I owe a sincere apology to Pikachu.

Sophia Takal’s Black Christmas is by far the worst film of 2019, and has no businesses using the name of Bob Clark’s 1974 original and Glen Morgan’s imaginative 2006 remake.

Incompetent in all regards, the new twist on a sorority under attack during the holidays is visually off-putting and distracting from the start. Shot with what appears to be a pointless grainy filter, it’s unclear if the filmmakers are going for a pseudo retro vibe or an exaggerated indie look, but whatever the motivation, it’s but one in a series of poor decisions.

Written by Takal and April Wolfe, this Black Christmas features an incredibly dull opening stretch that dares viewers to care about Riley (Imogen Poots, on a severe post-Green Room cold streak), her Mu Kappa Epsilon sisters, and the predicament in which they eventually find themselves.

Obsessed with exposition, the screenwriters at last bring forth a half-cooked fable of women righteously taking sexual assault to task, and cheapen it with an increasingly ludicrous story involving the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity’s pledges, whose lone value is unintentional laughs.

Poorly planned and sloppily executed, the plot twist wouldn’t even be raised at a Twilight Zone writers table, and would quickly be shot down in the offices of MAD Magazine.

The narrative inanity on display might be forgiven if the filmmakers had any sense for the genre they’re exploiting, but Black Christmas’ scares so predictable that one wonders if its creators have ever seen Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street — or the other Black Christmases.

Takal is lost when it comes to suspenseful build-ups or timing the actual attack, and her choice to limit the film with a PG-13 rating winds up being its second worst enemy — after the writing. At would-be cathartic moments of violence against the women’s attackers, Takal cowardly cuts away and dilutes whatever terror might have been present, as well as the potency of the film’s message.

Most surprising and ironic of all, especially considering it came from the minds of two women, is how shockingly, accidentally anti-feminist Black Christmas is. Assuming that scattered empowering statements automatically make their movie a triumphant work of Girl Power, the filmmakers hypocritically and cluelessly inflict frequent violence on their female characters, while would-be triumphant moments come off as hapless and hilarious.

Grade: F. Rated PG-13. Now playing at AMC Classic, Biltmore Grande, and Carolina Cinemark

(Photo: Universal Pictures)