Tag Archives: Remake

Evil Dead (2013)

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One from the rewatch pile…

Evil Dead (2013)

The Australian Bluray of Evil Dead

Film: Sometimes the tone of a film is really what makes it. Films like I Spit On Your Grave achieve what they set out to do by having the correct attitude, and succeed because of it. Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead succeeded not just for its gory setpieces and crazy storyline, but also because of its chutzpah and the wry sense of humour, which at its core has the blackest of hearts. For me, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, the FIRST Evil Dead remake, made that black humour far too obvious and slapstick, and fails because of it.

This film suffers the exact opposite: its failure lies in that it takes itself FAR too seriously.

Jane Levy as Mia

Mia (Jane Levy) is a drug addict, and her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) along with friends Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore)  have taken her to her family’s secluded cabin, in the woods, to help her dry out and support her through the coming down process.

What they find when they get there though, is that the cabin has been broken into, and some ritual performed in the basement. Eric finds a book, wrapped in plastic and bound in barbed wire, and curiosity being what it is, opens the book.

We all know what curiosity kills though, and after Eric reads a passage in the book, weird things start to happen. Is Mia’s coming down tougher than they all thought, or has something taken her… something that wants to swallow their souls…

Possessed, but totally ‘armless!

Straight up I have to compliment director Fede Alvarez on the direction of the film. Whilst it may not have some of the innovation brought on by budgetary constraints that Raimi had to deal with, it is at times breathtaking. He managed to keep the film quite timeless by not having a load of current gadgets and by giving it that washed out ‘sepia’ look. Initially, the level of gore that has been reached made the little gorehound, hidden deep inside me, stand up and applaud, and more than once, cringe… which rarely happens these days.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much where my interest in it stops.

The script was OK, but essentially the plotline is rehashed from the original, but updated to suit more current moviegoers attitudes, and with a few deliberate twists thrown it to throw fans of the original off. This is something that perpetually annoys me about remakes: the need to turn a story on its head JUST for the sake of being different. This is little more than a writer’s ploy to say he put ‘his’ mark on the film.

Sorry guys, but putting butter UNDER my popcorn doesn’t make me an innovator.

Of course, the film is full of those ‘fan service’ bits where iconic imagery from the original pop up for no reason other than to make you remember this is a remake, and not an homage or a flat out rip off.

The characters were photocopies of each other, and really any of them could have said each other’s dialogue and you wouldn’t have even noticed. This was made even more apparent by average performances, except for the one executed by Lou Taylor Pucci, whose performance was so annoying I considered punching the chips out of my television.

The real problem with this film though, lies in the fact that it didn’t ‘get’ the first Evil Dead. I stated earlier that I initially enjoyed the gore, but when you batter a viewer with non stop images of it, eventually the old brain starts to stop being shocked. Raimi’s Evil Dead understood that to make the violence and gore more shocking, you need shades of light and dark within the entire tone of the film. Raimi himself failed this uneasy balancing act with too much light in Evil Dead 2, and this film fails with its constant darkness. The original film had the idea of friends on a holiday to give the film some levity, but with idea that the friends are helping one of their own overcome a drug addiction, the story starts in a dark place, and doesn’t allow for any variation.

The last thing that really rubbed my rhubarb the wrong way here was the appearance of the ‘buried’ demon. Seriously, since the exposure to the Western world of Eastern films, particularly that of ‘ j-horror’, demon possession designers have gotten lazy, and I assumed I had fallen asleep, and someone had changed the disc I was watching to that of The Ring, or The Grudge, or any one of the other scary, black haired girl ghost films.

I really wanted to like this film, and honestly, the gore level almost fooled me into thinking it was a good film, but it’s not. The violence level is of what a good horror fan would want, but without levels of light, it’s just a barrage that eventually become overwhelming, and dare I say it boring and disappointing.

This, the SECOND remake of Evil Dead suffers from the same thing that the first remake, Evil Dead 2, suffers from, but from a polar opposite point of view. If you could take this FAR too dark remake and mix it with Evil Dead 2’s high level of levity you’d have a spectacular film. Wait a second… that already happened: it’s a film called The Evil Dead, directed by Sam Raimi. Watch that instead: it’s the best of both worlds.

