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Pendant ce temps sur Terre (2024)
The plot loses it
What is the purpose for choosing to live? To simply exist? To strive toward a goal? What if you're only dreaming?
Perhaps this profound themes are worth delving into, notwithstanding the escapist entertainment nature of cinema (especially multiplex releases--although I was the only one in this particular theater during this Tuesday afternoon screening), and perhaps the possible answers rightfully frustrate a brain keen as are all organs to perpetuate its existence (at least during the window of procreation, for a biological lifeform). But Meanwhile on Earth gets there only after becoming stuck in a plot of its own device.
Act I of Meanwhile on Earth is captivating, and the picture can by and large be held together by the strong performance of its lead--the actors who play the characters of her mama and papa are also quite strong. But all the sf, horror, & psychological thriller threads get subsumed by sentiment & melodrama, as the writer/director constructs this arbitrary game that protagonist must play, providing a raison d'etre for the subsequent series of scenes but existing only for its own sake/to fulfill requirements of "a good screenplay".
By the time we reach the one-dimensional scene of the sexual assault (the whole thing written embarrassingly) culminating in a farcical revenge fantasy, the intriguing potentialities offered previously have been lost, so that we as the audience are left to only keep watching for the fulfilment of a goal...or not.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
All the pitfalls of a microbudget, but Leatherface steals the show
I had been planning this night to just give Megalopolis a shot--it couldn't be as bad as all the reviews made it out to be: those were just ad hominem attacks masquerading as film criticism, right? No, that passion project is totally bad--but then I saw The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was being shown in theaters for its 50th anniversary, so what better way to kick off the month of horror movies than to make this my own double feature, before heading over to the IMAX theater (which I walked out of not 15 minutes into)?
From the start, Tobe Hooper's microbudget showed. The poor writing, done by amateurs in charge of the production (namely him and an assistant), starting with a redundantly unnecessary opening voiceover, and that trap of too much filler extending the running time beyond truly impactful horror carried on throughout. It's the '70s, so of course we get sexually-active (more or less), annoying teens--these ones are kinda squares, or else it took a little longer for the New Agey hippie culture to make its way down to Texas--out in the wilderness, having inane conversations until we want the killer to shut them up already. (On the plus side, being the '70s, the instigating motivation for the titular monstrosity is labor issues, as a technological innovation automated away a job performed proudly by a certain folk, who snapped after losing their livelihood and now worship the death they're condemned to in this country of capitalism red in tooth & claw--so o the irony in that these latest victims are descendants of the man who put this particular family out of business, and are in fact only in the area because of that relation.) There's also a bizarre range of cinematography, including Dutch angles and dolly tracking establishing shots of exteriors. And the soundboard is mixed, so that what largely seems diagetic can erratically be too loud or not loud enough. Oh, and we don't get to see any actual gore.
But that's not to say the violence isn't effective. Really, the only moments that make this film still worth seeing today are the extended shots of Leatherface chasing, capturing, and assaulting his series of victims. With the relatively cinema verite production level, it's striking to see the monster in real time preying on shrieking teens. Of course we'd like to be able to see practical effects to make the chainsaw attacks more visceral, but to see an oversized psycho chase someone die, carry them squirming, bash them with a hammer, etc. Is a level of realism that the FX-laden horror to come misses out on.
OK, two other reasons to still watch this ur-text of modern horror. One, the Act II-III turn is legendarily imaginative--even if these scenes, and the chase amidst bracketing them, are also too drawn out--as all the pieces add up into more than the sum of their parts, a family even more bizarre than we could have expected, Grand Guignol in an American heartland. Two, the closing image of Leatherface swinging his roaring chainsaw balletically in the full-moon sun is beautiful cinema--the Gothic reduced to a childlike reverie. (Nevermind that we don't find out the exact fate of the black truck-driver. Nor Jeff.)
Megalopolis (2024)
Believe the reviews: this one is as bad as they say it is
This is only the second movie I ever walked out of--the preceding time being, as a teen, some Mission Impossible installment. I gave it about 10 minutes before realizing this amount of chintzy cringe wasn't worth the rest of my night.
