Archive for category Remakes
New Let Me In Clip – Yawn
A new clip from Let Me In (Matt Reeves’ remake of Let The Right One In) surfaced today and I remain unconvinced. What we see here is Hakan attempting to drug and presumably drain a teenager by hiding in the back seat of his car. A bit of a cliche, no? This is all set to Blue Oyster Cult’s “Burning For You” which certainly gives the scene a distinctly American feel and I like the fact that the kidnapping is set to some benign rock song. Overall, the scene is nothing spectacular and it leaves me wondering why the producers chose this one to release as a teaser. It doesn’t do much to capture my interest. [Insert further whiny "I hate remakes of awesome films" talk here]. Check it out for yourself:
Martyrs Remake To Star Kristen Stewart, Lose Intellect
The perfect Martyrs cast
Sometimes I try to limit the amount of cynical content I write on this blog to avoid sounding like I’m just being bitter for the sake of it. But when news like this comes along, I’ve got nothing else to work with. That’s right, if it wasn’t bad enough that the Twilight producers are aiming to remake Martyrs, producer, Wyck Godfrey, is now saying that he wants Kristen Stewart to play one of the leads (presumably Anna). Why don’t we just go ahead and cast Pattinson as the brutal torture guy? Back when I bitched about this remake a few weeks ago, my esteemed co-author, Chris, joked about possibly having the pleasure of seeing Stewart punched in the face repeatedly. He was joking but it looks like we may get to see that after all.
In his interview with Fearnet, Godfrey also noted that they “are doing it for an American audience with an American cast” which I can’t help but read as “doing it for a stupid audience with a stupid cast.” Citing that the original movie is “not remake-able in its form for an American audience,” Godfrey seems to reveal that either the sheer brutality or intellect of the original is too much for American audiences to consume. How sad and insulting is that? So, as I had initially hypothesized, it seems like we’re looking at yet another unnecessary dumbed-down remake.
Yeah, I know. File this one under the “pointless bitching about remakes” category.
Martyrs To Get The Twilight Treatment – May I Borrow Your Gun?
Whyyyyy?????
The other day in News That Makes Me Want To Vomit, it was revealed that a remake of Martyrs is being produced by the same team behind the Twilight series. I’ll avoid making an obvious “torture” pun here but seriously? They’re taking one of the most brutal, unique, and interesting films the horror genre has seen in years and maybe turning into something that a teenage audience might see?
Of course, the fact that Martyrs is being remade isn’t surprising given the fact that anything sacred is bound to be snatched up and repackaged for financial gain. But this has the potential for epic-level bastardization. Anyone want to take bets that rather than leaving a thought-provoking ending, this one will tie up everything nicely? Then moviegoers will say things like, “Wow, that was unique” or “Wait, there’s an original? Oh it’s in French? Nevermind.” And yes, this is one of those cynical “I hate remakes” posts because I’m in a bad mood today. At least now I have something that irritates me as much as the Let The Right One In remake.
I don’t know what else to say. More details at Cinematical.
NOES Reboot And The Platinum Dunes Movie Release Process
Posted by Matt in New Releases, Remakes, Reviews on May 2nd, 2010
Over the past 7 months, I’ve been on a Platinum Dunes patented ride to a movie release. The process goes like this:
- Initial teaser trailer released for legendary horror franchise being rebooted. Said trailer is dark, ominous, and throws in just enough franchise nods appearing to have been updated for the current year.
- I think, “Hey, that looks like it could be all right!”
- Stills are gradually released, usually capturing iconic scenes being remade or title character looking horrifying.
- The horror community is likely divided on the new film – some excitement, some skepticism.
- Full length trailer is released. Said trailer includes teaser trailer footage, attractive 20-somethings, bits of over-dramatic dialogue, and periods of silence broken with loud “bang” noises.
- I think, “Shit! Looks like they might have fooled me again. I’ll still give it a shot though.”
- I see said film, knowing it will be terrible. And it is.
- I think, “I’ll never see one of those shitty Platinum Dunes remakes again.”
- [INSERT REBOOT TITLE HERE] is announced.
- Process begins anew.
So you may have guessed it already – I think the A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot was utter crap. I’m not going to dance around this one, trying to find and highlight the bright moments in an effort to be fair. This movie failed on nearly every level. Where do I start? How about the fact that Platinum Dunes took this iconic film, stripped it of all atmosphere, dumbed-down its best moments, and transformed it into another run-of-the-mill horror release? There are next to no scary scenes here, save for one or two where director Samuel Bayer actually allows suspense to build for more than 2 seconds. Everything else rapidly builds toward inevitable jump scares (punctuated by those great “bang” noises again) that you can see coming way before they happen. Nothing is surprising and somehow, they’ve managed to discard that eerie “is this a dream or reality” atmosphere of the original film.