Score: **1/2

The menu screen for Evil Dead

Format: The sound and picture quality of this disc are outstanding. The picture is presented in Hi-def 2.39:1 widescreen and the sound punches you in the head with a Dts-HD 5.1 track that has some pretty amazing levels to it.

Score: *****

Extras: There’s some ok extras on this disc!

Commentary by actors Jane Levy, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas with Director Alvarez and writer Rodo Satagues is pretty good, and most of their recollections are either informative or amusing.

Directing the Dead is a look at what processes director Alvarez used to make the film, and get performances from the cast.

Evil Dead the Reboot has interviews with Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell about being convinced to do a remake… sorry, a ‘reboot’, and with Alvarez and Sayagues about approaching a cult favourite and the risks therein.

Making Life Difficult discusses how psychologically hard it was for the actors to film the intensity of a film such as this.

Unleashing the Evil Force talks about the lore of the Book of the Dead.

Being Mia follows Jane Levy around on a day on the set, and looks at some of the tortures the director put her through… actually, a lot of the extras are very Levy Heavy, so the producers must have decided she is the Next Big Thing.

Previews starts with a trailer promoting Bluray as a format (hot tip idiots: I’m watching a Bluray disc, so I possibly already know about it) before giving us trailers for Django Unchained, After Earth, This Is The End, White House Down and Iron Man: Rise of the Technovore.

Score: ****

WISIA: There is enough gore to keep me going back, so yeah, I’ll watch it more than once!

Possessed!

Poltergeist (2015)

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One from the rewatch pile…

Poltergeist (2015)

Australian Bluray cover of Poltergeist

Film: So as cinema fans we have decided that remakes are something that we will no longer completely argue about as there have been enough good ones and enough bad ones for both sides of the conversation to have ammunition in a non-winnable war, but now, the detractors have a new weapon, a carpet bombing, nuclear, anthrax-filled, DNA bomb that will melt the argument of remake fans.

That weapon is the turd laden, disappointment fuelled crapfest known forever more as the Poltergeist remake.

This hunk o’junk was directed by Gil Kenan, whose previous efforts were the kid’s movies Monster House, which was pretty good, and City of Ember, but essentially we have a kid’s film director remaking one of the great all time horror films. It was written by David Linday-Abaire, who did the screenplay for Robots, Inkheart, Rise of the Guardians and Oz, The Great and Powerful, so again, another family film maker attempting to ‘reboot’, ‘redux’ or ‘reimagine’ a classic.

Sigh.

The new American Gothic?

I assume you all know the story but this has a few tweaks, so I’ll share those with you. The Bowen family have moved into a new, cheaper house as dear old dad, Eric (Sam Rockwell) was made redundant from his job at John Deere. He’s moved with wife Amy (Rosemarie DeWitt), and three kids, Madison (Kennedi Clements), Kendra (Saxon Sharbino) and Griffin (Kyle Catlett) in a new house. Very quickly though, they find there is something wrong with the house… Something supernatural… And when Carolanne… Sorry, Madison, is stolen by the evil entities living in her closet, the family enlist help of a seemingly useless university paranormal investigation team and a television psychic, Carrigan Burke (Jared Harris), but will they all be able to retrieve her, or has she, and the entire cast”s acting careers, been lost forever.

The Ghost Portal sucks!

Now in the throes of writing for various websites over the last 20 odd years (yep, still plugging away for no financial reward…sigh), I’ve sat through some absolute dire films in the name of cinematic, journalistic integrity, but never have I sat through such a waste of time, talent and resources. I actually should have watched it twice but I decided that seeing as how I’d already sat through the extended cut, there was no reason to poison myself again with a shorter, more incomplete film, I mean, you wouldn’t take half a dump, right?

Honestly, the only thing I can compliment this film on is one element of the production design, specifically the undulating, Croenenberg via Fulci look of the ghost world, as far as the rest of it though, well, my problems with this film lie in three measures, and I shall break them down individually.

