let’s get a quick talk about next week in here. There will be a post for the next movie, Last Ounce of Courage. That’s the movie. It’s out there. If things go as planned, there will also be a belated post for Far Cry. I’ve got three posts that were supposed to come out last month that I need to get up, and that’s the first of them. So, two posts, if everything goes as planned. We’ll see. Come back soon!