- Directed by Glen Morgan
- Written by Glen Morgan, Roy Moore
- Stars Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lavey Chabert
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G22-87SiYo
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
The remake of the 1974 classic, updated to use modern phone technology. It also now includes a lot more backstory on the killer, which was absent from the first film, maybe rightfully so, as this one drags a bit.
Synopsis
It’s Christmas at the sorority house. Clair signs cards and then looks in her closet. She’s immediately stabbed in the head with a fountain pen. Credits roll.
They hand out Christmas dinner at the Clark Sanitarium, and we get a look at the place. One patient, Billy Lenz, killed his whole family back in the day. His mother kept him in the attic when he was little, and every year he wants to escape and go home and kill her once again. The sorority used to be Billy’s home where this all happened.
Back in the sorority house, Megan hears someone moving around up in the attic. Naturally, she goes up there alone to check it out. She finds Claire’s body, and then the killer finds her.
Billy kills the guard with a candy cane and escapes. We get a flashback to baby Billy, who was born with a liver disease that gave him yellow skin. We move forward in time and see that Billy’s mother hates him. He peeks under the door and watches his mother kill his father on Christmas. The mother then padlocked him into the attic. In 1982, the mother comes up to the attic and has sex with Billy. Nine months later, she gives birth to Agnes.
The girls get a really strange call from Claire’s cell. The girls all laugh at Eve, the weird girl. Mrs. Mac insists that they open “Billy’s gift” first; it’s a holiday tradition since he’s kind of an urban legend about what happened in their sorority building. Then they all trade gifts in their secret Santa games until they get another creepy call, this time from Megan’s phone.
They go up to Megan’s room and find Kyle there. Kyle is Kelli’s boyfriend. Kyle tells more about Billy’s story and we see a flashback. For Christmas one year, Billy got a telescope to watch the neighbors, and he saw how they lived. Downstairs, little Agnes gets a doll. Billy comes down and abducts Agnes. He cuts out her eye and eats it before killing his stepfather and mother. He then ate various parts of them. Billy was then declared insane, and Agnes went to an orphanage.
Leigh comes to town; she’s Claire’s sister and a former member of the house. She finds a gift to the group from Billy. The power goes out. Kelli finds old sex tapes involving Kyle, and they fight.
There’s an entirely too long period of people looking angry, sick, and sullen while eyes peek at them from little holes in the wall and floor. Dana gets killed under the porch, and soon the girls get a call from her that’s just more incoherent rambling.
The girls find Eve’s head in the parking lot, which removes all doubt that something’s going on. Mrs. Mac says “He’s home.” They call the police, but with the storm, it may be as long as two hours until they arrive.
Mrs. Mac wants to get in the car and drive to the police station. She and one of the girls have to defrost and scrape the ice off the car first. This goes badly for both of them.
Several more girls are killed, and Kyle shows up again. Billy calls, wanting to know where Agnes is. “She’s my family now!”
For some reason, Kelli, Kyle, and Leigh decide to go up to the attic to make sure there are bodies up there. Billy kills Kyle and eats his eyeballs. He lights up some candles, and we see the missing people, all with their eyes removed.
Kelli stabs Billy with a glass unicorn and sets the house on fire. Except it’s not Billy, it’s crazy Agnes. Billy finally shows up and attacks Agnes.
Billy and Agnes try to catch Kelli inside the walls as Leigh beats on the drywall and the attic burns. Leigh and Kelli run outside as the house burns to the ground.
Billy wakes up in the morgue and kills the attendant. Leigh and Kelli are in the hospital getting treated for injuries. Suddenly, Agnes isn’t dead either and kills Leigh. Kelli gets trapped in her room with Agnes, but she manages to zap Agnes with a defibrillator. Billy attacks Kelli but ends up impaled on a Christmas tree.
Commentary
The phone calls with Billy talking to Agnes is very similar to what we heard in the first film. Calling from each other’s cells is a nice difference; they can’t trace those calls anymore even though you can see who is calling. Nice.
If you’re paying attention, you’ll easily notice that people started dying inside the house before Billy escapes the hospital, so it’s obvious that there is more than one killer.
I think this is probably the worst of the three versions of the story. There’s just too much running around and screaming in this one, and too much focus on the bad guys’ backstory.