First, the cast. I really like Sam Rockwell, and even when he is in dire rubbish like Charlie’s Angels, he stands out as a scene stealer, but here he appears to be collecting a weekly cheque, or his Downers have really kicked in, and he just fades into the background. The others are just terrible, and the director doesn’t seem to know how to get good performances out if any of them, and they all trudge through this mess like they are being forced to be there. Jared Harris normally stands out as well, and does here but it is due to his accent rather than his performance. It seems the director has no idea how to get actors to act and what he has achieved is the very definition of generic characterisations.

Second, the script. A director can perform his craft better if he has a decent script, and here he doesn’t. The story starts quickly and uses a few of the trappings of the original, but then it has jumps in the narrative that are awkward, and characters that change at the drop of a hat, making them nonsensical, not to mention a paranormal team that don’t share every scrap of information that they have experienced with each other. Their equipment is also eye rolling, especially the iPad controlled drone that is sent in to find Madison in the ghost world. At first I thought it was a cool idea, until the controls were handed to Griffin, the ten year old boy, to fly into the void. By the way, if I were watching images sent back from limbo of the tortured souls within, I’d probably react, rather than watch it like a repeat of the most boring of Richard Attenborough’s wildlife documentaries.

A lot if the script just doesn’t ring true, and even in the most fantastic of fantasies, lore and truth of the story must prevail or it becomes hard to swallow, and it happens so frequently in this film that it’s the size of a horse sedative.

Finally, the overall production design. In a post Paranormal Activity/ The Ring world, making a film about hauntings has its own visual language, but guess what: that doesn’t mean you have to adhere to it. This film has a complete lack of a visual originality.  All the flags are raised here: blue tinted imagery, little black haired girls, grabbed by your leg and pulled up the stairs, bubbling black ‘stuff’  from the ground. Even a casual horror fan, who may be suckered in completely by all these modern haunting films, would sit with arms crossed, and be able to identify from where each bit was stolen! Sure, it’s a remake so clearly originality HAS to as issue, but the good remakes generally distance themselves from the original to get a look of its own. This distances itself from the original by using all the looks from the post The Ring ghost films.

I really can’t advise you against this film enough, and have a slew of casual horror friends who have told me not to see it but I didn’t listen to their advice, but I expect that you all should listen to me: do not waste your time watching this film. The only thing wrong with this film is everything.

Just a horrible, horrible waste of a film. Don’t see this, please. I have thrown myself on a grenade for you, don’t make my sacrifice in vain.

Score: *

The menu screen of the Australian release of Poltergeist

Format: One positive thing I can say about this disc is how well it is presented. The film is in 2.40:1 with a 5.1 and a 7.1 soundtrack (I reviewed this on the 5.1) and as one would expect from a film of this era, it is perfect. In addition to 2 versions of the film, the disc also features the 3D version of film.

Score: *****

Extras: The extras, like the film, are a pile of rubbish. An alternate ending, which is almost as stupid as the original one, a stills gallery, which is an extra that never fails to infuriate me, and 2 trailers, which in their favour make the film look like it is going to be mildly entertaining.

Score: *

WISIA: No, thousand times, no.

The Dead… ARISE!

Rabid (2019)

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One from the to watch pile…

Rabid (2019)

The Cover the the Australian DVD release of Rabid.

Film: Most people love Cronenberg for his films like Videodrome and The Fly, and whilst I rate the latter, I’m not the biggest fan of the former. I much prefer his earlier films Shivers and Rabid: those films have a far greater appeal to me.

I do like eXistenZ and Naked Lunch too, but those early films really speak to me. As you can imagine, like most film fiends who hear the word ‘remake’ associated with a film they like, I went into a pre-judicial whine when I heard Rabid was getting one, until I heard the Soska Sisters, whose film American Mary was one I liked, were attached, and my whine turned into a far less bitter fruit punch. I wasn’t happy, but I was willing to cross my arms and shout ‘impress me’ at my TV screen.

The screenplay for this film was also written by the Soska Sisters along with John Serge, who gave us Killer Crush, Killer Mom and The Perfect Soulmate… I guess the name ‘Killer Fan’ was already taken.

