This festive fright-fest was a nice surprise from what I was originally expecting. This is another horror remake (from the people behind ‘Final Destination’ – great film), but un-like so many others; it did manage to come up trumps; such as ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.’ This is a remake of Bob Clarke’s 1974 classic slasher movie, ‘Black Christmas’; which actually came four years before John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’. Some fans lay claim that it was the original slasher flick.

From the outside, this looks like just another of your basic ‘there’s a psycho hacking up a bunch of pretty girls, who are running up the stairs instead of out of the door,’ and to a certain extent that’s correct, it’s the way this is conveyed which is interesting and enticing to watch.

The story: crazed killer, Billy Lenz, escapes his psychiatric ward and is determined to make it to his childhood home, where he was abused, by Christmas. Problem is, it’s years later and the home is now a Sorority house. It’s Christmas Eve and a who’s who of teen/horror girl stars are there to welcome him, including Melissa (Michelle Trachtenberg , ‘Buffy the vampire slayer’ fame), Heather (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, ‘Final Destination 3’), Dana (Lacey Chabert, ‘Mean Girls’) and Kelli (Katie Cassidy, ‘When a stranger calls’ remake.)

This movie is actually pretty good, it has a constant feeling of being watched that runs right through it and adds a sparkle to the scares, and the tension is kept high. The actresses, although spouting some awful lines at times, also say some good ones. The acting is good, and because most of the leading ladies are stars, and most of them horror stars, the audience doesn’t guess which one is going to make it to the rolling credits. The story-line builds well, and there is a mounting tension, as the killer first phones the girls, and then starts to do away with them.

A similar storyline to the original ‘Halloween’, with a killer coming home for the holidays, there are also many similar P.O.V shots of the killer, watching the girls throughout the house. The Christmas theme bleeds in nicely with the plot, and it comes across in places (especially, the flash-backs to Billy Lenz’s childhood) like something, director, Tim Burton, would dream up. The film gets darker and darker as we move through it, with some very violent scenes, and the music by Shirley Walker is great; capturing horror and Christmas all in one twisted melody. Also, the use of red and green lighting throughout (owed to Christmas) is very cool, and creates a great atmosphere.

While nobody can predict when death will pay them a visit and cut their life short, according to the movie P.S. I Love You, with some applied imagination and strategic planning in advance, you might be able to cheat the Grim Reaper just a little. Or in this case at least, from beyond the grave.

Not that this morbid premise sounds like ideal material for a fanciful romantic comedy. But filmmaker Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King, The Bridges Of Madison County) takes up the challenge of juggling this life and the next for laughs, and awkwardly negotiates an often less than plausible common ground between the best of both worlds, such as they may be.

Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler are Holly and Gerry in P.S. I Love You, a stressed out young Manhattan couple into marriage meltdown at the moment, as they brawl verbally about Holly's tendency towards too much shopping, not enough 'hot, nasty sex' on their weekly to-do list, Gerry's unsexy slacker attitude toward vocational ambition, whether or not they forgot to have children along the way, and might this be very well all that there is out of life. In the midst of Holly's nightly nagging and lingering doubts about their relationship, happy-go-lucky Irish rocker import Gerry suddenly kicks the bucket. Which leaves Holly in a deep funk of guilt-ridden regret and inconsolable misery.

While concerned mom Patricia (Kathy Bates) and caring best girlfriends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon) have no success getting Holly to dispel those full-time blues, the sudden, mysterious delivery of a series of letters from late hubby Gerry, slowly work their magic in snapping their glum gal pal out of her depressed state. The letters function like a 12-step program presumably mailed from the afterlife, nudging the stricken widow back to normalcy and even a little potential new romance. The tragicomic healing process culminates in no less than two trips back to Ireland where the couple first met, where Mom and Holly embark on a weird adventure together, to go pick up men.

P.S. I Love You and its dead letter collection plot device is far too overdone, and feels dramatically energy-inefficient and contrived to begin with. Much more effective is LaGravenese's sensitive physical and emotional layering of the complex unraveling of grief as a state of mind. And Swank gets it just right with a fine-tuned subtle expression of confusion, despondency and rage, though Holly's overly extended cranky self-pity party eventually wears out its welcome, for the characters and audience alike.