The sisters of Clemson University's Delta Alpha Kappa sorority are looking forward to the holidays, and spending time with their families.
Unfortunately for them, their sorority house was once the home of one Billy Lenz. At Xmas fifteen years ago, Billy murdered his parents and mutilated his sister (who is also his daughter: don't ask). He's spent the time since then in an institute for the criminally insane. This year, he intends to finally escape and find a new family to spent the holidays with.
Targeted by a serial killer for Christmas? So far, so bad! But though they don't yet know it, it's even worse than that: sorority sisters start getting murdered even before Billy makes his escape. Why are two killers targeting these young women?
Well, for those of us in the audience, the identify of the second killer isn't all that hard to guess. For the unfortunate victims, of course, it will be half the film before they even know they are in danger.
This film - often styled Black X-Mas, as above - is a remake of a 1974 proto-slasher film (featuring none other than Superman's Margot Kidder). It features a cast of then-TV-famous young women including Buffy's Michelle Trachtenberg and Party of Five's Lacey Chabert, as well as a pre-Arrow Katie Cassidy. That's probably some pretty good geek-bait, honestly.
Is it any good, though? Wellllll ... it's okay, I guess? It gets off to a fast start and it has plenty of the murderin' action that people generally watch slasher films to get. Also, the cast is solid. On the other hand, I think it loses a fair bit of momentum because it keeps stopping to fill in the backstory of the murderer. That's a big sin in this genre, to my mind.
At the end of the day, I didn't enjoy this enough that I would recommend it, but I did like it enough that I would like to check out the original.
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