On top of this, the best scenes aren’t executed well and they come off as having been thrown in out of obligation. They even had the balls to modify the scene where Tina is dragged across the ceiling by Freddy’s claw. Here, she gets thrown around the room a few times, hovers over the bed, gets slashed and falls down dead. We don’t actually ever see what’s happening on the dream side, like in the original. You would think they could have executed this one better than the original given the enhancements in technology, but honestly I think old-school effects will always prevail over CGI. Check out this comparison and tell me if you agree:
The plot is a slightly modified rehash of the original, so I don’t have too many complaints there. Though, I do have some beef with the nonsense idea (as explained by a character in the film reading out of a textbook) that after 70 hours of sleeplessness, the human body falls into a coma. It has been well documented that people have stayed awake for as many as 264 hours – 11 days – with no ill effects. I don’t know why that annoyed me so much, but it did. Probably because half of the audience will believe it is true.
What about Freddy? The writers do call into question his guilt and also turn him from a child murderer into a supposed child molester. I didn’t mind that change as, in a way, there’s something more perverse and disgusting about molestation. If anything, this angle provided a way for Jackie Earle Haley to explore a decidedly different character than Robert Englund’s. Unfortunately, that aspect of Krueger’s personality goes undeveloped. I think there was real potential for him to be creepy and downright gross here but the writers wimped out, probably wanting to keep things just “safe” enough for mainstream America to buy tickets. I can think of only one scene toward the end where Krueger’s true motivations and perversions are apparent. Otherwise, they’re just something that happened in the past, off screen and uninteresting. Instead, the writers have Haley’s gravelly voice uttering lines like, “Why are you screaming? I haven’t even cut you yet.” But don’t blame Haley. Blame the writers. All that he and the other actors had to work with was a below average pop-horror script. They did fine for the most part, save for a few extraordinarily corny moments.
Visually, A Nightmare on Elm Street had some strong moments – a snowy bedroom and blood soaked hallway come to mind – but I didn’t leave the theater pondering its cinematography. It adequately executed dozens of cliche images, if that’s what you’re going for. I’m not. I want something that’s going to stick with me for days. While watching a scene involving a “creepy” little girl, I couldn’t help but think of The Shining and how Kubrick excelled with his twins. That image still freaks me out to this day. The ones in A Nightmare on Elm Street will be forgotten before I fall asleep tonight.
This was more of what we’ve come to expect from Platinum Dunes and I’m done watching their crappy bastardizations of genre legends. I just heard they’re planning on remaking The Monster Squad. Hey, that looks like it could be all right!
Is This Your House? Have You Got Any ‘CGI’ Shotguns in There?
Tony Todd will be reprising his role as Ben for Zebediah’s Desoto’s “Epic, living Monet,” CGI thingy (probably a mess) take on the much redone Night of the Living Dead, Night of the Living Dead Origins. Todd, who played Ben almost twenty years ago, will step behind a computer generated likeness of himself and give a voice to what looks like, at first glance, a bad survival horror video game character. However, after rumors of Mos Def taking on the role, Todd taking up the reins of horror’s greatest tragic hero is probably the best decision Desoto has made since he decided to make this thing. Todd, most famous for his role as the Candyman, is at least genre tested, and fan approved. No matter how hokey his roles get he’s just always freaking cool.
The film, on the other hand, may not meet such approval. Desoto’s latest comment seems to imply it’s going to be a vessel for relating his views on modern violence in some strange artistic manner. In a recent interview Desoto rambled on, “I wanted to make this look like a living Monet; it’s expressionism,” and in an interview before that he rambled some more, “It’s going to be the first zombie movie played on a epic scale. This is the
Empire of the Sun of zombie films…I lived through the L.A. riots and saw the city on fire; I remember seeing people running, people getting pulled out of cars. And with 9/11, these images have been ingrained on people of my generation. I just thought that is the way it would really be, a lot of chaos.” Since he’s a newcomer, I will withhold judgment until it premiers, but with NOTLD 68′ we have reached the point where Romero’s masterpiece has become a canvas for everyone else to smear their own art all over, and almost guarantee a build-in audience to gawk at it. Start with a blank sheet, people. And imagine something fresh, your own!
Still, I digress, Tony Todd will be a welcome addition to this project and perhaps his willingness to sign on to it says something about the quality of the script. However, Bill Moseley – of Rob Zombie movies fame – will also be reprising his role of Johnny, whose judgment of scripts doesn’t do much for me. Actors and their previous work aside, Origins’ success will just depend on Desoto’s vision and his execution of it. I’m anxious to see what he comes up with. Can’t be worse than Night 3D! Can it?
