Jag’s Opinion on Horror Movie Remakes

Horror remakes are one of the quickest ways to cash in and make some quick money, for the greedy fat cats that sit behind the scenes and push and pull there weight against directors who have a vision. The fat cats I am on about are the studio executives and producers; the people who hand out as little cash as they can in order to make as much cash back.

These greedy bastards keep pumping money into horror remakes, and the worse thing is that they keep making money off them, I think its unfair just to blame just these greedy pigs because its also our fault, because we keep running to the cinemas or going out buying these remakes, we help fund and build up their egos who in turn give money to make these projects happen for desperate directors. This bloody circle is never ending.

What pisses me off more is that we say we hate these remakes, and want them to stop, well I tell you then- stop watching them, and just go out buy the originals and enjoy these bad-boys of horror. They are the true horror movies you want to have and many many horror fans hold them dear to their hearts and so should you. If we all stop going out and spending our cash on these god awful remakes, then the fat cats in Hollywood will stop making them as there’s no profit to make out of them and maybe then they will pump their cash into the slightly more original horror scripts that are floating around in the world.

Sorry peeps about that outburst but I just could no longer hold it in and well it all just had to explode out of me.

I was thinking I would review some remakes. The good, the bad and the o.k, but screw that I feel what’s the point maybe a later date I will get to it but for now I feel I should just take my time and talk more about remakes in general.

I would at this point like to state yes I was at one point helping to fund these remakes, and fell for the remake craze and for this peeps I am sorry, I was young and just wanting to support horror the best I could, but what I found out from this support for the remake was that Hollywood just won’t stop, these dicks just kept on, and made more and more remakes.

Since then I have stopped watching remakes at the cinema and buying them on DVD/ Blu Ray, since this is only going to help fund more horror remakes. If I want to check out a remake which is rare I can go on the good o’ tinternet and watch it for free, yes I would be giving up my time which I could have spent watching a great original horror movie but hey, we all have to make some sacrifices.

I personally feel that only roughly about 2-4% of horror remakes are good, and sometimes even outdoing the original, but not all, some just make it fun to watch and let us the fans, see a different side of what the movie could do.

Maybe a lot of you peeps out there are thinking its unfair saying all the ‘bad stuff’ about horror remakes since you have not seem them all and so my judgement is not all true or even half true and what I say to this is that having watched the original, 97-99% of all remakes don’t hold a touch to them, because what the original offered were scares, real physical effects, even a rather great story can not be seen in the remakes which seem to be flat on story, taken over by CGI and well it's just violent and nothing else.

Don’t get me wrong I love violence but hell I want it to feel real and maybe even scary, remakes seem to do violence for the sake of violence.

I think I know why this could be, what I’m about to say is not a fact and I have not researched it but rather personally what I think remakes just have violence for the sake of violence and no scares. Well that’s unfair they do have some scares and when I mean some I mean some like roughly 1% of the film is made up with scares, yes you could say there’s more scares, but the scares I’m on about are the ones no one see coming, the ones that hide and out of nowhere pop out and grab us by our necks. Sorry peeps seem to have gone off the topic, ok, lets get back to the main point violence.

I believe we have this over- the- top amount of violence due to the things that are happening around us and also the change of audience.

Let’s start with world events effecting horror violence. The news can now be seen 24/7, seven days a week, not just on western television, but now news channels all over the world have there own T.V channels, we have always had them appear on our radios, and even now we have them on the tinternets. We have been over exposed to the news from what we hear to most importantly to what we see, the images of dead people, or dying people and even people in war torn countries are powerful. I mean these images are so strong because they are real that they overrule horror movie scares because we are no longer as scared of bumps in the dark but rather by images of death.

Let me put this another way, we have become used to seeing images of death that we perhaps want more, but we cant tell others we want people to be ripped apart and have insane amount of blood flying everywhere so as a result we want to see this in films more than feeling the need to be scared in the traditional sense.

