Unnecessary Remake - Carrie (2013)

I was originally going to write a full length review of Carrie. After watching it, I decided, this movie isn't worth the effort. It is not a horrible movie, per se; it just offers nothing new, making it pointless.

The plot is very similar to the 1976 classic. The opening is new, showing the birth of Carrie (Chloë Grace Moretz). It is pretty intense with Margaret (Julianne Moore) apparently unaware that she is pregnant, giving birth at home. After that, the story sticks close to the original film. Carrie is an outcast at her school. She freaks out while having her first period and becomes the target for Chris (Portia Doubleday) and her friends, who are painted in a very Mean Girls mode; caricatures, who target Carrie for no particular reason. She also begins to display telekinetic abilities immediately upon having her period. Nicer girl Sue (Gabriella Wilde) convinces her boyfriend Tommy (Ansel Elgort) to take Carrie to prom to make up for her part in humiliating Carrie. At prom, Chris douses Carrie in pig's blood and accidentally kills Tommy. Carrie unleashes her telekinesis, killing many of the students, including all of her tormentors. She heads home and kills mom, but spares Sue when she realizes she is pregnant. Carrie apparently commits suicide, although the ending implies she may have survived.

There is a missed opportunity to explore cyber-bullying and, perhaps, take the story in a new direction. Instead of De Palma's fresh, masterful cinematography, director Kimberly Peirce tells the story in a visually bland fashion. There are more special effects, with Carrie displaying her telekinesis almost immediately. Instead of the spare, but effective use of practical effects in the original, we see a lot of mediocre CG. This is particularly bad during the prom massacre. What was a quick, horrify sequence in the original, suffers from showing too much and is topped off by a laughable sequence in which Carrie flies out of the prom, instead of Spacek's serene walk through the devastation she has caused. And what was a quick, brutal end for Chris in the original is dragged out to the point of inspiring derisive laughter.

Another problem with the film is with the casting. While the actors are fine, Chloë Grace Moretz is too cute to be believable as the outcast Carrie. The girl is supposed to look "peculiar" and embody the outsider. This is something Sissy Spacek was able to capture. Even after she gets made-up for the prom, she still looks odd. Moretz never embodies the physicality of the outsider and even before the prom, she looks way too cute. This gives the film the feel of one of those "ugly duckling turns into swan" movies. While a good actor can embody a variety of personalities, their looks do come into play in certain roles. When Carrie, the outsider, looks more attractive than the "in crowd" this becomes a problem. Unless, of course, this is made part of the story, that the other girls are propelled by jealously. This is not the case.

Ultimately, this is a competently made film with a pretty good cast that fails because it doesn't have anything new to say about the story, nor a new, unique visual style to tell it in. Do yourself a favor; watch the original and avoid this version of Carrie.

Pointless Remake News - Cabin Fever

I don't have a problem with remakes, per se. We've seen some that are pretty good. For example, John Carpenter's version of The Thing is as much of a masterpiece as the 1951 original. The recent remakes/reboots of the Planet of the Apes franchise have been great films. The Magnificent Seven is a wonderful remake and re-imaging of The Seven Samurai (as is Battle Beyond the Stars). One can easily find movies that have been successfully remade, some loosely connected to the original, others very closely. Usually, what a worthwhile remake does is bring something to the screen that the original didn't. It can be a new theme, better effects, a different tone, a different setting...something that sets the new film apart. It also helps if the source material has some depth to it or reflects a story-telling archetype. For example, The Seven Samurai is such a primal story - a group of imperfect heroes helping the underdog against an oppressive force - that you can easily see it being made time and again.

Then, there are remakes that make you ask "What. The. Fuck." In that category is the announced remake of Cabin Fever. I enjoyed the original. I thought the first sequel was terrible and the prequel left a lot to be desired (see here for that review. But the basic concept - flesh eating virus infects group of people leading to gooey survival horror fun - could still lend itself to new movies. So, why remake the original? And why use the exact same script? Yes, that's right.