It was awful watching as capable an actor as Adam Driver have to overact terribly written actions and lines. The voiceovers were entirely infantilizing. And the CG architecture with that costume design (really the whole premise) is the sort of corny and poorly executed shlock you find yourself horrified to realize has come from no one but the auteur who did The Godfather.
My how New Hollywood has fallen--Scorcese's latest picture was overrated, but this project is an exercise in someone who has lost touch with the world as experienced by those people in the theater seats of the chains having to show it. The product is exactly like watching a play put on by a theater manager who has far too much power over his repertorie. The Rain People is one of my favorite films of all time. And Peggy Sue Got Married is a great movie. (To say nothing of the obvious pieces in Coppola's oeuvre.) How could this happen?
Strange Darling (2023)
Frequently proficient photography (of forgettable content)
More films should be shot in 35mm. And more films should be directed by cinematographers. Even if there's not much to the screenplay or even necessarily the acting, a picture with some great shots is better than most other major motion pictures available in theaters.
But yeah, although this thriller does a good job (more or less) of delivering twist after twist, it doesn't ultimately have anything to say. Instead, it's an exercise in gender-flipping--replete with addressing, only to discard, the associated mores of today vs. The 1970s origin material--that sort of exploitation flick that's not so much a portrait of a serial killer as a supervillian action spree.
Cuckoo (2024)
Doesn't live up to one of the all-time best trailers
This and In a Violent Nature have been 2 of my most-anticipated movies to watch in theater this year, based on trailers before other screenings. The result isn't necessarily time ill-spent, but it is a product that begs the question of why the investment was made.
Superficially, the picture is fine to look at, with a bougie location used (not enough) as eye-candy, and corresponding costume design that invents a reconstructed retro-bougie casual chic. But the screenplay is cinematic juvenilia, which of course lets the whole movie down. The timing of plot setups into payoffs is laughable, as is the plot itself. And rather than embracing the uncanny or absurd, this picture reaches for earnestness, resulting in soap opera dramatic moments as if they're petitioning for Academy Awards.
(Along these lines, this movie feels like--yet another--audition for Hunter Schafer. Her acting career is building up into something powerful; but it'll take a more talented director than one of the "New Weird Wave"--which is hardly weird, instead trading for unexpected tonal affects to tilt major motion picture budgeted mis-en-scene just enough to garner clout--to realize that potential.)
Kinds of Kindness (2024)
Gratuitous
This picture is certainly for me between a below-average 4/10 and doesn't-need-to-exist 2/10 (but not an actively-bad 1/10).
Fundamentally, Yorgos is working on shaky ground. He demands patience in engagement from his audience, with long shots panning from an aesthetic framing far away from the speaking actors into the subject, and slowly-developing plots including dialogue-for-dialogue's-sake, yet he also essentially wants his movies to be entertainment (c.f. The Plum Crazy Dodge Challenger whipping around all CG, and the jarringly jocular credit scenes). He also wants his actors to deliver their lines as if they are indeed reading lines from a script, an irrealism that qualifies his films for the Greek Weird Wave yet does little else, an absurdism-for-absurdism's sake that can come off as uninteresting acting--and what a shame, when there are such interesting actors available to work with! From the currently-one-of-the-best-of-his-generation Jesse Plemmons underutilized into uncertainty to another director not knowing how to best direct Margaret Qualley (let's get her away from her mom and towards the dramatic girl-next-door meets femme-fatale she's capable of, with Quentin Tarentino's Once Upon a Time in the West a launching pad of potential--I'm thinking a role in a Joyce Carol Oates story adaptation); even Hunter Schafer is only given one micro-role, despite her remarkable abilities; as for Emma Stone, she's just not doing it for me, which makes sense with how much Yorgos seems to get on with her. And this is an anthology film of 3 short stories--including Bierceian twists--which demands the interest of a viewer who's signed up for a particular picture but perhaps not each of these 3 different ones, especially as they pass frivolously enough (the first of the stories is boring; the second becomes an intriguing Invasion of the Body Snatchers tale that resolves both too satisfyingly and not satisfyingly enough; and the third is an X-Files-esque road tale that has all the entertaining pieces of a comic book). Yorgos is a self-indulgent auteur, which is good for a brand in today's Instagrammable cinema but which as candy is unsatisfyingly hollow to mature consumers.