Now my other point is that these horror remakes seem to be targeting the younger audience, the studios see them as an easy way to make money, they also now have more media to showcase their films (well trailers for there remakes) unlike before and well when you enter the realm of the tinternet you can target all major age groups, from 10 year olds-late 30s maybe even the early 40s, because everyone nowadays lives off the tinternet it has become part of our lives it is like another friend, a child or even secret lover, and the great think is the tinternet will never say your wrong, your dirty it will never judge you.

This amazing tool lets everyone explore the new remakes, by seeing behind the scenes, photos on set, the cast we all love on the small screen to the big screen (I mean this in a general way).

So to wrap up, what I am saying is that the audience have changed now and remakes have become weak in sense of scares but strong in bloody violence and the ratings have lowered for the new generations of horror ‘fans’ and so what was a R rating for the original is now a PG13 for its remake.

Well I’m going to stop here because there’s a lot there to read and take in, and yet again I’m sorry peeps for my outburst but hey the true horror fans do have to let the feelings out about the new crap being showcased to us.

-Jagman-

John's Opinions and reviews on Horror Remakes

I find it hard to enjoy any remake, especially if the original movie was a mediocre or a crap film. It's equally as painful if a great film like Halloween is remade into something a crap film school student would put together. These movies are usually made by music video directors or first timers that don't have a clue about pacing a horror film correctly. Not a single horror remake has been as scary to the modern audience as much as it's original was to it's audience. Hollywood are cashing in on the name for financial security, this is the sole reason remakes are made.

The second most painful thing about remakes for me is that the modern audience don't even know they are watching a remake. In the space of one week I experienced this as one of my work colleagues asked me if I'd seen the Crazies trailer and I said to him “you mean the remake?” And he didn't know it was a remake. Even more shocking was my own brother wasn't aware he'd just walked out of a remake of 'The Wolfman'... All that has to be done to prevent rubbing salt into the wounds of original fans is to say in the trailer or posters “Based on an original film by Wes Craven” or “A rein-visioning of a horror classic” for instance. Problem is a lot of the films they are now remaking were horrible original films that nobody can call a classic such as 'The Blob', 'Troll', 'The Crazies' (sorry Romero) and 'Sorority Row'. I've read recently that there may be another Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake for 2011 and another Spiderman movie set in high school for 2012 with a possible Robert Pattinson (Twilight) as the hero... it will seem the movie world at least will truly end on that year. So if Hollywood are increasingly scraping the bottom of the barrel for material to recycle with horrible cast, and now RECYCLING what has recently been RECYCLED as well as the increasing acceleration in other forms of technological entertainment it's looking pretty grim for Hollywood.

Below are our reviews on remakes: the good and the bad

A review of bad remakes – Reviews by John:


'Rob Zombie's Halloween' (2007) Rating: -3 out of10
Also known as 'Zombieween' amongst disgruntled fans, this is possibly the single worst remake of all time, from an extremely hypocritical artist who had publicly stated that remakes are the worst thing a director should do. This film doesn't know what it's doing. The first half is sort of a prequel to the story of Michael Myers the iconic serial killer, as it gradually explains how young Michael became psychotic. The second half adapts the original film's story but pointlessly has additional scenes in particular, scenes that are a waste of screen time, such as a scene showing us how Michael got his overalls. Every character including Laurie Strode had been written as obnoxious and verbally abusive which makes it impossible for the audience to actually care for them when Michael is in for the kill. Another thing which got under my skin was Malcolm McDowell's and William Forsythe's horrendous acting which was akin to a bad student film or an episode of Emerdale. Any half-assed director with sense would either ask for a retake or a recast!! I could go on and on about how bad this movie is in detail but it would fill the whole page and probably leave you wanting to kill yourself. What was worse is that Rob Zombie had shown great potential with The Devil's Rejects which I still enjoy to this day because it is so different from anything else today, whereas Zombieween was a mimic of all the serial killer bio-pics with a shooting and lighting style no different from everything else today.