The Crazies Remake: More Boom For Your Buck
The basic rundown is a simple recipe for a horror movie, drop a biological weapon that is designed to “disable a population” by infecting them with a disease that causes general confusion and homicidal tendencies into a small town’s water supply and wait. Potential for creepiness is definitely there as fans of the original will remember the granny in the rocking chair with the knitting needles, but for this run they decided to go action flick. Well mostly…
Some remnants of a horror film remain. We get zombie faces on the infected, a high body count, some false alarm scares, and few grizzly kills. One of the more notable scenes involves a mortician that sews his security guard’s eyes and mouth shut despite the fact that he’s still alive, but the dust never settles long enough for the movie to ever really become that creepy. Every scene features something blowing up or bursting into a fireball while faceless government agents fumble around like the Keystone Cops during their bad attempts at quarantine.
In a strange way, the film took on a feel synonymous with the Golden Age of TV – the Western. Why not? After all the main characters are a sheriff, David Dutton, and his loyal deputy, Russel Clank; and, in the tradition of Bonanza or Gun Smoke, Dutton and Clank keep showing up in the nick of time when every anyone is in trouble. The convention gets uncanny. Dutton is about to be castrated by a runaway bonesaw and Clank shows up to step on the cord with just inches to spare. A girl is tied to table with a Crazy ready to stab a pitch fork into her as the duo rides in to the rescue. 
The SAME girl is later tied to chair while a Crazy has a gun on Dutton, but Clank’s does a nifty hard shot through the window with the Winchester to take him down. I’m surprised the Crazy didn’t toss himself out the window and fall to the grounding screaming and doing the flying chicken as a tumble weed rolls by. If a Crazy in a black hat with a long handlebar mustacheo tied the girl to railroad tracks then I was going to leave.
Sarcasm and old action sequence conventions aside, the remake succeeds in cutting down Romero’s lengthy commentary on incompetent military intelligence to managable chunks and mantains an acceptable portion of the original’s creepy feel. At the end of the day, The Crazies 2010 was an enjoyable up-tempo re-imagine of its 70′s counter part, but don’t go into this one expecting a pure zombie film, as the trailer attempts to market it, because the movie never settles into that genre either. However, it’s a decent watch or at very least doesn’t leave you with a blinding rage over the fact that they remade it.
New NOES Trailer And My Deflating Excitement
Posted by Matt in Horror, New Releases, Remakes, Trailers on February 25th, 2010
Oh, Platinum Dunes. Oh, how I want to like your films but always end up disappointed. Damn you for having talented production guys working on your movie trailers in order to deceive us horror fans. I think I’m on to you this time.
As you can guess, I just caught the full Nightmare on Elm Street trailer this evening. I’m not sure if it’s already been out for a while but I’ve been preoccupied lately. Several months back, I posted about being excited by the teaser trailer as it appeared Platinum Dunes/Jackie Earle Haley were bringing Freddy back to his dark roots. I think I’m less excited now and that makes me sad.
Much like their Friday the 13th trailer, this one tries its hardest to suck you in with nostalgia. Where the former has quick cuts of teenage sexuality and machetes, this one has us revisit Freddy’s most famous accolades – claw in bathtub, scraping against steam pipes, and stalking through a rubbery wall. But move beyond that and this looks like a run-of-the-mill horror movie to me, albeit with legendary characters.
I think Haley is a fantastic actor and he’s been consistently good in everything I’ve seen him in. Recently, he was one of the bright spots in Shutter Island and I think Platinum Dunes made a good choice casting him. Still, I’m not a fan of what I see in this trailer. “Oh, God,” one clearly-not-a-teenager says. “No. Just me,” a gravelly voiced Freddy retorts. Really? That’s the line you want to showcase? Another one: “Why are you screaming? I haven’t even cut you yet.” Looks like another case of shitty writing to me.
On top of that issue, a few things jump out at me. Why does Freddy look like a Harry Potter dementor during the iconic “rubber wall” scene? There’s a shot of a female clearly-not-a-teenager wearing Freddy’s glove and an evil smile. Are we in store for a cliche sequence where one of our protagonists unexpectedly turns evil? Hey, at least with this one, it can be written off as a dream but it’s just so expected.
Freddy's side gig?
I want to like this film. If you asked me yesterday, I might have even said that I’m excited for it. Now? Fearful (in the bad way) and suspicious. Take a peek for yourself.
The Wolfman Remake…Just Why?
Maybe the moon was full when some Hollywood lunatic decided to remake The Wolfman (1941), but not much thought was put into the project after that. How can anything with Anthony Hopkins and a budget to CGI enough blood splatter to fill a swimming pool go wrong? Well frankly, it goes like this.