In a Violent Nature (2024)
This is cinema for people who enjoy cinema.
This is radical cinema (for a movie theater chain release).
"A slasher from the POV of the killer" pretty much describes it all, but we can get more specific than that. This is a close third-person film following a Jason-esque slasher in a knowing parody of Friday the 13th. The pacing takes its time, with photography that is in multiple shots beautiful. That attention to the visual details of cinema, at the expense of any depth of plot or character, and even eschewing the typical modern scare tactics of horror (e.g. Jump scares, absence of daylight), is wholly foreign to Hollywood releases from time immemorial. And what a shame that is--this picture begs the question, why aren't more, if not all slashers shot this way?
The deconstruction of slasher tropes is mainly visual--the writing is shallow, and most of the scenes aren't to be taken seriously (there is one, drawn-out scene that is truly disturbing, which is a credit to the actor portraying the victim, as well as the framing of the sequence). And, for the postmodern viewer, there is from start to finish one cloyingly unanswered question: who is supposed to be holding this quite mobile camera?
I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
Tearjerking period piece about coming out (or not) as gender-nonconforming
I feel I have to write an apologia for my rating, because this is actually an 8.5 film for me.
This is destined to become a cult classic. It's been written about plenty before how this captures a time before the internet accelerated fandom and yet while there was remarkable TV (escapism) being produced. Jane Schoenbrun's genius--besides a couple excellent transitions--is that she achieves art by producing questions, not answers.
The principal actors (including the boy who depicts the main character as a pre-teen) have to be commended, as it's got to be exceedingly difficult to act autism, or more to the point to depict a character who's emotionally distanced themself from reality due to the mental torture of being unable to express their authentic self. There are plenty of shining moments, and Brigette Lundy-Paine in particular achieves an enigmatic performance that will be worth returning to for cinephiles for the rest of time. But there are moments when even Brigette overacts (especially early on), and the other actors aren't always able to succeed in portraying awkward surfaces with resonant emotional sublimation.
The cinematography is quite good, although it doesn't rise to the greatest-of-all-time that would deserve a 10/10.
What the movie could really have done without is the voiceovers/direct addresses. Maybe that postmodern extravagance is supposed to be reminiscent of the '90s shows which are being evoked--although that seemed to be done more in kids' shows--but it doesn't add meaning to the film's narrative.
Mars Express (2023)
The cyberpunk neo-noir story, à la française
All the Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? Tropes are well-worn by now (notwithstanding the updated understanding--and not--of these technologies), but this French anime is worth existing if only for being another example in major motion picture theater chains of how much cooler a world we could be living in.
The movie is most successful when it's being a thriller.
I do appreciate the makers of this picture actually trying to depict the more metaphysical cyberpunk scenes (jacking into a brain-farm; transcending one's robot body into a collective digital conscious), even if the success is only relative (anti-climactic lines of code; a 2001: A Space Odyssey redux, respectively).
This superflat animation--which dips into some digital animation action and vehicle sequences--calls attention to itself.
The First Omen (2024)
What if evil is a real part of our life?
It's difficult to make your own film when it has to be the prequel to one of the most iconic horror pictures. Yet this effort, while seemingly all over the place, and having to retread the major tropes of the franchise, comes together as the run-time agglomerates on, resulting in the most profound expression of the Catholic Church's sex scandals that I've seen thus far in cinema.
That said, it's not much more of an exceptional film than on those terms. There's some time relishing the period piece mis-en-scene in Act I, and as with major motion pictures in general nowadays there's a high bar for quality photography, and indeed there are even some great shots (c.f. Any setup with a mirror, or the noir tight angle of the lead character walking toward the camera in a dark alley). But the horror is all almost comically overdone, relying on jump scares, most of all loud sudden noises, and trying to depict demons at times via practical effects and at other times more CGI, but always running into the same issue that was present in Night of the Demon: we can't suspend our disbelief at a representation of something so alien to our lived experiences, so the monster is met with incredulity--on the other hand, the evil that humans actually inflict on each other, as depicted as well as hinted at/allegorized, is movingly impactful.