'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' (2003) Rating: 3 ½ out of 10
Not nearly as bad as “Zombieween”, this film is most likely responsible for the remake trend, the use of green colour correction, this slick film is a completely different approach to the original version. However just like “Zombieween” it too fails in sparking fear into the imagination of the audience as the original had achieved. There's barely any blood in both the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween, however the audience were still terrified or disgusted because of the clever film trickery that was presented to them. On a positive note, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre did have some disturbing moments such as the suicide in the car as well as a new way of portraying a grimy environment, albeit an artificial grittiness via the now overused green look and overdone production design. Going back to a negative point I think is worth mentioning, it never once seemed the protagonists were from the 70s which is the time the film is set, this is due to the casting which deliberately chose good looks over unique performance. In hindsight this film could have been a whole lot worse, but having said that, we did not need this film at all.

'My Bloody Valentine 3D' (2009) Rating: 2 out of 10
I must confess, I never watched this movie in 3D, or in theatres, I didn't even buy or rent the DVD/Blu Ray. Instead I ended up watching a pirate copy my friend owned. So I cannot right a complete review on if the 3D worked or not, not can I comment on lighting or production design. That leaves me with the story. A story which is somewhat similar to the original with the 3 main characters, but with a twist on it. Written by Todd Farmer, the same guy who had written Jason X, the story could have been that bad but thankfully it wasn't. Once again I have to complain about the casting; which consists of two famous TV actors, Kerr Smith (Dawson's Creek) and Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, Smallville) who could not support the film from falling apart unfortunately. If decent actors were chosen to portray these main characters rather than obnoxious ones with ego then this movie would be in my 'Good remake' pile below. Instead this movie is in the pile of sh*t because I found it quite boring and it didn't even touch the original, which is amazing since the original didn't have famous people in the roles, a 3D gag or even half the money of this film, but it managed to execute the story more perfectly and is considered a slasher classic. Thus we can all dread the execution of Patrick Lussier's next project, Halloween 3D.

'Dawn of the Dead' (2004) Rating: 3 out of 10
The remake of George Romero's masterpiece, this remake is surprisingly favourable amongst even the Romero fans, and is probably the most liked remake just behind John Carpenter's remake The Thing. However I on the other hand, think this remake doesn't deserve all the hype and praise it's been undeservedly given for quite a few reasons. Firstly I hated this movie, and this was when I actually used to give remakes a chance back in the day, I forced myself to re-watch the film for this review and I still hated it 6 years later. I still dislike the running zombies, and THEY ARE ZOMBIES because there are scenes where people die for minutes (after being bitten) and then get back up. You don't get back up if you have died unless you are a zombie, or were incredibly lucky your doctor struggled to revived you. Problem is that this movie tries to sit on both sides of the fence: the infected persons with rage and the undead. The zombies run like the hyper raged (but still alive) humans in 28 Days later. This doesn't make any sense. It's understandable for infected people who are ALIVE to run extremely fast to attack, but not someone who has just died, especially IF THEY HAVE BEEN DEAD FOR A MONTH... 28 Days later at least had the logic and showed that after a month or so the infected persons ran out of energy from lack of food, and lay on the ground like any malnourished human or animal would. But no this movie has no common sense and has it's zombies more energetic than the starving character Andy across the street! This major flaw in logic I and certain other horror fans could not get past.

The second biggest flaw is the writer's choice of deliberately making sure 80% of the main characters are selfish assholes. And just when you think you can start liking them, they do something obnoxious, selfish or psychotic in the following scene. For instance we are unexpectedly let down by Michael, who all of a sudden thinks he should kill a father (they had just rescued I might add )who has been bitten but Michael is fully aware that his dad's daughter wants to spend her last hours with him. It takes the female protagonist to remind him and the police officer BASIC MORALITY. I could go on.

The third biggest flaw is that it completely lacks any metaphor whatsoever, which by the way is extremely easy to do in a zombie film and is required if you are remaking a film which did so. The original was an obvious reflection on the increasing consumer mindset that was forced in the faces of the American people in the late 70s, one such tool of this was the shopping mall. The original film said to us that materialism, the need to buy more is a sign of mindless emptiness within oneself, exactly mirroring a mindless zombie feeling the need to consume human beings. But I guess James Gunn, the writer of this movie thinks that we are all too mindless to understand any metaphors, so he just won't bother and will instead sprinkle the movie with explosions, forced cameos, cgi effects and a thin plot with one dimensional annoying characters that a high school student would write. Or maybe it is just him being stupid, mindlessly copying every other movie that came before.

