Three years ago, Riley was sexually assaulted. She reported the rape to the police, but nobody believed her (except her sorority sisters, that is). And the entire experience changed her. She couldn’t see the point in fighting if it wasn’t going to make a difference anyway, so she became docile and meek.
However, that all changes over Christmas break. While many of the students at Hawthorne College head home for the holidays, Riley and three other members of her sorority prepare for their annual “Orphan’s Dinner” (a celebration for anyone stuck at school over break). They get a tree, they invite some other “orphans” over, and they cook a holiday ham.
But then Riley gets a mysterious phone call from the mother of her “little sister,” Helena. Helena is missing. And she’s not the only one. Just a few days earlier, one of the young women from another sorority house disappeared as well.
Riley is convinced that it has something to do with their performance at the DKO house’s talent show. She and her sisters performed an alternative version of “Up on the Housetop” calling out the rape culture of Hawthorne’s fraternity houses. But fellow sister Kris isn’t so sure: After all, kidnapping people is a pretty extreme reaction to a song.
But when a group of hooded and masked figures attack the women in their sorority house, Riley and her sisters must come together to fight back to find out who’s behind these attacks.
And their message is clear this time: “You messed with the wrong sisters.”
[Note: Spoilers are contained in the sections below.]
The women of Riley’s sorority stand together. When nobody else believes Riley about her assault, they stick with her and support her. They encourage her to continue fighting even when she loses hope, and they eventually help her to overcome her fears.
Some of the more outspoken members, such as Kris, make it a point to confront misogynistic behavior on campus. Kris succeeds in having a bust of the college’s founder removed, since he was a known racist and sexist—among some other really bad things, as we’ll see. And she also petitions to have an extremely biased professor fired. A few men support these efforts and commend the young women for their courage and initiative.
Several characters bravely put themselves in harm’s way in order to help their friends escape danger.
This film plunges deeply into the occult and dark spirituality. The founder of the school that Riley and her friends attend, Calvin Hawthorne, was well known for his obsession with black magic and the supernatural. This becomes a key point when the fraternity brothers of DKO discover that his bust (which was removed from campus) contains magical powers, granting them the ability to create an army of men to overthrow the “threat” posed by women.
They perform a “hazing” ritual with their pledges while wearing robes and masks. This ritual involves chanting, candles and a black, blood-like substance that is placed on the foreheads of the pledges. It causes them to be possessed by the spirit of Calvin Hawthorne and grants them supernatural abilities.
Items are stolen from the women of the sorority houses to be used in the fraternity’s rituals. These items then act as homing beacons of sorts so the possessed pledges will know who to target. Men who are not part of the fraternity are targeted by the spirit of Hawthorne through a high-pitched whistle that only they can hear. It gives them headaches and brings forth their “alpha natures,” causing them to act violently.
A woman mentions her Jewish heritage while wishing a friend “merry Christmas.”
A man and woman make out, and he pushes her down onto his bed. She tries to stop him, saying “Wait!” several times, but he continues to kiss and touch her, removes his belt and grabs a condom. They are interrupted when the woman’s sorority sister enters the room and tells him to leave.
A masked figure “kisses” a woman when he spots mistletoe, but she pushes him away.
Several women dress up in “sexy Santa” costumes and perform a dance while singing a song about sexual assault with explicit lyrics. We see a woman reach inside her pants to insert a feminine hygiene product. Women talk about their different undergarments. Some women wear yoga pants.
A woman implies that she bought her sorority sister a sexual toy for Christmas. Several comments are made about sex, male anatomy and promiscuity. Masturbation is mentioned. A man makes a crude joke about nonconsensual sex.
Riley has several flashbacks to her sexual assault. Although nothing critical is seen, we see her hands pinned down and extreme discomfort on her face.
There are several fight sequences between the various sorority sisters and the hooded and masked fraternity brothers. In these scenes, people are grabbed, hit, kicked, knocked down and stabbed. Several women are yanked back by their hair and choked; a woman is stabbed with an icicle; and another is shot in the leg with an arrow and later stabbed in the stomach.