I'm in general a fan of satanic possession/incarnation movies, as they get us to think about moral philosophy in the entertaining imaginative spaces of the horror genre and the superstitions of religions we're supposed to have shed. The Omen is as much of a lodestone as The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby in that regard; and while I don't quite have the same response to this prequel as I did to the remake of The Omen--a fine movie, but simply a modern production of the original, and therefore why did that money need to be spent, and that time diverted?--there is the question of why The First Omen needs to wallow in modern horror trappings, rather than totally focus on the actually compelling themes--first of all, the matter of being gaslit over evil that has traumatized you; and also, more secondarily, the political climate of the '70s (especially Italy), as secularism takes over cultural hegemony from religion (thereby threatening the relevance of long-time ways of doing and thinking about things).
(One more note: the noir diversions with the priest who introduces us to this picture, while certainly an entertaining convention that we're all accustomed to in this subgenre of devil cinema, feel superfluously sewn on--"characters" reading lines we know too well by now.)
Late Night with the Devil (2023)
A high concept that fails to deliver
I watched Late Night with the Devil late at night (but in a sparsely attended showing a chain multiplex). From the trailers and press releases, I was mildly interested--it takes a lot for me to not just give any satanic possession movie a watch (like Immaculate looking utterly unoriginal)--and certain circumstances conspired for me to spend $5 on a ticket.
The product feels like a first film, particularly babby's first screenplay, as there are certain original ideas floating around, and interesting approaches for tropes, yet ultimately not the right expertise to pull it off, as ultimately the director(s) don't have anything to add to the genre other than a form that has seen something of a resurgence in interest: as a total fan of The Eric Andre Show, I love '70s late-night talk show period stylings as much as anyone, but the set dressing isn't enough to carry a demonic possession picture when the movie itself mentions--and that introduction is horribly over-extended, with all that framing poorly executed anyways, as the voiceover is supposedly contextualizing this as some TV special yet without the feel of what we actually see on TV, with all kinds of filler imagery and words that we certainly don't need by this point--all the evil that actually existed at the time--indeed, this feels like Halloween shlock, which makes the April release ill-fitting, instead ending up something destined to be shown as an actual rerun on TVs during that season.
The performances are by & large sub-par in a lack of talent way, not camp. Maybe that is the legacy of '70s television, but it means that era will be much better remembered for Amityville.
Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
Late-Cold War dirty realism neo noir-lite pleasantly succeeds
I almost rated this movie a 7. It spoke to me, although objectively I have to consider it only as above average.
First off, the costumery and mis-en-scene is great. The outfits and the hairstyles (sure, also the soundtrack) were really all that makes this movie count as a period piece--other than a mention of the Berlin Wall, and I suppose the subject of (female) bodybuilding (and the drugs that entails), lending this neo-noir certain Cold War themes about power being destructive--but that was totally worth it. And the "Nevada" (shot in New Mexico) suburban desert buildings--besides evoking for me a sort of Southern California I look at romantically--complete the imagery for a dirty realism text in 2024(!).
The director knows how to compose scenes. Even when the writing doesn't quite hold up, the lines being said are just enough, the pacing is taught enough, and the photography is dynamic enough to convey the idea/emotion.
Which does bring me to the denouement: while initially jarring, I ultimately had to consider it as working. Risking intentional fallacy, I can understand a director/writer who crafts this sort of screenplay nowadays and knows that it can never end well for two starcrossed lovers caught in a crime spree under the modern U. S. criminal-justice system; so why not (as a postmodernist) just embrace the fact that this is cinema, that we want to see the happy ending, and to have fun with it? The seriousness is taken out of the plot, but for those in the theater laughing at what they consider camp--and, sure, the acting isn't always perfect, as the leads can't quite perform up to that responsibility, and Ed Harris plays a bit cartoonishly, and the "psycho girlfriend" character overacts (only Jena Malone really delivers a consistently good performance)--we can only surmise that they have never been caught in love with someone for whom there is a mutual, essential, inescapable danger, and that is the theme this picture surely succeeds in conveying.
Dune: Part Two (2024)
The Avengers-era "cinema" for a Call of Duty generation
I watched Dune: Part Two on IMAX (as seems befitting that sort of big-budget picture), in pretty good seats considering the house was packed with a diverse crowd of young adults for the late-night showing.