'House of Wax' (2005) Rating: 1 out of 10:
A boring, generic and not scary film which has a completely different story to the original and takes the House of Wax idea a bit too literally as the building bizarrely melts like a candle at the end. Perhaps more bizarre is that it has a protagonist who looks exactly like Justin Timberlake, but with a bad attitude problem and somehow this bad attitude scarier than the evil villains themselves. The film also stars Paris Hilton, could this be any worse?

'The Omen 666' (2006) 2 out of 10:
Again, not scary, just boring. This remake tries to have a political edge to it at the start showing footage of the burning Twin Towers etc. but this is probably the most interesting scene as the rest of the film is not only boring, but technically disabled. In many scenes, whilst watching Jag and myself spotted the boom microphone above the actors!! The CGI was also piss poor and the protagonist's voice and character is so one dimensional and monotone that he sends you to sleep. It didn't help that I had seen the original, because the movie pretty much copied most of the scenes. So I guess I knew what was coming, another major flaw with remakes!!

'The Amityville Horror' (2005) Rating: 3 out of 10:
Admittedly has better scares than the other remakes mentioned above, however the bad CGI lets it down a lot, that and the overused blue look to all the night scenes. I actually preferred this to the original which I thought was overrated, but nevertheless it's a very forgetful and superficial film, from the same year that brought us the very memorable and distinctive Devil's Rejects

'The Grudge' (2004) Rating: 3 ½ out of 10
The Unsubtle Hollywoodized version of an original asian horror film, shamefully and unexpectedly produced by Sam Raimi with the same director as the original. This movie is extremely 1 dimensional; in characterization and story. It has some good scares to it, unlike it's extremely predictable and unscary sequel. I guess the film has set out what it wanted to do: a dumbed down version of a tangled story into a popcorn horror for the teenagers on the back row


Now that I've let off an unexpected 2000 word outburst of frustration I will now review the remakes I actually enjoyed.:

Good Remakes – reviews by John:

'John Carpenter's 'The Thing' (1982) Rating: 10 out of 10
I haven't seen the original film so I am not sure if I'm just being one of those people who are ignorant and think the remake is the better or what. Nevertheless this film is visually impressive through it's photography of the Antarctic location as well as the creative and sophisticated special effects used in the gore sequences. Not a shred of cgi was used, and to this day nothing has looked so real as we witness people and animals being ripped apart from the inside as a shape shifting alien comes out of them in all kinds of creative and imaginatively gory ways. The acting is superb and the humour is just right, but kept to a minimal as the atmosphere of isolation and doom is being crafted around us as we watch. It plays on the fear of physical invasion, like an infection that will inevitably eat it's victims alive and this is enhanced by the fact that they become pretty much trapped in the Antarctic. This film is much more advanced at creating the feeling of a grim fate within the audience than the Dawn of the Dead remake tries but fails to achieve 22 years later. What makes the film even more isolated is the clever technique of having an all male cast, depriving the audience of femininity and purity and this adds a certain grimy psychological aspect to the film.

'Night of the living Dead' (1990)
A surprisingly well executed remake directed by the special make-up effects artist Tom Savini, this film does not lack anything, which is unexpected because the last time a make-up effects person went into the directors chair we had 1 dimensional films like Troll and Friday the 13th part 7 where it seemed the director didn't care about performance or story. This film on the other hand not only doesn't suffer from this but it also enhances the characters particularly that of Barbara's who has a character arc from once being a meek young woman in distress and hopelessness at the start, to a heroine that surpasses the others in strength and wisdom. The practical special effects were unsurprisingly amazing, and the stunts, zombie make-up and direction made the walking zombies an incredible threat as they can sneak up on you or trick the characters and the audience into underestimating them, so that they do suddenly appear for the attack, its is much more frightening than the predictable running zombie in the Dawn of the Dead remake. Additionally the musical score is both original and very chilling, and once again as in The Thing remake, we the audience feel the same dread and doom the characters experience, making it more of a memorable and frightening horror film than 'Zombieween' or Dawn of the dead 2004 will ever be.. The only thing I ever remember from those 2 films is feeling angry, disappointed at how superficial and predictable those remakes were.

