Scores thanks to its stylish visuals, fiendishly inventive slaughter and unexpected twists.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 31, 2024

For those in search of more “slay” than “sleigh,” 'Black Christmas' offers a chilling experience.

| Oct 25, 2024

Bob Clark's Black Christmas is a masterful exercise in tension. That it happens to be one of the most progressive horror films of the '70s is just an added bonus.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 21, 2024

This proto-slasher helped to establish the formula and received virtually none of the credit. Quite honestly a near perfect film and one that dares to say the word "abortion" in 1974, no less!

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 18, 2024

I found all of the characters incredibly unlikeable and the writing left a lot to be desired. I also wish there was more gore.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 2, 2024

I did not enjoy this despite its influence of some of my favorite horror film franchises. The character choices and performances were so out of pocket.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 2, 2024

Although it’s been 49 years since Jess (Olivia Hussey), Barb (Margot Kidder), and the rest of the dorm confronted the offensive murderer, the film remains ageless as its themes of body autonomy and female empowerment are more important than ever.

| Original Score: A | Dec 12, 2023

…disturbing, highly-influential horror sleeper…

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 27, 2023

Black Christmas is one of the best in the endless cycle of slasher flicks, largely because it arrived before the genre got set within its tired and overly familiar parameters.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 12, 2022

...Black Christmas is a holiday classic and a film that builds horror's foundation for more than its kills. It is with us 45 years later because of how it establishes tropes and how it presents a depiction of being a woman in a real and authentic way.

| Dec 27, 2019

The editing is more butchered that the victims.

| Nov 26, 2019

Something of a period piece, though an influential one -- and still an effective festive horror, as a killer stalks the young women of a sorority while the men in their lives also try to control them. Margot Kidder is fantastic as the damaged Barb.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 5, 2018

There's no doubting that Black Christmas had all the advantages of being first of its kind. The film stands as the mother of the modern slasher. It was able to make its own rules, and subsequently created a template for the films that came after.

| Nov 1, 2018

It is the uncertainty that is unveiled in the final moments before the credits roll that makes Black Christmas a quintessentially Canadian masterpiece.

| Oct 31, 2018

Black Christmas is a pioneering genre film. If you've seen a slasher film, almost any slasher film, you've likely seen the tropes that Black Christmas created.

| Oct 3, 2018

Made at a time when there were as yet no fixed rules for the slasher subgenre, here anything goes, and the survival of neither virgin nor even final girl comes guaranteed.

| Nov 13, 2017

The writing is also very good and a reminder of a time when movies were genuinely made for adults.

| Aug 24, 2017

A well-made excursion into the bloody unknown, driven by characterization and modulated by a tone that knows when to amplify the scares and when to back away from them, usually at the service of a story with the morbid curiosity to investigate further.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 1, 2016

One of the better slasher films.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 23, 2010

While I'll always love The Shape emerging to chase after Laurie Strode, for my money "Black Christmas" is the supreme slasher film...

| Dec 18, 2010