My review of the first of Denis Villeneuve's adaptations was that it was pretty to look at, but basically uninteresting in its plot, a major let-down considering how hyped the books have been, when on the screen they're no better than Star Wars. This second one exhibits those same features, but worse.
This is basically an action movie--a genre which I'm fundamentally uninterested in--which seems at odds with all the talk of Dune being characterized by complex political & economic maneuvering--of which this film does include some, albeit parenthetically. The scenes are impressionistic in their pacing and content, and expressionistic in that the photography & score are more about attempting to convey emotionality, or at least get the adrenaline pumping, than any sort of profound characterizations or themes. This is Lawrence of Arabia in space but with the Cold War as the contemporary allegory. That sort of story would still have been resonant during the post-9/11 era, but we've moved on from those wars by now into an altogether different geopolitics and political economy.
The monumentalism of the shots can be impressive, and certainly the design of the mechanical vehicles is (in addition to the still-eye candy costumes), but there are too many moments where it's like watching a video game cut-scene, or even a video game playing out (c.f. The entire opening sequence). Cinema is going backwards when that's the case. And there are some egregious dissonances in the sound design, most of all in the various accents the actors were allowed to use, which takes us out of the suspension of disbelief, but also in the over-application of non-diegetic score, which treats the audience as dumb emotions-receptacles, during scenes that by-and-large do not earn such responses.
(The only outstanding sequence of the film is when Paul attempts his first worm-ride, which is almost as exhilirating as the roller coaster ride it attempts to be for us on screen.)
There are also weird dissonances in this film attempting to be humorous, as the on-again off-again nature of those lines (and how they're delivered) feel like a wink to the audience that this allegory of Abrahamic religions co-opting a people's revolution--albeit against a totalitarian capitalist empire, mixing all kinds of economic stages of history, much as the genres of swords & planets and sci-fi and fantasy are mixed--is not to be taken too seriously in our secular times. But then, what are we to take from this "epic"?
Drive-Away Dolls (2024)
Banal sex & violence comedy
Drive-Away Dolls is the movie I'd been most looking forward to seeing in theaters since Killers of the Flower Moon--I'm a fan of noir and all its derivatives, and so one featuring as its protagonists two gay girls? Sign me up--for that reason Love Lies Bleeding is next on that most anticipated list for me (although I fear it will be as disappointing as all the ones that came before). Specifically, a buddy road crime movie--I should've known it was a Coen film, but I didn't until hearing the release date hype for it on the radio.
But I also happened to see an early review pop up in my feed, titled something like "Drive-Away Dolls is the horniest and campiest Coen film yet", and though it's too inconsistent in its delivery (thanks to uneven performances by largely uninspiring/underdeveloped actors) to qualify as campiest, it certainly is horny. That's a problem, when it comes to a Hollywood feature film, as notwithstanding a raunchy second opening scene and some more titties later on, the depiction of sexuality is PG-censored. It's more apropos to consider this picture as in the lineage of the Code Era movies it evokes with its opening sequence (which achieves camp, to a ludicrous success that evades most of the rest of the hour & a half run-time), along the lines of the fast-talking romantic comedies, interspersed with some noir. (Add to that some interspersing of '60s cinema, which in combination with some '70s wardrobes confuses the whole historicity of the ostensible period piece, supposedly set during the run-up to the U. S. election debacle at the turn-of-the-millennium--nevermind the dating of the soundtrack, nor the too-2020s' photography.) And at the end of the day--indeed, as the credits roll--we can't escape the fact that this supposedly queer film, evidently trying to be a subversive pastiche, has been written/directed/produced by a husband & wife--notwithstanding the husband's CV, which is more than enough evidence of genius as a writer and director.
Really, this is a screenplay on a silver screen. The actors are reading their lines; the lines are meant to have punch; the scenes are brief, almost rapid, with playful transitions; but it doesn't add up to anything, nor is it any deep. Is it a good time for an evening out? Almost.