This is what Deadline is reporting;

Eli Roth’s 2002 horror comedy Cabin Fever is getting a remake, with the original movie’s writer-director Roth returning as executive producer. He won’t have to do much writing this time, though: The plan is to use the exact same Roth-Randy Pearlstein script that was shot in 2002, and with a cast already moved in, it puts the project on the fast track. Shooting begins this week in Portland, OR.
The new version will star Teen Wolf‘s Gage Golightly, Dustin Ingram, Samuel Davis, Matthew Daddario and Nadine Crocker. Travis Zariwny (Intruder) is directing.

I quite honestly don't understand this. First, while the first film was fun, it's not exactly a household name. Second, why use the exact same script? Are they that lazy? That dumb? Neither the sequel nor prequel are any good, but at least they told original stories. I don't care if this shows up on Netflix; I'm not watching it. And I watched Strippers vs Werewolves, so yo know my viewing bar is set pretty low. If we stop watching lazy shit like this, they'll stop making it. I'd rather watch the worst original story than a cynical money grab like this.

Evil Dead (2013) - With Demonic Spoilers From Hell

A remake of The Evil Dead, Sam Raimi's 1981 low-budget classic, Evil Dead is competently made. It has good special effects, some well-executed scenes of graphic violence, appropriately gloomy sets, effective sound design and good cinematography. The cast is bland, but not bad; they are hampered by underdeveloped characters and the sacrifice of story for gruesome spectacle.

The film opens up promisingly enough. A young woman is being chased through a dark forest. She is clubbed over the head and tied to a post in the basement of a cabin. Dead cats hang from the ceiling on hooks. An old woman reads from a book of demonic evil in an odd tongue. Inbred hillbillies line one wall. The girl's father emerges from the shadows. She begs him to release her. He says she killed her mother and douses her with gasoline. The girl's eyes turn yellow and the demon that has possessed her begins taunting him. He lights her on fire and blows her head off with a shotgun.

That's the first three minutes. It's an impressive opening.

A new set of characters arrive at the cabin. They are there to help one of their number, heroin addict Mia (Jane Levy), go cold turkey. The characters - Mia's brother David (Shiloh Fernandez), schoolteacher friend Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), nurse friend Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and David's significant other Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) - settle in and each have a few character moments, none of which amount to much. In due course, the basement is discovered and the book of evil found. Eric reads it for no fathomable reason. Given that it is wrapped in barbed wire, bound with human flesh and has numerous dire warnings scribbled on its pages, the scenes of him thumbing through the book and reading the Latin (or whatever) incantations are unintentionally humorous.

This results in demons being set loose on the unsuspecting characters. Mia is possessed first when a slimy, black worm-vine slithers into her body. Soon, characters are slicing their faces off, getting perforated with a nail gun (whenever a movie features a nail gun, you know this is how it will be used), performing self-dismemberment with an electric carving knife and being subjected to numerous other acts of bodily harm. David, the only survivor, manages to free Mia from possession in a scene that makes little sense. He then sacrifices himself to save her. Blood rains from the sky, a last undead monster emerges from the ground, Mia kills it with a chainsaw (after having to pull her own hand off) and then the sun comes up.

The problem: when the end credits roll, you are left wondering "what's the point?" This is a common question when dealing with remakes, re-imaginings and reboots. The marketing rationale is clear - take a known, successful product (even if it only succeeded in embedding itself in the cultural consciousness), and change it to reflect the sensibilities of a new cohort of viewers. This isn't something to dismiss out-of-hand. People have been doing this to the works of Shakespeare for a long time. Think of the number of remakes and alternate takes have been made of Frankenstein and Dracula. Far from being the reflection of a lack of ideas out of Hollywood, recycling stories has a long tradition in literature, theater and cinema.

There is something, however, that a remake needs to do, in addition to the normal measures of a film's worth: it has to add something to story told by the original.

The problem is that the Evil Dead, while maintaining a high level of graphic violence and keeping the serious tone of the original (the slapstick action and darkly humorous one-liners didn't start until Evil Dead 2), doesn't really add up to anything more than a generic horror movie. The manic energy of the original is missing. Raimi's film stood out because no one had seen anything quite like it before. It featured over-the-top gore and camera work that had the energy of a Looney Toons cartoon. The cast and crew had a low budget to work with, but didn't let that hinder them.