Eeeeeeeek! She’s SOOOO ugly! (Not really, it’s Laura Vandervoort)

Wallflower Rose Miller (Laura Vandervoort) works in the fashion industry for obnoxious designer, Gunter (Mackenzie Grey) and because of her retreating personality, probably due to her facial scars from a car accident, is treated like dirt.

Gunter is having a fashion show and after the After Party, Rose leaves immediately after having an argument with her friend Chelsea (Hanneke Talbot) and is in a horrific accident which causes irreparable facial damage.

Yeeesh! That’s something gross from the effects department!

… or is it irreparable? Rose receives a mysterious email from The Burroughs Institute about the potential for reconstructive therapy, but it’s not facial reconstruction they perform: its stem cell based hocus pocus, which of course offers a full recovery… but it changes Rose in ways she doesn’t want to face.

Dr Burroughs (Ted Atherton) gives Rose some tablets and ‘protein drinks’ to help her recover, and is warned that they may give her bizarre hallucinations, but her hallucinations seems so real, and the people she is hallucinating about attacking seems to be coming down with a weird, rabies-like disease…

Ok, so the first problem with this film is it’s star. Sure, it’s a good performance, but like teen movies of the 80s and 90s, when the wallflower is revealed to be a great beauty, it’s a false reveal, because even with the light scar facial effects and blotchy make-up, Vandervoort is still absolutely gorgeous.

My next issue with the film is it’s decision to just play along with the expected tropes of bitchy industry professionals, flamboyant fashion designers, asshole TV directors, and the horrifying ‘oh my god, she’s so successful now she’s beautiful’ plot device. I honestly couldn’t tell if the Soska Sisters were pulling the piss out of those cliches, we’re paying homage to them or were unaware they existed. Either way, it didn’t work very well.

It’s not all bad, though. The make-up on Rose after her accident is horrifying, and some of the other gore effects are nice and chunky.

Possibly the most terrifying thing about this film is the medical professional reaction to a viral outbreak. At this point in time it seems unfortunately real.

Also, considering this is a remake of Cronenberg’s film, there are some fun tributes to him throughout, such as the medical scrubs from Dead Ringers, and the concept of calling an institute that deals with altering bodies ‘The Burroughs Institute” and it’s head scientist/ doctor ‘William Burroughs’ was a nice tribute to the author William S. Burroughs, who wrote Naked Lunch, an unfilmable film made by Cronenberg.

This film is OK at best, and all the way through watching it, all I could think of was how much I wished I was watching the original, or Shivers, or Dead Ringers, or something ‘body horror’ more original than an average remake.

Score: **

The menu screen to the Australian DVD release of Rabid.

Format: This film was reviewed on the Australian R4 release which runs for approximately 104 minutes and is presented in a clear 1.85:1 image with a matching Dolby digital 5.1 soundtrack. I would have rathered a super Bluray release with a bunch of extras.

Score: ****

Extras: Absolutely nothing, well unless you count the trailer for The Final Wish before the film. It is a shame there is none as I would have liked to have heard the Soska Sisters thoughts on Cronenberg’s original and their ideas to remake it. Oh well, screw you, movie fans, you don’t deserve that.

Score: 0

WISIA: Probably not.

Holy crap! Someone needs some ointment!

One Hour with Resident Evil 3

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One Hour with Resident Evil 3

So, against my better judgement, and in a feat that makes me a massive hypocrite, I bought Resident Evil 3, the remastered game, for my PlayStation 4. Why am I a hypocrite? Well, even though I am an advocate for movie remakes, I don’t understand why people would want a remastered video game.

(Yes, I’m aware that it’s basically the same thing, and I can’t explain why I don’t feel the same way about video game remakes: I just don’t!)

Resident Evil 3 is obviously the sequel to Resident Evil 2, which also had a revamp and a dress-up last year, and is predominantly a third-person puzzle game in the disguise of a zombie-hunter. That is, it’s a ‘find-this-to-open-that-to-get-this-to-unlock-that’ game, but with a fair bit… actually, a LOT of combat against all sorts of zombies and beasties.