(I try not to take a restroom break during a movie at a theater, but I didn't feel too bad doing so during this one--even though its run-time is sub-90 minutes, the trailers/commercials at the Cinemark where I viewed this ran on notoriously long past the given starting time--even as I apparently missed the girls delivering the drive-away, receiving the severed head, and thereby realizing they're in a scenario much greater than their road trip sex romp--though, are they really?)
Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka (2023)
Ho-hum mastery
I watched the English dub in theaters--which was a bit over-dramatic vocally but the bolstered music surely created a bigger impact.
The Boy and the Heron is par for the course by and large for what we expect from a Studio Ghibli movie: "slow", cityfolk returning to the countryside to encounter magical otherworlders that enable their own growth as a person, a parent marked by death, supreme artistry in conjuring the specific details of something in motion, beautiful though static painterly landscapes. The excellence in animation is surely something we can take for granted, and the fact that we're still able to enjoy such efforts in theaters as they come out is truly special. But this particular plot is especially surrealistic, treading Ghibli's typical territory of fantasy existing as a space for people to work out their trauma so that they can come back into the real world emboldened to take on the difficulties that life throws at each of us (as we mustn't stay in those escapist realms forever).
Just watching the animation of the opening sequence, the aforementioned specific details the geniuses at Ghibli chose to illustrate, overwhelmed me emotionally to the verge of tears, as I was reminded of what true artists I was able to again encounter. And the minimalism of the intro and outro lines of dialogue felt right--as did other brief mentions of important details that we're left to piece together, an adult move so as not to baby the audience with inartistic exposition, albeit there are some plot threads that may be holey.
There's not really anything new here for Ghibli fans to experience, only a return to the enjoyment of what the Studio generally does so well. That may be disappointing--and certainly Ghibli's full-bore plunges into fantasy seem to me the better pictures than their slice-of-life pieces, which are at times tedious--but ultimately it's just telling of Miyazaki Hayao being of a certain generational moment of Japan, which will go on existing through his ouevre.
Saltburn (2023)
Hit and miss
To watch Saltburn is to be audience to a great filmmaker. As the intro transitioned into the opening credit sequence, I was emotionally overwhelmed at the profound style of filmography that is so lacking in most movie releases nowadays and yet that I was able to experience at my local chain theater. There are regularly fantastic shots through the course of the film, and some of the editing is super impactful. Of course the mis-en-scene is grand, and though the period is too ill-defined to yet feel like a period piece--this is coming from one who lived some formative years then, as a high schooler c. 2006--the soundtrack (and certain clothes, i.e. Trashy colors and swim-prep summerwear) provides just enough of a setting.
I also got choked up when the main character delivers the line that he's not like the mooted object of affection, that his life actually depends on succeeding in school (rather than being born with a silver spoon). And yet while the film does deliver several more cutting lines in that millenial theme of inequality (delivered via the British sociocultural touchstones of class), it ultimately banalizes that profound critique by transforming into a neo-Gothic monster movie, in which the traditionally-unsuspecting outsider who finds himself in an old mansion with a creepy family does not fall victim to the aristocratic monsters, nor does he slay them as such, but rather the genre is inverted, as he himself turns out to be the monster. (Also, this inversion brings us back to uncomfortable classic Hollywood territory regarding non-heteronormative sexuality, as the psychosexual perversions engaged in by that main character become not erotic metaphors for the desire of wealth by the proletariat as in their initial reading but are rendered in the end as behaviors to be condemned as associated with psychopathic killers. This problematic neo-Hitchcockian twist stood out all the moreso during my viewing experience among, for lack of a better term, a half-full theater of "normies", i.e. A typical stratum of suburban Estadounidenses, who generally laughed in unease, or expressed disgust sex--or even just nude--scenes.)
Emerald Fennell is capable of masterful cinema, so it's too bad that the screenplay lets this picture down, into something that provides scenes to certainly savor but overall is jumbled into a messy narrative not worth remembering.
(P. S. Kudos to IMDB for being the first place I saw anything about this film, when I was able to first watch the trailer. I've been awaiting it ever since as one of the few major releases I wanted to catch in theater, and I am glad I was able to, for those aforementioned moments.)
