Horror Queen

I knew a remake was coming!

PLOT

Boy preacher Isaac convinces a group of kids in the small town of Gatlin, Nebraska that everyone over the age of 19 is steeped in sin (as per dreams sent by God/He Who Walks Behind the Rows) so they slaughter all their parents and other adults in town. Twelve years later, Vietnam vet Burt is traveling down a Nebraska road with his unhappy wife Vicky. The two fight, a kid runs out in the road, they hit him and Burt discovers that he had his throat slashed beforehand. When the couple arrive in town, they come face to face with the kids and realize that they might not make it out alive.

TRIVIA

Stephen King was sent a copy of the screenplay, but returned it without reading it and despite sharing a writing credit, has never seen the Children of the Corn remake.

THOUGHTS

I was in Kentucky for a family reunion when this originally aired on the Syfy Channel and I watched about 15 minutes of it before I got distracted by family members. When I saw it on the Wal-Mart shelf, I decided to just go ahead and buy a copy. I can’t say I’m disappointed, nor can I say that I’m that happy. Children of the Corn is definitely better than the original, but the character of Vicky is so annoying that I couldn’t wait for her to die. My former Marine boyfriend was about to climb in the television and bitch slap her for the comments made about a vet (saying that he killed the kid on purpose, mocking him for killing women and kids during the war, etc.). Had they made her just a little more sympathetic, I think I would have liked this a lot more.

I recently sat down and watched The Last House on the Left again and it was actually better the second time around. I’m talking about the remake from earlier this year and not the original, which I haven’t seen in several years and need to see again. I actually watched it with a friend who had never seen it before and he felt fairly disturbed at the end. I do have to say that I’m not a big fan of the “alternate” ending they put on the DVD on the unrated version. It felt a little too hokey for me and I didn’t like the idea of Justin surviving.

What can you say about a remake?

PLOT

Nick is a local man, working on a fishing boat and sleeping with Stevie Wayne, the sexy DJ who owns the only radio station that reaches residents of a small island. When his girlfriend Elizabeth comes back to town, he tries to hide his recent actions from her and go back to things as normal. Something isn’t normal though, and the residents discover that when bodies start turning up after a mysterious fog sweeps through town. Elizabeth starts researching the town’s history and discovers the dark truth of the town founders. The founders murdered a ship full of men and kept it hidden, but now the ghosts of those men want their revenge.

TRIVIA

A kind of/sort of remake of the John Carpenter movie The Fog.

THOUGHTS

I never bothered to see this movie because the reviews were so bad, but when I saw it for $2, I couldn’t resist picking it up. Now I’m almost sad that I wasted the time. The only good thing about the movie is Selma Blair as Stevie. She’s so great and Maggie Grace is so bad as Elizabeth that you wonder why anyone would pick her over Stevie. The acting here is pretty bad too, with most actors just sleepwalking through their roles and acting like wooden dolls. I expect to see this in a low-budget, straight to DVD release and not a wide-spread horror movie.

The first of many remakes.

PLOT

A college professor jumps off his balcony and kills himself, much to the horror of his girlfriend waiting in bed for him. The movie then jumps to an American woman in Japan who moved there for her boyfriend. She heads to work as a health aide and learns that she’s being sent on her first home visit alone. She arrives and finds the patient by herself and also sees a small boy in the house. The movie then cuts back to two other stories and reveals how they are connected. A young woman was obsessed with the professor and her husband killed her before killing their son for seeing it happen. The next residents of the house were attacked by the ghosts of the house right before the American began working with them. She has to uncover what happened before she becomes the next victim.

TRIVIA

Sarah Michelle Gellar previously starred on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, while Clea Duvall and Jason Behr both starred on different episodes in the first and second season.

THOUGHTS

I never realized just how confusing The Grudge was until I tried to write out the plot and realized that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. With a movie like this, it’s hard to figure out what happened when and which character goes with which storyline. I will admit that the noise made by the woman’s ghost grates on my nerves and when I heard a similar noise on the street, it sent chills down my spine. I guess The Grudge remake wasn’t too bad, though I’ve heard that a lot of people really hated it.

Not as good as I remembered.

PLOT

Cyrus, a ghost hunter and his assistant Dennis head off to capture a ghost, but Cyrus is killed during the mission. His nephew Arthur learns he inherited his uncle’s house and heads off to look at it with his kids Kathy and Bobby and nanny. The house has huge glass walls with Latain words on many of them. Dennis arrives dressed as a power worker and when he finds ghosts in the basement, he tells Arthur of the truth. The lawyer showing him the house tells him everything is fine, but then ends up dead when one of the ghosts attacks him downstairs. The ghosts begin attacking the family and Arthur finds a medium named Kalina hiding in the house. The only way to see the ghosts is by using special glasses and when Arthur discovers that his dead wife’s ghost is in the house, he becomes determined to save everyone inside.

TRIVIA

A remake of the 1960 William Castle movie.

THOUGHTS

I know that Thirteen Ghosts isn’t some great horror movie, but I always liked it. It’s fairly cheesy, a little lame and Shannon Elizabeth looks nothing at all like her onscreen dad Tony Shaloub. When I watched it again though, I didn’t like it as much as I did before. This time it seemed a little long and most of the characters were annoying, Elizabeth especially. I kept checking to see how much time was left because I was ready for another movie.

