So Bad It's Horrible Cleanup

Someone added Black Christmas (2019) to Horrible Film (0-F). Here is the full writeup

• The 1974 slasher film Black Christmas has been remade twice. The first remake was poorly recieved and bombed at the box office, but it has its fans and developed a cult following in years after its release. The second remake, Black Christmas (2019), is a film that managed to be hated by even fans of the first remake. For a start, the film's title is a complete lie, as only the first act of the film is anywhere close to being a remake of the original film, and even those scenes are loosely inspired at best. Then there's a fact that the film was made purely as an angry feminist diatribe who seems to hate men. While the original 1974 film had a political feminist subplot, said subplot only took up 10 minutes of that film. The whole movie's plot is that a year after main character Riley was sexually assaulted by a member of a fraternity, they stumble upon a conspiracy that said maternity are members of a cult trying to kill people on campus. Saying the film is Anvilicious is an understatement; the film drops an entire factory of anvils on the viewer; the most blatant example happens halfway through when the film stops completely in its tracks to have its characters engage in a screaming match at each other over whether or not all men are rapists, a scene that doesn't even tie in very well with the film's core message, especially since the film goes back to the way it was like nothing happened. And as if this wasn't bad enough, the movie can't even get its own moral values right. The film's twist is that the fraternity are a cult being mind controlled by a humanoid alien. So for all we know, the men themselves may not have raped anyone knowingly, and taking this a step further, it also turns out that Riley accused the wrong guy of sexual assault, yet the film still acts as if she was right to do that. Because remember, kids! false rape accusations are completely okay!

On top of all this, the movie's production was clearly rushed and it completely shows. The film is very obnoxiously shot, with every shot looking as if has the You Tube stabilization feature used to get around copyright claims, and the film's colour scheme looks like vomit. The film even blatantly rips off other classic slasher movie moments, with one scene in particular being a complete ripoff of the infamous "corridor scene from The Exorcist III''. When even the film's director has stated that she "only made the movie for the message", you know you're in for a shit show. The film was hated by even the very feminists it was pandering to, and the film currently enjoys a 2.6/10 rating on IM Db and a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes. Watch Chris Stuckmann gloriously rip into the movie and give it an F here, Zack Cherry tear it a new asshole here, and Flicks With Nick call it the worst Christmas movie ever made here.

Besides the fact that this is a wall of complaining text, I have doubts whether this should be here. On one hand, I have hardly seen or heard anyone defend this movie. At the same time, 38% on Rotten Tomatoes seems too high for a movie to qualify. Thoughts?

Edited by magnumtropus on May 1st 2021 at 3:32:46 AM

I think it could potentially qualify, but I haven't heard and/or seen the film myself, so I wouldn't know.

I think a 38% is just terrible enough to qualify. Needs trimming, however.

I agree.

An Updated Writeup:

• While the first remake of the 1974 slasher film Black Christmas was poorly recieved and bombed at the box office, it has its fans and developed a cult following in years after its release. The second remake, Black Christmas (2019) is hated by even fans of the first remake, as it's practically In Name Only. Only the first act resembles the original, and even those scenes are loosely inspired at best. The film was intended to be a feminist horror film, but focused more on the former than the latter (The director claimed that she put message before plot). The original 1974 film had feminist subplot, but it didn't overshadow the rest of the movie. This movie is set a year after main character Riley was sexually assaulted by a member of a fraternity, and her sorority stumbles upon a conspiracy that said fraternity are members of a cult trying to kill people on campus. The film is so Anvilicious that the term is an understatement. The most blatant example is halfway through the movie, when the film stops in its tracks to have its characters engage in a screaming match at each other over whether or not all men are rapists, a scene that doesn't even tie in very well with the film's core message and is pretty much ignored after this. And the movie's twist undermines the films core moral values - The the fraternity is being mind controlled by a black goo containing the misogynistic essence of the college founder, implying that the men themselves may not have raped anyone knowingly. Another major problem is Kris, the deuteragonist. She was intended to be the movie's mouthpiece, but is so obnoxious that she comes off as an offensive caricature. Her actions show that she only sees her friends suffering as a means to an end, yet the movie want us to see her as having the moral high ground
  
  The movie's production was clearly rushed and it completely shows. Every shot looks as if has the YouTube stabilization feature used to get around copyright claims, and the film's colour scheme looks bad. The film even blatantly rips off other classic slasher movie moments, such as the infamous "corridor scene from The Exorcist III''. . The film was hated by even the very feminists it was pandering to, and the film currently enjoys a 3.4/10 rating on IMDb and a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes. Watch Chris Stuckmann gloriously rip into the movie and give it an F here, Zack Cherry tear it apart here, and Flicks With Nick call it the worst Christmas movie ever made here.