In this tale, you play Jill Valentine, a member of the S.T.A.R.S team (Special Tactics And Rescue Service) who is trapped in the zombie ridden Raccoon City and after being attacked by a creature known as the Nemesis-T Type. To get out of the city, she needs to team up with Carlos and members of the U.B.C.S (Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service), who are attempting to evacuate as many citizens as possible on a subway, but, as you would expect, there are lots of things that need to be done before that can happen.

Also, unfortunately for Jill, not every member of the U.B.C.S. is necessarily of great assistance, and considering they work for the corrupt company that caused the pandemic, Umbrella Corp, how far can she even actually trust them… and then there’s also the zombies…

This game is a remake of the 1999 game Resident Evil 3: Nemesis but thankfully as given up the AWFUL tank-like controls and fixed camera angles. Graphically it is really nice and the soundscape adds tension of a really high level. The moans of zombies come from a fair way of and the consistent rattling of chain-link fences and the crackling of fires adds a disturbing amount of depth.

Something I found really cool about this was the opening scenes were live action and really added to the realism of the environments. I thoroughly enjoyed my one hour of play, and if I’m honest, it quickly turned into 90 minutes as I did get lost in the environments.

Another cool thing about this release is the opportunity to play the beta version of the online game Resident Evil: Resistance. RE:R is similar to games like Evolve or Friday the 13th where one person plays the bad guy, and they are up against a a team of four players.

The single player is playing as an evil Umbrella Corp employee who is attempt to stop the other players from escaping a facility by putting zombies and other traps in their paths, controlling the situation from a series of cameras, whilst the team collects various forms of protection and executes missions to secure their escape.

I didn’t get to play this online unfortunately, but the training session was fun and and the character and play design engaging.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this game, and will no doubt drop several hours of my life into surviving Raccoon City’s zombie problem.

Happy Halloween Flick: Night of the Demons (2009)

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One from the to watch pile…

Night of the Demons (2009)

Film: It’s hard to do a review of a remake of a film that has iconic scenes with iconic horrors stars in it. More to the point, it’s hard to do a review of a remake of an 80s horror film that has so many things that make it stand head and shoulders above other smaller budgeted films of the same decade. The ‘lipstick in the nipple’ scene, the ‘bending over in the convenience store’ scene, the atrocious ‘acting’ by Linnea Quigley… actually, in summary, it’s EVERY scene in which Quigley appears!!

It must have been a daunting task for remake director Adam Gierasch to attempt to follow in 80s version director Kevin Tenney’s footsteps, but soldier on he did. As always the key to doing a remake is to take the originals scenes, and turn the violence volume up on them to a Spinal Tap-like 11, but how does one do that when the original has scenes that a SO well remembered for their absolute craziness.

Anyway, the story tells of Angela (Shannon Elizabeth), a club/party promoter who has organised a kick-arse party in a house when 85 years ago, some murders took place, and the house has been shrouded in mystery ever since.

A bunch of Angela’s friends come to the party, but the police shut it down due to the appropriate approvals not being present. Unfortunately, a bunch of them, including drug dealer Colin (Edward Furlong), Jason (John F. Beach), Dex (Michael Copon), Lily (Diora Baird), Maddie (Monica Keena) and Suzanne (Bobbi Sue Luther) get stuck in the building, and after one of them in ‘bitten’ by a dead body in the basement, slowly, one-by-one, they get turned into demons cast out of Hell, but will any of them survive… and will you, the viewer, even care?

Pretty much well everything about this film can be used as an argument AGAINST the concept of remakes being OK, but if I was to be forced into offering this film any sort of compliment, one of the demon designs (the one who has prehensile tit tentacles… titacles?) is pretty inventive, but other than that, this film is like a poor pisstake of the film GO! but with demons in it. The worst crime this commits is that it sets up ideas in the script that are interesting, that don’t pay off, and are just their because, for example, London gangsters are hot right now, let’s have one!

To add insult to injury, the songs on the soundtrack are pretty terrible and emulate sounds from actual big heavy metal songs… one in particular steals so liberally from one of Rob Zombie’s songs that I can’t believe they weren’t sued by him.