Black Christmas (1974)
Atmosphere unsupported by screenwriting
Black Christmas has excellent sound design--notwithstanding the dated psychotic crank-caller hamming it up--and moments of outstandingly photographed mis-en-scene, only for B-movie writing & acting to denigrate this picture into a wooden, illogical late-night movie for college kids.
Released the year after The Exorcist and several years before Halloween, Black Christmas uses tried (if not so true) techniques of horror from an age when it was part of a mainstream cinema repertoire while helping to establish tropes that would go on to define the new, summer-flicks-for-the-teens production of horror. The crank-caller sounds at times like Norman Bates schizo playing out his mother, and at other times like Pazuzu in guttural possession of Regan, each contributing to the general explanation of killers as psychotic monsters whose split-personalities enable them to do what normally wouldn't be done. There's also a scene late in the movie where the lieutenant is standing in the doorway of a dark room--that turns out to be the recital space where the Phantom of the Opera-esque red herring villain--which totally evokes the German Expressionist shots of The Exorcist (c.f. In particular the iconic poster shot). The aforementioned psychotic, gender-bending nature of the villainy as I said harks to Hitchcock and older conceptualizations of horror, as does the psychological preying, but also choosing to obscure any showings of the "monster" belongs to that older cinema. But then there are aspects in which Black Christmas lives up to its reputation as a landmark slasher, with the shots of said slasher in shadow in the background vs. The unsuspecting victims in the foreground. That said, the aestheticized violence are in the tradition of the forerunner giallo genre, even as the chosen methods of murder (slashing and strangulation) are not depicted so much as the resultant corpses (particularly headshots thereof, quite composed). Unfortunately, where Black Christmas does truly presage the Americanization of giallo into the slasher genre is with the producing towards teens, taking old teen movie-style writing from the beaches to horror--and even including an old actor to ham it up, which would be shockingly incongruent to the tone of the overall picture if there weren't so many moments of all the characters just not taking it super seriously that someone's killing girls in their immediate vicinity--which in this case is more towards Friday the 13th's campy caliber than Halloween's more restrained accuracy.
One way in which Black Christmas's usage of old cinematic conceptions of horror does work (very well) is in its sound design. If you're not going to show the monster, then you better have some scary noises of the monster in its rampage, to deploy as terror rather than horror, and Black Christmas certainly delivers. The Act III moment in which the killer's pounding on the door that the Final Girl's bolted shut compares well with the most frightening moment in Robert Wise's The Haunting, when the supernatural presence is banging on the door.
The writing ruins it for me, though--and where bad writing lies, bad acting will follow, not least to deliver those eye-rolling lines. Of course it's illogical that the corpses never decompose as time passes (not physically nor by odor, which would surely have led the girls and then the cops to the attic). But even the writing that does hold up, which could make Black Christmas something of a minor feminist landmark, in the Final Girl standing up to her boyfriend in wanting an abortion to continue the life she's dreamed of even as he squanders his, is victim to the muddling plot, which may hold some value in paralleling how monstrous it can be for a man to demand his decision in abortion vs. A woman's but gets confused by the decision to have said villain just turn out to be an artist suffering a nervous breakdown, so that the killer is some unknown brown-eyed man--possibly the boyfriend of the Jewess, who was mentioned but never showed up. That "twist"--oh, you think it's so obvious who the killer is? Well, guess what? You have no idea!--is a Theatre of Cruelty act of absurdism to an audience conditioned to a solvable mental game: the murder mystery should have a logical explanation based on the content provided, or else why did we consume the text? To bear witness to the inexplainable evil that can afflict human existence? This is where the modern horror that Black Christmas allegedly ushers in falls short of the New Hollywood horror of The Exorcist, or even Old Hollywood horror: if some guy is killing people because he snapped or is cracked, that's an amoral anomaly that we can only throw up our hands/shrug at--OK, sure that's a possibility, and I can also be struck by lightning, so what? Whereas evil is rendered profound when considered in light of a force beyond our understanding--in The Exorcist, this includes both the lack of understanding in treating mental illness that all the professionals depicted exhibit as well as the possibility of the supernatural re: demons on Earth--and to be able to fathom something as beyond our understanding we must have a specific notion as to what that thing may be. Black Christmas fails by offering only vagueness, not ambiguity.