Could it be shorter?

Edited by magnumtropus on May 1st 2021 at 8:35:00 AM

Sorry to be off topic, and also sorry if this is a stupid question, but an entry on Horrible.Music Songs was edited to go from saying "the n-word" to the actual word. Is this allowed, or does it violate Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement? Like I said sorry if I sound like a Karen, I just don't know the exact swearing policy here and if a racial slur is allowed on the site like this.

I think the troper's doing that all over the wiki. That's...concerning. Definitely not "Karen"-y to be suspect about it.

Edited by mightymewtron on May 1st 2021 at 2:26:32 PM

If it's a quote or excerpt and the original wasn't censored, don't censor it.

If there's possible confusion as to what word is being referred to (e.g. an ambiguous T-Word Euphemism,) don't censor it.

In all other cases, use your best judgment.

(See No Lewdness, No Prudishness and Bluenose Bowdlerizer.)

In this specific case, I feel that spelling it out is the better option, mostly because of the specific impact of that particular word. It essentially hits the reader like a sledgehammer and makes it more obvious what in particular is "horrible" about the song. (In other cases it's unnecessary and just sounds crude.)

Only one thing... am I the only one who is annoyed by the SBIH catchphrase of "Watch Caustic Critic rip it apart here"?

Yep. Too many cases of "one cherry-picked reviewer out of 20 hates the work, so it sucks." (This kind of nonsense is most common with the Nostalgia Critic and Linkara due to their overenthusiastic fanbases, but others have a strong impact as well.

I have consistently objected to the inclusion of those links.

Eh, if the example isn't based around the opinion of one reviewer and the link's just there to help support the claims being made (or for people to get an idea of it themselves), I don't see a problem.

Agreed. It provides outside sources that help illustrate how bad the entry is in addition to the critical scores. The entry should be able to stand on its own without the link, of course, but I often get more suspect of entries that don't reference any outside reception.

Edited by mightymewtron on May 3rd 2021 at 3:20:37 PM

Sooo... Black Christmas?

Edited by magnumtropus on May 3rd 2021 at 5:23:54 AM

I think I asked about it before, but would Songbird count or not? The film's about a dystopian future set in 2023 where COVID-19 has mutated badly, to the point that those infected are sent to "Q-zones", concentration camps where they're essentially killed by the virus. The story revolves around Nico Price, an immune contraband courier saving his girlfriend, artist Sara Garcia, from being sent to one of the camps when her grandmother is infected. It's got a 9% rating on RT (the audience score is about 32%) and 27 on Metacritic. A lot of the reviews point out the Audience-Alienating Premise - viewers wouldn't want to watch a film about the pandemic when it was still ongoing, whereas people interested in a pandemic-focused film wouldn't be interested in the Romeo and Juliet-style subplot overtaking the movie and not taking advantage of the pandemic plotline. Some also felt the dystopian future and the concentration camps were akin to fear-mongering. It was a Box Office Bomb, having a budget of $700,000–$2,500,000 but only making back $409,321 (although this is probably because cinemas were closed).

Not gonna say anything for certain, but that premise sounds awful at least.

Was the film really bad in ways besides the Audience-Alienating Premise?

From memory I believe there's a lot of plot holes induced by the romantic story, and that the romance itself doesn't feel that interesting or developed. I'll have to check it out again later.

Edited by SkylaNoivern on May 3rd 2021 at 1:27:15 PM

Re: the discussion about SBIH pages that are on PRLC: I honestly think Horrible.Sports could potentially work as a subpage. One of the reasons listed as to why it was deleted was because "It also contained moments of This Troper and Conversation In The Main Page", things that were very common for just about every page back in the day (it was redlinked around 2010 or 2011).