When a film is only remembered for Quigley reprising a visual take on her original role, and Edward Furlong looking like a hobo, you know it’s got issues.

Score: *

Format: This film was reviewed with the Australian Region 4 DVD which runs for approximately 93 minutes (though it feels like SO much longer) and is presented in an average looking and sounding 16×9 widescreen image with a 2.0 audio track.

Score: **

Extras: This film thinks it’s far too good for you and offers you NOTHING in the form of extras!

Score: 0

WISIA: This is one of those cases where the original is so crackers that the remake will never be remembered! I won’t watch this again, not while the original exists.

Day of the Dead Bloodline (2018)

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One from the to watch pile…

Day of the Dead Bloodline (2018)

Film: Another day, another ‘Day’. It seems that a lot of Hollywood need to feed from the undead teat of the late George Romero, and if they screw it up, they give someone else a go. The Night of the Dead remake by Tom Savini was a decent watch, Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead was suitable impressive too, even though it was more of an action film with dead people than a horror film with a message like Romero’s, but remakes of Day have constantly screwed up.

Horror legend Steve Miner’s heart may have been in the right place… in his chest, not on a plate… when he remade Romero’s Day Of The Dead, but it just fell a little short with some odd casting, like Mena Suvari, and Ving Rhames, but playing a different character from that which he played in the Dawn remake… confusing! Next we had Day of the Dead 2: Contagion and here we… actually no, the wounds are still too fresh, even after 13 years… and now we have a brand new, 2018 remake, Day of the Dead Bloodline, with a script by Hush’s Mark Tonderai and Baby Blues’ Lars Jacobson, and directed by The Corpse Of Anna Fritz’s writer/ director Hèctor Hernández Vicens.

The Dead walk, and mankind is screwed! You know the story: when there is no more room in Heck, the Dead walk the earth when something fell from space or something, and mankind is in some deep doodoo.

It’s 5 years latter Day Z, and medical student Zoe (Sophie Skelton) is now one of the medical personnel at a military run refugee camp, filled with army personnel, as well as families. One of the children at the camp gets a strain of influenza that desperately needs anti-biotics that she knows is at the University facility where she was five years ago, so of course, she and a bunch of muscle-bound army men travel off to retrieve it.

The problem is though, when they get there, the place has a small zombie problem, and particularly for Zoe, a creepy dude, who was obsessed with Zoe and had a strange and rare blood type, named Max (Johnathon Schaech) is still residing there. Now, though, he’s a zombie, and due to his weird blood type, he only half-turned and still retains some memory or being alive.

Well, this is the assumption, anyway…

Of course, he is intelligent enough to find a way to break into the facility, and when captured, Zoe convinces Lt. Salazar (Jeff Gum), the boss of the refuge that he may be the key to creating a vaccine to protect mankind from become ‘rotters’ (this film’s word for zombies) and she starts her experiments… but will the refuge survive?

So how bad is this? Well, it’s not. It’s interesting insomuch as there is a real proactive movement towards creating an inoculation which is an interesting aspect to the zombie breakout idea, which yes, has been done before but if you overlook some of the stupid script bits and pieces as a few moments of emotional melodrama, it’s actually works.

Schaech does his rapist freak Bub impression just fine, and Gum’s wound-back version of Captain Rhodes actually works far better as he at no time really becomes a caricature like Joe Plato’s did. The army aren’t the enemy here, they are here to protect us,

The zombies all look pretty good too, and the special effects are of a pretty good quality, but there is one problem with the film.

You can definitely tell this isn’t Romero’s Dead World is it all looks new. The story tells us it’s 5 years after the Dead first came back, but everything: the military vehicles, the guns, the uniforms, all look like they were unpacked yesterday. Also, even though supplies are getting thin, everyone at the refugee camp looks like a catalogue model: clean skin, even tan, manicured beard/ hair… thank Revlon a decent hairdresser/ waxer survived the zombie apocalypse.

This is where the suspension of disbelief gene that all movie fans have, fails. I don’t like comparing originals to remakes, but the grit and filth of the facility in the abandoned mine in the original gave a sense of realism, whereas even though the zombies look fine in this, it’s all Ikea fresh. Even the abandoned towns don’t look TOO abandoned, and a little like a movie set.

