I watched this at the weekend, and, after seeing the trailer for it, I was quite looking forward to it, although I was slightly dubious because of the whole ‘remake’ thing. I mean, why fix something that’s not broken?
Remakes, in my opinion, are rarely anywhere near as good as their original counterpart (The Fog, Halloween, Predators, to name a few), but there are some that not only live up to the hype, but out-do the original in scare factor and these benefit from the large strides film making and technology has taken over the years.
Remakes, in my opinion, are rarely anywhere near as good as their original counterpart (The Fog, Halloween, Predators, to name a few), but there are some that not only live up to the hype, but out-do the original in scare factor and these benefit from the large strides film making and technology has taken over the years.
However, unfortunately, I don’t class this remake as better than the original. In fact, I don’t think it even came close. There were quite a few things that bugged me about it. First off were the unlikeable and unbelievable characters. I am not blaming the actors at all, I think they did their best with what they were given, but I found it difficult to believe that I was watching the same Sam Rockwell who gave an outstanding and intense portrayal of ‘Wild Bill’ Wharton in The Green Mile. They were all very much blasé and not too bothered by the whole experience. Even when their little girl went missing, the mother didn’t take much convincing not to go to the police about it, and when she was sat speaking to the psychic researchers she could have just as easily been discussing the weather rather than her missing daughter. The researchers themselves were laughable. One of them has something seemingly unexplainable happen to him that visibly scares him, and then he is seen a very short time after, implying they are making the whole thing up. If that wasn’t hypocritical enough, at one point something which should be terrifying happens to him, and in fairness, he does react like he is shook up…but only for that scene. In the next part he seems absolutely fine again, like nothing untoward was going on at all. As for the psychic, well, I instantly disliked him. Everything was a joke to him and even when he was trying to be serious he just didn’t have the ring of truth about him. All of his explanations were just accepted. Why? Wouldn’t it be much better if he was questioned as to how he knew the bodies from the cemetery under the house hadn’t been moved like they were told? Or maybe why, as a psychic there to help he didn’t really do anything different to the researchers? Once this character is introduced, the teenage girl loses any depth of character (hmm…) she had and becomes totally star-struck and not at all concerned for her little sister and their house full of ghosts.
Another thing I just did not like was the use of the latest gadgets. Fine, incorporating technology into films isn’t a bad thing. Without it we wouldn’t have lived the terror of Katie and Micah in Paranormal Activity and all the subsequent found footage films, so I am certainly not against using it. It opens up a world of possibilities to scare viewers and I liked the part where the teenage girl was picking up on something via her phone, although personally I think much more could have been done with that angle. What I didn’t like though is the immediate and again, nonchalant use of the drone with a camera attached to it. I found myself yet again asking, why? Why would a psychic enter a haunted house and straight away decide the best course of action would be to send in a drone? This comes back to the believability (or not) of it all. They didn’t use any such thing in the original, yet that still managed to produce a creepy atmosphere that lasted the entire film. Sometimes, not seeing something is worse than seeing. The scenes they did take from the original were outdone to a comical standard, which I’m sure is not what they were going for, but someone should have told them that bigger isn’t always better.
There was a part in it that I found genuinely scary though. The scene with the clowns was terrifying for me, as someone who hates clowns with a passion. Everything that went into that scene was eerie, but unfortunately, it was only pretty much that scene that did it for me.
Overall, it seemed like they remade a film but changed too much about it for my liking. I know there wouldn’t be any point in remaking it exactly the way it was, but the whole reason of remakes is to add something to its advantage, not take it away. This just solidifies my belief that it should have been left well alone.
Overall, it seemed like they remade a film but changed too much about it for my liking. I know there wouldn’t be any point in remaking it exactly the way it was, but the whole reason of remakes is to add something to its advantage, not take it away. This just solidifies my belief that it should have been left well alone.
I just didn’t like it. I don’t think they should have done a remake. I don’t think it needed a remake and now I am just hoping they don’t remake Poltergeist 2, for the pure and simple reason that I honestly cannot see who they would get to play Kane that would be nearly as frightening as Julian Beck.
At the end of watching it I had to check that it was actually a horror and not a dark comedy. Nope. It is classed as a horror. And now I’m fed up of asking why…
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