A man wraps Christmas lights around a woman’s neck and strangles her. Later, we see her dead body on a balcony. A woman is found dead, wrapped in Christmas lights with a knife stabbed through her face. Two people are shot in the head with an arrow. One man is suffocated when a woman wraps plastic around his head. Someone’s neck is snapped.
A man is set on fire when someone throws a lamp at his feet. The resulting fire consumes multiple people who are locked in the room. A masked figure uses a knife to slowly cut a woman’s cheeks to torture and scare her. Women use makeshift weapons, including a broken mop handle, a kitchen knife, a shovel and car keys (one man is successfully stabbed in the neck with said keys).
A woman throws her drink in a man’s face after he makes a joke about rape. A man starts throwing and breaking things after he discovers that someone destroyed his expensive sound equipment. Someone smashes a bust of Calvin Hawthorne. Several women receive threatening text messages before getting attacked. A woman makes a joke about how she killed her hamster by starving it while threatening to do the same to her cat.
Being a horror film, there are several jump scares throughout the movie—all featuring hooded and masked figures grabbing women suddenly.
We hear one use of the f-word and 15 uses of the s-word. We also hear five uses each of “b–ch” and “h—,” two uses of “p—,” and one use each of “d–k” and “d–mit.” God’s name is misused about 10 times, and Christ’s name is misused once as well.
Women are objectified with words such as “teases,” “bodacious” and “bimbos.” There are several crude references to male and female anatomy. Someone makes a crude hand gesture.
People drink champagne, beer and wine in several scenes. One woman becomes visibly drunk and asks if it was a mistake to mix vodka with tequila before throwing up several times. A man who normally doesn’t drink is chastised by his girlfriend when he uncharacteristically decides to have a few beers. The date-rape drug “roofies” is mentioned. A fraternity house is trashed with empty bottles and cans of alcohol.
Although Riley and her friends rightly try to eliminate “rape culture” on their campus, some of them take things too far, such as posting a video that implies all men are rapists. When the boyfriend of one woman tries to point this out, Kris and the man’s girlfriend get angry and kick him out of the house. However, Riley also calls Kris out, saying that they aren’t inspiring people but angering them when they take that approach.
Riley has no parents, and when her friend asks if calling their celebration the “Orphan’s Dinner” is insensitive, she makes a distasteful joke about it. A woman says she has her dad’s credit card, so they can spend as much money as they please. Someone says she doesn’t blame her dad for leaving her mom, since her mom is a pain. Projectile vomiting is mentioned.
In an end credits scene, a cat licks up the black blood substance that came from one of the dead fraternity brother’s bodies.
Helena betrays her sorority sisters by helping the fraternity gather personal items from the women they want to attack. She tries to convince Riley that if they submit to the men, they won’t be attacked anymore and that women rightfully belong behind men, even though these particular men are violent, cruel and heavily involved in black magic.
Black Christmas, aptly released on Friday the 13th, brings the horror genre to Christmas much in the same way the Die Hard franchise did for the action genre.
There are scary elements, bloodshed and plenty of cursing, but what viewers should really consider before going to see this film are the heavy references to sexual assault and the occult. And, obviously, many of the men in the movie embody attitudes toward women that cross the line from sexism into being truly sadistic.
Riley and many other women try to speak out against rape culture and misogyny. While protesting violence against women is honorable, the young women’s methods are often misguided and arguably cause as many problems as they solve.
Although Riley and her friends (including a few good guys who are decidedly not misogynistic) ultimately prevail, the entire message of the movie is troubling considering how they take justice into their own hands. It can be confusing, because women who have been mistreated should stand up for themselves and support one another.
But if you resort to violence to end violence, are you really accomplishing anything? Even if we allow for the fact that the film is obviously intended as a dark satire, the solution it suggests remains a deeply troubling one—especially in our increasingly fragmented and divided culture.
In the end, Black Christmas shows the strength of sisterhood—but it does so by saying that the only way to achieve one’s goals is through violence and bloodshed.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