This is an Ok zombie film, and is more like a sequel to the Snyder Dawn with its slick presentation. I’ve actually seen many worse zombie films than this, and two of them were also called Day of the Dead.

Score: ***

Format: Day of the Dead: Bloodline runs for approximately 90 minutes, and this review was performed on the Australian, region B Bluray which has a perfect 2.35:1 image and an DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 of matching quality.

Score: *****

Extras: There is a single extra on this disc called Behind the Scenes is a 5 minutes fluff pieces which pays homage to Romero’s original work, but quickly turns into a self-congratulatory thing. Interesting one of the producers says ‘we are not trying to replace Romero’… so why not call your film ‘Military Hospital Of The Dead’ or ‘Blood Type Z’ or something.

Score: **

WISIA: Aside from how stupidly new it looks, it’s good enough to watch again, even though the end may be a little… well, really schmaltzy, but it’s certainly a different ending for a zombie film, that’s for sure.

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

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One from the re watch pile…

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Film: The early 2000s were a wonderful time when every second movie that was released was a remake, not like now when every movie is a Disney film, and every forum on the Internet was rife with old school horror lovers screaming blue murder that a remake would wreck ‘their’ film.

Here’s a few pointers:

-a remake doesn’t wreck an original film…in actual fact it does nothing to it other than bring attention to it.

– it’s not ‘your’ film, and the owners of the rights can do whatever they feel like to it. You are just playing in their backyard.

Anyway, this remake was directed by French director Alexandre Aja, whose previous film was the unusual, and violent psychological film Haute Tension aka High Tension which many people were stunned by both for its extreme gore, and is use of trickery, and blatant lies to tell its tale. The script, whilst based on Wes Craven’s original film, is written by Gregory Levasseur, who also worked on Haute Tension and Aja’s next film, Mirrors.

The Hills Have Eyes remake tells of a family who are travelling across the New Mexico desert on holiday. When the father, Big Bob (Ted Levine) is told of a short cut not on the map by a gas station attendant of dubious moral, he proves he must have never seen a horror movie a decides to take it.

Part of the way across this ‘short cut’ the family are in a accident staged by a bunch of mutants who live in the mines in the hills, and in the governmental built town made to see how nuclear weapons would effect suburbs. These mutants are the results of the fallout subjected their ancestors.

Quickly, the family are subjected to murder, rape and cannibalism before one of them steps up his game and decides to set things straight, and carves a path of blood and guts across the desert.

Aja proves that his Haute Tension film was not a fluke, and this, his first American film, sits high on my list of amazing remakes, along with John Carpenter’s The Thing and Chuck Russell’s The Blob. Aja has taken Craven’s film and really increased the levels of every threat the family encounter.

A special shout-out has to go to the effects, which to me are a seamless combination of CGI and practical effects, and the soundtrack, not just the incidental music but also the bizarre choices of songs for the opening and closing credits, particularly the opening which is combined with 1950s styled happy-housemaker adverts and deformities of the children of people who were exposed to Agent Orange in Viet Nam.

There is a lot to love about this film and dare I say it, I like it far more than the original.

Score: ****

Format: This film was reviewed with the Australian, region B Bluray release of the film, which is presentin a crystal clear 2.35:1 image and a matching Dolby DTS-HD 5.1 audio track.

Score: *****

Extras: There is a few extras on here which are a pain to access as the disc has no menu screen, so whilst the film is playing you have to use your ‘Pop-up Menu’ button to access them.

There are two commentaries, one by Aja, writer Levassuer and Producer Marianne Maddalena and another by Producers Peter Locke and horror legend Wes Craven. Either individually or watched one after the other they offer a whole pile of interesting anecdotes of the making of the film.

There are 7 Production diaries which can be watched individually or as a job lot. They are crappy handicap filmed behind the scenes stuff with no offer of an explanation throughout and each one only goes for about two minutes. Ultimately worthless.

We also have trailers for this film, From Hell and X-men: The Last Stand.

Score: ***

WISIA: I really dig it so, yeah: 100%