The remake includes some of the signature scenes and techniques from the original - for the example, the camera work giving the audience a point-of-view for the "force of evil" crashing through the woods - but nothing feels particularly fresh or innovative. Key plot points from the original are included: reading an evil book in an isolated cabin leads to possession and mayhem. The remake looks better. The cinematography is more professional, the cast is no worse than that of the original and the plot is slightly more complex (although the most interesting new elements - the heroin addiction of Mia and tension between Mia and David over how the latter left the former to care for their dying mother - have little impact on the story). With a higher budget ($17 million versus $375,000) the gore effects are not as garish and cartoonish.

The problem is that movie has a very generic feel it. There is none of the personality that the original has. There is none of the feeling of shoestring creativity. It is too polished for its own good.

Each of Raimi's Evil Dead films, while following the same basic plot (someone reads from the book of evil, people are possessed and undead monsters attack), have a unique twist. The first film is gritty and gore-filled, the tone of the second shifts to horror slapstick and the third is a low-budget, period-piece epic. In terms of creativity and originality, the remake is a watered down version of The Evil Dead. There was an opportunity to do something different - perhaps using the heroin angle to make a surreal horror film. Instead, the filmmakers focused on the most obvious characteristic of the original, the gore. With the graphic violence that can now be seen in films and on TV (The Walking Dead, for example), a film needs more than a few cringe-worthy moments of bloodshed to stand out.

In part, the remake suffers from the shallowness of the original. The Evil Dead is a triumph of creativity over budget. Its story and plot are functional, nothing more. The characters are little more that one-dimensional punching bags. It is a great movie; but that stems from the on-screen energy and the context in which was released.

For a remake to be successful the source material either has to be rich enough that it lends itself to new interpretations or the remake has to improve on the original. Evil Dead can't reproduce the feel or energy of the original; that is tied into the state of cinema when it was released and how the creative team attacked the low budget. Evil Dead is a decent horror movie. However, it fails to add anything of interest to the plot, performances or tone of the original. It joins the long list of remakes that will be remembered mostly as a marketing gimmick, not as a fresh and worthwhile reinterpretation of the source material.

Unnecessary Remake - Red Dawn

The original Red Dawn is a fun movie. It is a product of it's time with a sinister coalition of Russians, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Cubans, etc conquering a third of the US while Europe sits by and watches (except for England; hat-tip to our English brothers and sisters). Set in Calumet, Colorado, the original film followed the exploits of a group of resistance fighters, mostly teenagers. It ends with most of the protagonists dead and an epilogue set an unspecified number of years later that makes it clear that America eventually won World War Three. It has decent acting, some great action sequences, a lot of more-or-less accurate Soviet gear and a bitter-sweet ending.

The remake involves North Korea invading America using some poorly explained EMP device to cripple the US military. Oh, and Russia just "occupies" the East Coast. How? Obviously, all Russian mail-order brides are really spetsnaz operators. Anyway, a motley group of 30-year-olds playing teenagers run to the mountains around Spokane and start making life difficult for the invaders.

The remake is not just bad; it is unnecessary. A good remake should bring something new and interesting to the original story. Remakes, reimanginings and reboots are not inherently bad; but they have to have their own voice, something unique about the way they tell the story. It helps if that voice is as good or better than the original film's. The Red Dawn remake fails in both counts. The story it tells is inferior to the original's and the the way it tells is it is generic. Characters are one-dimensional and the actors bland. The villains are aren't even; they have no character at all. It's interesting that at the height of the Cold War, the original manages to spend some time giving a few of the invaders personality; the remake says "Why bother? Here's an explosion." Even the action is dull, relying on excessive "shakey-cam" and bad CGI. The finale, which in the original captures the tragedy of war and the bittersweet nature of victory, is terrible, a last bit of action and no conclusion. Maybe they were hoping for Red Dawn 2: Electric Boogaloo.

I saw it on Netflix and, with the amount of time I spend streaming, any particular movie winds up costing me about 15 cents. I still feel ripped off. Avoid at all costs.