The little shop of horrors that is Blumhouse would like to continue refurbishing your classics. On the heels of 2018’s Halloween and the news that Zoe Lister-Jones will be overseeing its reboot of The Craft, the studio announced today that it is developing a new Black Christmas. Based on the landmark 1974 Canadian slasher, Black Christmas centers on a group of sorority girls who are still at their house just before the Christmas holiday. The tree is topped and the tinsel is hung with care — and there’s also a killer on the loose picking off co-eds one at a time. Sophia Takal, who broke out with her thriller Always Shine and helmed the Blumhouse Into the Dark feature New Year, New You from 2018, will direct, and she co-wrote the script with sometimes-Vulture contributor April Wolfe. The announced cast includes the permanently underrated Imogen Poots, Aleyse Shannon, Brittany O’Grady, and Caleb Eberhardt.
Black Christmas is a genre classic that laid the groundwork for more widely heralded horror films that came after, including John Carpenter’s original Halloween from 1978. It got a straightforward remake in 2006 that was really just okay, but it sounds like Takal and Wolfe’s treatment will adhere more to reboot structure. The tease provided says, “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,†and yes we do welcome this premise in the new era of femme vengeance. Let’s hope at some point, though, the call will be coming from inside the house. We’ll find out when the movie hits theaters on December 13 later this year.