Cary Elwes starred in the low-budget horror ‘Saw’ franchise, as well as the likes of ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, ‘The Bride’, and ‘Psych 9’. Now he is returning to the genre in Blumhouse and Universal Pictures’s ‘Black Christmas’, based on the 1974 slasher classic. Elwes’ role wasn’t confirmed but it is said to be a “main part.”
The original film depicted a group of sorority girls who are stalked by a mysterious stranger over Christmas break from their college. The stranger kills them off one by one, but the original ‘Black Christmas’ is infamous for its ambiguous ending– the killer’s identity is never revealed, so he could have been someone in the cast or a complete stranger. The movie also introduced the horror trope of “the phone call is coming from inside the house”… which… doesn’t really work nowadays.
The film was remade in 2006, and in that version, the killer was revealed to have been a boy who’d been raised in the abode that became a sorority house. The boy was held prisoner in the attic by his mother, who later rapes him in order to get pregnant. In the end, the killer and his sister/daughter are revealed to be co-killers.
Here is the synopsis of the new take:
“Hawthorne College is quieting down for the holidays. One by one, sorority girls on campus are being killed by an unknown stalker. But the killer is about to discover that this generation’s young women aren’t willing to become hapless victims as they mount a fight to the finish.”
Elwes could be playing the killer, or possibly a more benign role, as one of the college students’ father, or a teacher or dean at the school.
The cast of the remake includes Imogen Poots, Aleyse Shannon, Brittany O’Grady, Lily Donoghue, and Caleb Eberhardt. Sophia Takal co-wrote the screenplay with April Wolfe, and will be directing. She recently directed the “New Year, New You” episode of Blumhouse’s Hulu series ‘Into the Dark’. ‘Black Christmas’ is due to begin filming in New Zealand soon, and will be out in just a few months, on December 13, a week shy of the 45th anniversary of the release of the original film.
Elwes will also be seen in the horror-adjacent ‘Stranger Things 3’, and the not horror-related-at-all ‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’.
‘Black Christmas’ wants to ruin your holidays, starting on December 13, 2019.
Source: Deadline