The characters (with one exception) are boring and brutish, the trappings of their drab atmosphere just permeated too deeply, and we end up with flat performances. Oscar winning Sir Anthony Hopkins plays Sir John Talbot whose son Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) returns home after learning that his brother has been missing. Hopkins mostly mopes around like an aging bad ass while yawning out creepy one-liners and ends up looking like a mix of his characters from Legends of the Fall and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Del Toro suffers from a similar bland personality of an emo kid whose favorite goth band has just canceled their concert a night before the show. I can’t imagine director Joe Johnston could be to blame for this awkward tone with a resume featuring, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, The Pagemaster, Jumanji, and Jurassic Park III. How could you go wrong?
The plot tries to hinge itself on Lawrence’s troubled past where he witnessed his mother’s suicide and now must return to the site of his mother’s death to discover why his brother has also met a grizzly end. Long-story-short, Lawrence realizes his memories are false and his mother was also killed by an obvious plot twist that reveals the true identity of the beast, but not before Lawrence tangles with the werewolf and also contracts the curse.
Curses and uninspired writing aside, the movies is visually fun, and I think that is all the filmmaker set out to accomplish here since the movie makes no attempts to be original, to create compelling characters, a compelling atmosphere, or an interesting story line. Instead, the audience is given a laser light show of dismembered limbs, decapitations, disembowelments, and a climatic werewolf on werewolf battle ala Underworld. It’s fun to watch, but it sure as shit ain’t Shakespeare.
The saving grace is Hugo Weaving who portrays an aloof Scotland Yard inspector named Abberline whose presence on the screen is missed the second he leaves it. Weaving unleashes his usual smug delivery of mundane lines, just dragging out syllables, in ways only he can and brings the Abberline character to life in another wise lifeless cast of dull characters. If you need further proof then check out how epic he looks fighting the werewolf below…
Maybe not, but Weaving performance is still the only reason to see this film, unless you’re a die hard werewolf fan that wants to see a lot of cool CGI slayings. Don’t show up looking for substance, because it just isn’t here.
Somewhere in the distance I think I hear Lon Chaney Jr. howling at the moon…mournfully.
Romero Goes Remake Crazy
Well, we all knew that every chapter of the holy zombie trinity would be remade one day, but a remake of The Crazies (1973) seemed like something that would float around the internet like rumors of Romero directing Resident Evil and never happen, but here we are two weeks away from The Crazies 2010 premiere. For the past twelve years, whenever anyone asked me what The Crazies was about I was always quick to say, “its one of Romero’s zombies movies without zombies.” The post apocalyptic environment and snarky commentary about government was still present, but there just didn’t happen to be any walking corpses around. Still, it created that same world-apart-at-the-seams atmosphere and watching it you expected a zombie to lumber from the tree line at any moment. Now-a-days, with an expanded definition of zombie horror; I would argue, from what I’ve seen of the trailers, that Mr. Executive Producer Romero has merely added the zombies to market it into a zombie happy film industry (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
However all this talk about trailers and remakes had me thinking about the old one, and how I remember it being kinda hokey… Well, see for yourself.
Man, have trailers come a long way in thirty-seven years. Guess subtlety wasn’t big in the 70s…I digress, here’s the new one…
Zombie horror or not, as a devoted Romero follower, I’ll be in the theater opening night.
Friday The 13th Reboot Sequel To Finally Kill Jason? I Don’t Think So….
Pajiba had an interesting post today claiming that an inside source indicated that 2010′s Friday the 13th Part 2 will be the end of Jason. Forever. According to post author Dustin Rowles (who, despite his apparent disdain for the horror genre, is an excellent writer), “But, going in, anyway, producers Brad Fuller and Walter Hamada want this to be the last of the Friday the 13th movies, and you can bet your ass that that proposition will make its way into the marketing, spoilers be damned.”
I’m calling bullshit here. As Rowles later indicates, if the movie makes money, we’ll see more of Mr. Voorhees. Granted, Marcus Nispel’s reboot only turned a profit of about $71 million and this one may not do any better. Still, that’s a lot of money. Worst case scenario (or best, depending on your viewpoint), this movie bombs and Jason Voorhees gets put on the Hollywood shelf for a few years. After some more time passes, another money-hungry producer will say, “Hey! What about a reimagining of the reimagining of the original?! Brilliant, I say.” And the next thing you know, we’ll all be lining up to see 2017′s Friday The 13th. Or at least I know I will because I’m a glutton for punishment.
I don’t think there’s any way to really kill Jason the character or especially the idea and that goes for any of the genre’s elite. Just because it’s already been made and remade once doesn’t mean it won’t come back again. But maybe Rowles is right – some ideas just die. I mean, we’ll probably never have another have another Evil Dead film. Oh wait, never mind -Evil Dead 2010. Maybe that was a bad example. I mean, we’ll probably never have another Hellraiser film. Fuck – Hellraiser 2011. You get the point…
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