Mediocre remakes that were bearable – review by John:

'Friday the 13th' (2009) 7 out of 10:
Also predictable and superficial, this film doesn't try to be something it wasn't meant to be. It adheres to the formula of the original Friday the 13th franchise with a setting and situation similar to F13 parts 1 to 4. The writers new exactly what the fans wanted, the only let down in terms of expectation was the lack of the talented Harry Manfredini for the music score. Instead they opted for a very generic industrial sounding music. Probably the most annoying thing about this movie is the shaky camerawork and deliberately poor interior lighting, rendering the audience clueless to the action taking place in front of them. I personally dislike this style as it does not reflect reality in any way, damaging the suspension of disbelief which s a vital technique needed to make a film good. However since fans of the franchise don't go for a great story or filmmaking craftsmanship but more so to see Jason and his ultra violent creative kills, the fan audience will leave satisfied, just as I was the first time I had watched it opening night. Having said that the film was more suspenseful than actually scary, and also relied more on violence just like the majority of the original franchise. The second major problem i had with it was once again, they mostly cast people for their looks and stardom rather than their acting ability, but nevertheless these films were never meant to have great acting in them in the first place so who cares right! Admittedly, being a big fan of the franchise as well as the character of Jason Voorhees, may have clouded my thoughts from properly reviewing this film from an objective start point.

There are many, many more remakes that I have not bothered to watch in these recent years, as what's the point if I know I will come out of the film with £7.00 less and feeling angry about them.

In conclusion:

From my own personal experience in watching horror remakes I conclude that there has been only ONE decent remake per 5 to 10 YEARS, that's probably 5% of horror remakes that are good in the last decade. So my advice if you don't want to see anymore of them, is stop wasting your money seeing them for a start, watch original content instead then perhaps Hollywood will realise that remakes are not as profitable as they were and as a result they will stop making them..

Thanks for reading this lengthy rant, John

Location scout

by John Mitchison

Last week Jag and myself went on an 6 or 7 mile grueling location scout in the cold weather, the end result wasn't too pretty as Jag fell ill on the way back and the next day I phoned him at 3pm and he was still in bed!!! But we got a lot of things done which is why we were so exhausted...














The lane

It will appear somewhere in the beginning of the film, hopefully it will be this exact lane, but if not we know another lane we could use which is more quiet but somewhat private which is another issue in itself. The reason we chose a lane, without actually knowing in detail exactly what will happen in the scene is because the perspective of the lane itself kind of visually mirrors some of the other scenes around it and relates to something else I'm not allowed to mention, third reason we're using it is because there's something about it which looks visually stunning. That's about all i can say on that for now.

The lane in Friday the 13th: Jason's Rage

The reason we were going to use this lane in our fan film we've yet to make: 'Friday the 13th: Jason's Rage' because it looks like a small country lane that would be in New Jersey.. More on that: i am still up for making that film and I think it is good to put it on hold for now because if we leave it for the future, we will not only have better experience but will also have more film equipment we would have bought by then. That's not to say that the upcoming film we are currently making now won't be as good. But to tackle a franchise well brings along fan expectations that we would have to meet which is tricky believe it or not as we don't have a budget that would even meet the original F13. So we want to tread carefully with any films we will make from now on, this make take a lot of time and money but we will hopefully make films that will be an improvement upon our last efforts. Anyway along the way we saw another potential location, this time for the fan film:

Regarding Friday the 13th 2009, i think it was a good attempt at bringing in both the original fans of the franchise as well as attracting new ones because it used the original formula but added the style of post 2000 horror of fast cutting, dark lighting and jerky camera movement.. Despite the fact that I myself DID NOT LIKE THIS SHOOTING AND EDITING STYLE, I respected the writers because they respected the fans ad i am a hardcore fan of the franchise so there will probably be a lot of future discussion to come on Jason Voorhees..