Ungh

PLOT

The movie starts out with a flashback of Michael’s mom bringing him a horse statue and then jumps to the moment right after the last movie ended. Laurie goes to the emergency room and Michael’s dead body is picked up by an ambulance. Of course it crashes and Michael escapes. He shows up at the hospital, starts killing people and chases Laurie until oops, she wakes up and it was all a dream. Michael is actually missing and it’s a year later. Dr. Loomis is a big star how, having wrote a book about the events and Laurie has turned into one of those poser chicks that I despise. Laurie starts having visions of herself doing Michael’s earlier killings and basically being schizo before learning she’s his sister. Oh and he’s on his way “home” to finally off his little sis because his dead mom wants the family back together again.

TRIVIA

Rob Zombie originally didn’t want to do a sequel and production began with different filmmakers before he finally decided to come back.

Danielle Harris returned for her fourth turn in a Halloween movie.

THOUGHTS

I’m very protective of Michael Myers because the Halloween franchise has always been my favorite. My boyfriend and I saw this together the day after watching three of the original movies and that was probably a mistake because the longer this movie went on, the more pissed off I became. After Halloween 2 ended, we both said at the same time, “what the fuck was that?”. I really, really didn’t like this movie at all. I disliked how Laurie was a little poser teenager who does all the same damn things girls do in movies to look “different” (clothes, music, etc.) nor did I like how Dr. Loomis is now an asshole. I was hoping that the kills would be interesting, but you couldn’t see a damn thing. As soon as Michael started killing, it intercut with Laurie freaking out somewhere and you couldn’t tell what the hell was going on. I feel sad just sitting through Halloween 2.

Yes, I did in fact watch The Uninvited for a second time. I thoroughly blame my boyfriend because while we were at Hollywood Video and I needed another movie to get a discount, he started in about how he “really wanted” to see it. I got it and he proceeded to fall asleep halfway through, only to wake up ten minutes from the end and feel confused as hell. It obviously didn’t make an impression seeing as how he has still yet to finish the movie and we got it three weeks ago. Anyway, the movie was about the same. I still liked the one sister better than the other, but it was a little better than it was in my memories.

Ah yes, the movie that I barely liked when it first came out. Okay that was probably an understatement, but I at least wasn’t a big fan of it. Part of it was because I was such a fan of the original. Recently I sat down and watched the whole movie with my boyfriend who had never seen it before. This time I have to say that the movie was better than I originally thought. I like the ending, which left room open for a sequel and I actually liked the acting in it. Sue me, but this time around I actually liked it.

More proof American filmmakers can’t remake foreign horror flicks.

PLOT

Josh is a guy who gets attacked by a weird ghost and then is later discovered dead by his girlfriend Mattie. Mattie starts getting IMs from his computer, but she decides that there must be a problem with the computer. She finds out that the new owner of the computer Dex has never turned it on, but the messages keep coming to her and her friends. She gets a letter from him that he mailed before he died, along with red tape and a note. Dex then finds messages Josh sent to a mysterious doctor and a virus he was working on to stop “them”. Turns out that a virus caused ghosts and spirits to escape into the real world and now they’re out for death. Oh and they can come through any signal.

TRIVIA

Co-written by horror movie icon Wes Craven.

Followed by two sequels (which I also reviewed) that went straight to DVD.

THOUGHTS

I have to admit that I actually own Pulse, not because I thought it was a great movie, but because it was cheap and I hadn’t seen it before I bought it. The first time I watched it, I actually thought it was fairly good and now that I’ve seen it again, I wonder what I was smoking back then. The only real fun about the movie is Kristen Bell as Mattie and some of the supporting characters. I love some of the background characters and I’ll admit that some of the CGI stuff wasn’t bad either. Pulse still wasn’t that good of a movie though.

The South’s gonna rise again.

PLOT

Three guys are heading south for spring break when they encounter two girls and a guy also heading the same way. One guy Anderson has the hots for one of the gals and passes along his number. The next day they take a short cut through the town of Pleasant Valley and arrive just in time for their big Guts ‘n Glory Jamboree, led by the mayor played by Robert Englund. The other group arrives right behind them, followed by another couple on a motorcycle. They’re all invited to stick around for the jamboree, not knowing that they’re on the menu.

TRIVIA

Eli Roth turns up at the very beginning, playing the same character he played in his own movie Cabin Fever.

Kane Hodder has a very, very brief cameo towards the end of the movie.

A sequel is set for release in 2009.

THOUGHTS

Despite the fact that I’m an Ohio girl born and raised, I like to think that deep down I’m a good old southern girl. This movie made me rethink that idea. There is so much racism in this movie and even when they try to play it for laughs, it falls short. There’s also one character that looks so much like my ex-boyfriend that I winced every time he came on screen. I’ve never seen the original so I have no idea how the two movies compare, but I get the feeling that the original was a lot better. It would really have to be better. A lot of the kill scenes felt like something I’ve seen before, but one scene involving metal teeth was pretty good. I don’t think I’ll be lining up to see the sequel to 2001 Maniacs.