Remakes & Reboots Part 1 – The Bad

During the course of our 31 Days of Halloween, our CliqueClack writers have given us a peek into what makes for a good Halloween movie, from the music to the main monster, to a single scene or the psychology of the story … we’ve looked at all the good things about Halloween movies. But, as we all know, horror movies come in all shapes and sizes, from very good to very bad and everything in between. Horror is almost like comedy in that it’s very subjective. One thing that scares one person may not affect another. We also have differing viewpoints on what is good and bad in a movie as well, especially when it comes to remakes (or reboots, as filmmakers like to call them today). Over the next three days, I’ll share my opinion on three such “reboots” — the bad, the good and the controversial.

The Bad

There is nothing worse than having the highest of expectations for anything, particularly a movie, and having those hopes dashed. It’s happened to all of us at one time or another, and more often than not, it’s happened while viewing a remake of a classic (or not so classic, but maybe fondly remembered) movie. Over the last couple of years, we’ve been (mis)treated to a slew of remakes of 1980s horror films, from Halloween to The Thing (okay, that one is technically a prequel but it shares a lot of DNA with the 1982 version), and while some are okay, most of them are just plain bad. For the purpose of this particular post, I must single out one particular production company with a particularly egregious record when it comes to destroying an 80s horror film with a pointless remake.

Two words: Platinum Dunes. If you see these words attached to a movie, run away. Run like Jason Voorhees, Michael Meyers and Freddy Krueger are all chasing you. Platinum Dunes kicked off their remake-a-palooza with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the original of which is regarded as a horror classic (although all I can recall of it is a girl running and screaming for most of the film’s running time). That was followed by The Amityville Horror and The Hitcher, and they obviously influenced the makers of The Hills Have Eyes. Their remakes bring nothing new to the table, and when they try to switch things up (like they did with various plot elements of The Hitcher), they fail miserably.

The last two PD productions were remakes of two important 80s slasher films, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. The Elm Street remake had a lot of promise, particularly by casting Jackie Earle Haley in the role of Freddy Krueger. They tried to interject a little more of Freddy’s backstory into the film, but it just ended up being another pointless entry into the remake game with nothing new to set it apart from Wes Craven‘s original.

Friday the 13th, however, was the worst of the offenders. For years, fans have been hoping for a kickstart to the franchise and the people at PD promised so much while this film was in production. Reports kept hitting the internet that we would go back to Camp Crystal Lake, Nana Visitor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) had been cast as Jason’s mother, we’d learn more about what happened to Jason as a child, etc. Those promises only turned out to be half truths. Yes, the new movie did take place at the Camp Crystal Lake area but it was set in the present day. Nana Visitor was wasted as flashbacks to the original film were recreated with her filling in for Betsy Palmer, and used only during the movie’s opening titles (why not just use the original footage?). The only information the characters in the movie had about Jason were the “legends.” And then the killing began.

What I hate most about these Platinum Dunes movies is the cookie cutter aspect where if it worked once, we’ll keep doing it that way (and this carried over to The Hills Have Eyes, which should have been a PD production) — place a group of unlikable characters in an isolated location and kill them off, one-by-one, and make the audience root for the killer. Instead of truly rebooting the F13 franchise, PD gave us another sequel with characters you wanted to see dead because they’re just awful and they do stupid things like go into dark rooms (or caves) alone. Watching this in a theater, my huge disappointment turned to anger by the time the movie was over because all of the promises I had been given never materialized, and we just got another carbon copy of a movie that had already been copied ten times in the past … and now for the first time, it seems that someone has finally been able to kill Jason Voorhees. No, not a character on screen, but the company responsible for putting him there. PD and Warner Brothers were certainly hoping for a hit to revive the franchise and make them more money, but for the time being there is only an idea for a sequel that Warners does not want to commit to (and Warners, why not just sell the rights to the character back to Paramount — which owns the title but not the character — and let them do it right without any input from PD?), but setting another F13 movie in the winter does show a glimmer of promise in the premise. It’s something that’s never been done before and could be interesting … unless a snowstorm is just another excuse to abandon a group of unlikable characters in a remote location so they can all be killed off one-by-one. (Although the PD folks are now saying they will no longer make horror films, so that could be a plus.)

Oddly enough, Friday the 13th starred Jared Padalecki from TV’s Supernatural (he also starred in an ill-received — but I kind of enjoyed it — remake of the classic House of Wax in 2005), and was released in February of 2009. A month earlier, Jared’s TV brother, Jensen Ackles, headlined his own remake of another classic slasher film, My Bloody Valentine. In Jared’s case, the remake was a failure on all levels. Jensen, on the other hand, ended up with what I consider to be a terrific update … which I’ll examine in Part 2 of the series: The Good.

Clacked by Chuck Duncan
on Oct 26, 2011 @ 09:00 EST5EDT