The hills have eyes
So I thought the remake was pretty excellent, considering
1. It's pretty faithful in tone to what I remember of the original, especially in the harrowing, disturbing first half(?) culminating in the attack on the family.
2. The score was great, quasi-Carpenter stuff
3. The opening credits were easily the most disturbing part of the movie, for me.
4. The original (and this) are my favourite kind of horror movie - more "horror" than "scary", ferociously effective and not pulling (m)any punches - but not quite the kind of sucking, malevolent sinkhole The Devil's Rejects was.
5. Despite some egregious uses of the Hero's Death Battle Exemption, the second half and its switch to "hunt and kill the bad guys" was fairly well executed and didn't totally ruin everything (as it threatened to for a while).
Easily the best horror movie I've seen in a significant stretch (although I have the suspicion it's still not quite as great as the original, although as I said to Ben and Joy, my experience of that movie is primarily in the form of a nightmare) and the credits had the preview for Silent Hill, which I am still hoping will be incredible.
Edit: Probably the best way to point out some of the differences is to quote a chunk of Nathan at Cold Fusion Video, from his excellent review of the original:
From even the most superficial standpoint, everything here works well as a horror-thriller. The Carter [the normal family] characters all have that certain ambiguity that, paradoxically, speaks of well-formed personalities behind what we see exhibited of them here (as opposed to the single-trait cliches that populate most horror movies in strict ratios). The build-up, while slow, is inexorable, and though the budget is low, the premise is such that the stripped-down, spartan production values reinforce the stranded suburbanites' plight. Even the bare-bones cinematography is a plus; the desert is shot with an oppressive character completely at odds with the austere mystique we've come to expect from a cinematic heritage of Westerns that dwelled lovingly on its arid beauty.
Even acknowledging everything I've said, these are not grounds for rating a movie a classic. But a movie is indeed a classic when it's successful both on a surface level (a suspense story about a normal family versus psychos) and deeper levels (explorations of the role of socialization in civilization, and subtle comparisons and contrasts between our two main families).
Some of that (even the bit about well-formed personalities, I think) applies to the remake, but the second paragraph is almost wholly missing from this version. It's similar to when I recently saw Robocop again and was astounded at how good and complex a film it is, for a movie about a robotic cop. I think the problem is these days if you're a director who wants to do something more complex and nuanced economics doesn't force you to necessarily work in genre film, and that is to genre film's disadvantage.
1. It's pretty faithful in tone to what I remember of the original, especially in the harrowing, disturbing first half(?) culminating in the attack on the family.
2. The score was great, quasi-Carpenter stuff
3. The opening credits were easily the most disturbing part of the movie, for me.
4. The original (and this) are my favourite kind of horror movie - more "horror" than "scary", ferociously effective and not pulling (m)any punches - but not quite the kind of sucking, malevolent sinkhole The Devil's Rejects was.
5. Despite some egregious uses of the Hero's Death Battle Exemption, the second half and its switch to "hunt and kill the bad guys" was fairly well executed and didn't totally ruin everything (as it threatened to for a while).
Easily the best horror movie I've seen in a significant stretch (although I have the suspicion it's still not quite as great as the original, although as I said to Ben and Joy, my experience of that movie is primarily in the form of a nightmare) and the credits had the preview for Silent Hill, which I am still hoping will be incredible.
Edit: Probably the best way to point out some of the differences is to quote a chunk of Nathan at Cold Fusion Video, from his excellent review of the original:
From even the most superficial standpoint, everything here works well as a horror-thriller. The Carter [the normal family] characters all have that certain ambiguity that, paradoxically, speaks of well-formed personalities behind what we see exhibited of them here (as opposed to the single-trait cliches that populate most horror movies in strict ratios). The build-up, while slow, is inexorable, and though the budget is low, the premise is such that the stripped-down, spartan production values reinforce the stranded suburbanites' plight. Even the bare-bones cinematography is a plus; the desert is shot with an oppressive character completely at odds with the austere mystique we've come to expect from a cinematic heritage of Westerns that dwelled lovingly on its arid beauty.
Even acknowledging everything I've said, these are not grounds for rating a movie a classic. But a movie is indeed a classic when it's successful both on a surface level (a suspense story about a normal family versus psychos) and deeper levels (explorations of the role of socialization in civilization, and subtle comparisons and contrasts between our two main families).
Some of that (even the bit about well-formed personalities, I think) applies to the remake, but the second paragraph is almost wholly missing from this version. It's similar to when I recently saw Robocop again and was astounded at how good and complex a film it is, for a movie about a robotic cop. I think the problem is these days if you're a director who wants to do something more complex and nuanced economics doesn't force you to necessarily work in genre film, and that is to genre film's disadvantage.