I'm a bit iffy at the idea of putting individual athletes on the page, but I think other things can work.

Edited by toonyloon on May 3rd 2021 at 9:19:49 AM

This just got added:

• The 2020 short film Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind COVID-19 and its feature-length sequel, Plandemic: InDoctorNation, are a pair of Documentaries of Lies about medicine and public health in the grand tradition of the below-mentioned Vaxxed, complete with a similar backstory of having been made by a former scientist, Judy Mikovits, whose career had previously ended in disgrace only to claim persecution and enjoy a second wind on the Conspiracy Theorist circuit. Mikovits and director/producer Mikki Willis spend both films promoting a laundry list of crackpot theories about the COVID-19 Pandemic, including the claim that SARS-CoV-2 was an engineered bioweapon, that wearing a mask to avoid infection or spreading the virus will only make the infection worse, that hydroxychloroquine (a medication normally prescribed for malaria and arthritis) is an effective treatment for infection, that the scale of the pandemic was exaggerated for political and financial purposes, and that vaccines are dangerous, all while trying to relitigate Mikovits' past and claim that she was the victim of a Smear Campaign by the pharmaceutical industry and the Department of Health and Human Services. Unlike many bad movies, these had a tangible, negative real-world impact, their viral spread on social media being widely blamed for fueling anti-lockdown, anti-mask, and anti-vaccination sentiments and protests that served only to prolong the pandemic. The two films were found to be so grotesquely inaccurate that every mainstream social media platform quickly banned them, and numerous news outlets and websites, including PolitiFact and NPR, have done point-by-point rebuttals.

Now obviously this documentary is filled with pseudoscientific lies and bullshit, but as always, did the target audience of this documentary hate it, or is it just controversial?

Also Never My Fault is NRLEP.

(This entry was added by The Red Red Kroovy, for the record.)

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on May 4th 2021 at 10:35:55 AM

We have at least one case of a supposed "childcare" guide listed as horrible despite having actual fans due to the tangible harm caused by following its advice, so there may be precedent for keeping that. I'd definitely like more voices to weigh in, though.

Bringing this directly here because the last time I brought that kind of stuff in the "removing bashing" thread they redirected me here.

I noticed that Video Game Generations: Seventh Onwards haves a few games described with excessive bashy terms. Let me show some examples with the focus points in bold:

• Dragonball Evolution is a terrible PSP adaptation of the already-pretty-terrible film, being essentially a poor man's Dragon Ball Z: Budokai with cheap-looking graphics, lackluster sound and voice acting, a short and overall boring story mode (in case you didn't get enough of the film's cringeworthy plot), and such limited depth and variety that one can win simply by mashing the Square and Triangle buttons. Fans are far better off sticking with Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai.
• Vampire Rain is a piss-poor stealth-action survival horror game that features (among other things) a thinly-written plot with wooden voice acting, dreadful dialogue, lousy gameplay that shamelessly rips off both Splinter Cell and Metal Gear (and doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as either), laughable enemy AI, and wildly inconsistent difficulty. You know a game is terrible when the most innovative thing about it is that your knife (a melee weapon) actually requires ammo to use! (The game attempts to justify it by making the knife explode inside the victim, but this doesn't make things less frustrating).
• The Letter (not to be confused with the visual novel of the same name) is a low-budget exploration game in the vein of Dear Esther, Gone Home, or Proteus, but has barely a fraction of the flair required to match any of them, and isn't worth the $2 it costs to download the thing from the Wii U eShop. Your player character gets a letter supposedly left by his parents, then fumbles around drab, empty environments trying to figure out what happened to them. It tries to pass itself off as a horror game, but there are no scares to be found whatsoever unless you count playing this crap. Worst of all, the game can be finished in less than 15 minutes, and ends with a trite All Just a Dream twist.

That Plandemic seems like the kind of example that people add because they mistake this trope for "odious political opinions". Well, it is but I don't see evidence that it's So Bad, It's Horrible even from Wikipedia. Delete that example.

Charlie's Angels is listed twice, once on Horrible.Video Game Generations Fifth To Sixth and another time on Horrible.Video Games Other.