I enjoyed Jackie Earle Haley in Watchmen and thought he was a good choice to cast as the new Freddy, and he's pretty good in the movie, he just doesn't have much to work with unfortunately. The rest of the cast seems comprised of kids who didn't make the Twilight call backs and, thus, had some free time in their schedules to work on a watered down, WB knock off version, of an 80's classic horror flick.
I had vaguely high hopes about this flick, as the original was a kind of seminal moment in my early movie watching career (I have a vivid memory of watching the original sitting on the floor at the foot of my parent's bed one sunny afternoon and being scared out of my mind.) Like the recent Alice in Wonderland, it seems as though the team behind the project decided to cherry pick some of the most memorable moments of the original story (however not the Johnny Depp blood geyser for some reason??) as way of paying homage, but then they decided to cut those moments down to about 15 seconds of screen time (again with no tension) and quickly move right past them. For the rest of the film's "scary" beats they opt for lame jump out and get you moments that you can see coming from a mile off, or badly edited quick cuts to supposedly "frightening" imagery that...well....isn't.
There's honestly not much more to say. The first is a far superior film in just about every way. It's scarier, the plot is better, and Robert Englund is given more time to terrorize. It's weird because, there is a moment or two right near the end of the film where you can tell that Jackie Earl Haley's Freddy has real potential to be a world-class creep. The final climactic beats where he's facing off with the new Nancy are, in fact, creepy mainly because this version more directly addresses Krueger's backstory as a pedophile. However, just as he's getting warmed up the credits roll (after a quick cut to black on a lame final beat.) It was in these few final moments that I found myself thinking, "Wow, if we'd seen this side of him the whole movie this really could have been something." and instead they went for cheap scares and watered down imagery to frighten you.
Stay home and rent the original. Now, on to another point I want to discuss briefly....
You know what sucks? Knowing that this reboot is the most recent in a long, long line of reboots that's just begun with scads more coming down the pike. This line includes such titles as the recent Wolfman, Clash of the Titans, The Crazies, and the upcoming American Pie, Spider Man, Robin Hood, The Thing (okay it's a "prequel"), Arthur, Fright Night, Red Dawn, I Spit on Your Grave and, (yes Andrew) Footloose.
I understand the idea behind all of the "rebooting", Hollywood figures it's better to bet on a known quantity that's been successful in the past to get people into theatres rather than betting on new properties that are unfamiliar to audiences and, therefore, less likely guaranteed to draw a crowd. Hollywood has been hit hard by the recession like just about everyone else out there, so the math makes sense.
What pisses me off about this trend, especially what we've seen of the product so far, is that the studios don't seem to give a damn about the material they're rebooting (I will admit that Star Trek was a great reboot....) To me that's insulting, and a slap in the face to moviegoers. I'd like to believe that if you're going to try to retell a story that's already been told once successfully, that you'd want to try to not only service the original, but do it one better, add to it in some new and insightful way. Instead the idea of all of these remakes seem to be focused on telling a rough outline of the original story and filling the rest of the screen time with lame special effects and overblown action sequences that add nothing at all to the story being told.
It's a nasty game to be playing on us moviegoers and I hope that some of the upcoming reboots buck the trend that's been established or the movie going horizon is going to be bleak for the foreseeable future, and that sucks for all of us. Here's hoping.
I had vaguely high hopes about this flick, as the original was a kind of seminal moment in my early movie watching career (I have a vivid memory of watching the original sitting on the floor at the foot of my parent's bed one sunny afternoon and being scared out of my mind.) Like the recent Alice in Wonderland, it seems as though the team behind the project decided to cherry pick some of the most memorable moments of the original story (however not the Johnny Depp blood geyser for some reason??) as way of paying homage, but then they decided to cut those moments down to about 15 seconds of screen time (again with no tension) and quickly move right past them. For the rest of the film's "scary" beats they opt for lame jump out and get you moments that you can see coming from a mile off, or badly edited quick cuts to supposedly "frightening" imagery that...well....isn't.
There's honestly not much more to say. The first is a far superior film in just about every way. It's scarier, the plot is better, and Robert Englund is given more time to terrorize. It's weird because, there is a moment or two right near the end of the film where you can tell that Jackie Earl Haley's Freddy has real potential to be a world-class creep. The final climactic beats where he's facing off with the new Nancy are, in fact, creepy mainly because this version more directly addresses Krueger's backstory as a pedophile. However, just as he's getting warmed up the credits roll (after a quick cut to black on a lame final beat.) It was in these few final moments that I found myself thinking, "Wow, if we'd seen this side of him the whole movie this really could have been something." and instead they went for cheap scares and watered down imagery to frighten you.
Stay home and rent the original. Now, on to another point I want to discuss briefly....
You know what sucks? Knowing that this reboot is the most recent in a long, long line of reboots that's just begun with scads more coming down the pike. This line includes such titles as the recent Wolfman, Clash of the Titans, The Crazies, and the upcoming American Pie, Spider Man, Robin Hood, The Thing (okay it's a "prequel"), Arthur, Fright Night, Red Dawn, I Spit on Your Grave and, (yes Andrew) Footloose.
I understand the idea behind all of the "rebooting", Hollywood figures it's better to bet on a known quantity that's been successful in the past to get people into theatres rather than betting on new properties that are unfamiliar to audiences and, therefore, less likely guaranteed to draw a crowd. Hollywood has been hit hard by the recession like just about everyone else out there, so the math makes sense.
What pisses me off about this trend, especially what we've seen of the product so far, is that the studios don't seem to give a damn about the material they're rebooting (I will admit that Star Trek was a great reboot....) To me that's insulting, and a slap in the face to moviegoers. I'd like to believe that if you're going to try to retell a story that's already been told once successfully, that you'd want to try to not only service the original, but do it one better, add to it in some new and insightful way. Instead the idea of all of these remakes seem to be focused on telling a rough outline of the original story and filling the rest of the screen time with lame special effects and overblown action sequences that add nothing at all to the story being told.
It's a nasty game to be playing on us moviegoers and I hope that some of the upcoming reboots buck the trend that's been established or the movie going horizon is going to be bleak for the foreseeable future, and that sucks for all of us. Here's hoping.
Thinks for making me feel better about skipping it on Sunday.
ReplyDeleteHappy to help Melissa!
ReplyDelete