Black Christmas
The Christmas horror film a lot of later slashers borrowed from, and it still unsettles.
Festive Factor 37 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.The story
About Hosts
On Christmas Eve, a young couple, Jack and Lucy, are getting ready to go next door for dinner with an older neighbour and his family when something with shining white eyes takes over their bodies. They arrive a little odd, and the family puts it down to nerves. Then, at the table, just after the mother has shared some long-awaited good news, the guests turn on their hosts and hold them captive for the rest of the night, playing cruel games that drag the family's buried secrets into the open. A low-budget British first feature that keeps the cosy set-up for a long time before it turns very bloody.
The CineClaus verdict
Hosts spends a long time looking like a fraught but ordinary Christmas Eve dinner, and that patience is its best trick.
When the turn comes at the table it is sudden and nasty, and the rest of the night is cruel games and buried family secrets, played out in a lot of practical gore. It runs out of road once it becomes a chase round the house, and the countryside finale raises more questions than it answers.
A grim, low-budget British oddity for horror fans, not the family.
The family desk
Can the kids watch?
Our take: adults only: possession, a family held hostage and strong, bloody violence.
Content advice & accessibility
- Our age guidance
- Editorial, separate from the official 18 certificate, and never looser than it.
