Black Christmas Review: 2 Ups & 7 Downs

3. The AWFUL Jump Scares

When all else fails, what else will cynical, lazy PG-13 horror movies resort to but jump scares? And while Black Christmas isn't as rife with them as some other recent terrible horror flicks, it does use them in a totally unimaginative and irritating way.

The periodic jumps are nothing more than cheap attempts to jolt a likely otherwise snoozy audience, but there's no basic inventiveness or technical panache to them whatsoever.

A loud noise plays, a character is startled, and rinse and repeat every 10-or-so minutes.

It's the blandest element of the entire movie, and at least if it didn't have any jumps, it'd be one less thing you could ding the movie for. It would've actually registered as restraint, honestly.