Anyways back to our Location Scout



The location we thought was a bike ramp area was most likely a paintball gun range we discovered later on -coincidently relating back to Friday the 13th again (only true fans of the franchise will get what i mean)

Basically this location serves good for the scene we want because as you can see there would be many places to run and hide, and it generally has something creepy and other worldly about it if treated in the right way. It may seem a bit of a random location but we have good reasons for choosing an area like this as you'll hopefully understand when you see the film at the end of this year.

Later on the scout we unintentionally came across some more locations that were scripted which we may or may not use, depending on creative grounds or simply if we can get permission:







in addition to scouting, we also filmed some of the new opening title shots which should include in the next horror show episode if all goes to plan, this was pretty easy as we have done the same thing a year ago but the footage was recorded on the dead Hi8 format, the camera broke shortly afterward which stopped us from even transferring it onto a computer! We still have more crazy shots to film on that as we pretty much half assed it because we were focusing on the location scout more than anything. I think next weekend we should be filming the rest of the intro


Thanks for reading even though I doubt many people bothered to....

The Next written blog will be up next week, in the meantime STAY DEAD

-John Mitchison

Update 09/02/10

Hey all,

Just wanted to give a quick update, on what's currently going on in the world of Horrorville.



We went on a location scout on the Saturday, and came across a wonderful place, it has everything that i wanted and more, it was creepy to find something so good in our backyard (in a manner of speaking).
It crazy peeps it seems everything is falling into place, we have a solid idea of the way the film is going to move, we have some nice locations and also me and John are working as a team, ideas are flowing and feelings for this project are getting higher.

I guess that's all for now, hopefully we can put a couple of photos up for our next update, so peeps know what's going on.

But for now, I say peace and enjoy the night.

-Jag

Horrorville is back, or maybe i should say the Horror show is back, its bigger and better, and it gonna be the best way to stay in touch with what Horrorville Productions is currently up to, and also what we think of horror.

Before I go on further I want say that we are sorry that we have not been on Youtube much or uploaded any new horror shorts, well I should personally say sorry me Jag, as I don’t go on Youtube a lot, due to personal problems, but that’s in the past now. I and John plan to make horror films and stay in contact with all our fans.

Well I guess I should move on with what this blog is all about, in its simplist form it’s a way of talking about horror films in general and also about Horrorville.


I'll begin by talking about Horrorville and its past work and the new stuff we are working on and what are, as well as our future plans.

One of the biggest disappointments was ‘Don’t Deny It’ which was going to be one of are biggest projects to date, it had started of as a Uni project but had become so personal for me that I started to fall in love with it, and John felt the same, the project was a loose storyline based on two Asian films I had seen, I took from both and turned it into something true to me. The story was about two brothers and the oldest brother girlfriend. It was about love but played so much on the psychological side or horror but did have its fair share of bloody violence.

The film had started production but was cut short due to myself travelling abroad and when I had come back the tapes had got ruined, and the deadline was drawing so near that I could not go back to restarting the film again. So, I had to quickly work out a new film which most of you may know as ‘Run’.

We at Horrorville Productions are now working on a new project, many who have seen the Horror show will know we have talked about it in its most basic way, but I can revel more now, it is about two brothers and the theme is wanting to escape. I am sorry but that’s all that can be revealed for now.
So basically what we're telling you so far is that it’s a sci-fi horror movie, its about two brothers and will take a year to film and edit, hoping to be shot in the summer.

Before I leave, I would once again say thanks to everyone who watches our films (Marcus, Nick, Nate, Tamerick, Dwayne Miller to name a few) and thank you for supporting us over the years and because of this if any of you peeps have any questions or thoughts, well anything to talk about do message us on our youtube channel www.youtube.com/user/slashville and also www.youtube.com/user/HorrorVillePictures Or you can also add comments on this blog (not sure if it can be done but if it can go for it). Me and John will get back to you all and do our best to stay in touch with you all.

Peace for now and do watch out for new blog entries and web shows

-Jagbir Dhillon