OCT 12 — In this age where Hollywood films have become even bigger business and very often cost close to, sometimes even more than US$100 million (RM428 million), remakes have become increasingly normal, in addition to franchise films.
Because they often cost so much to make, logic dictates that it’s much safer to produce films that audiences are already familiar with (and have proven to be successful before), instead of gambling on new or original ideas that may or may not necessarily attract people into cinemas.
Horror films, especially those made by Hollywood studios, are especially prone to this remake, sequel/prequel or reboot phenomenon, to the point that audiences no longer cringe at the thought of yet another new horror remake arriving in cinemas or streaming services.
While this may produce the occasional spark, like the recent prequel The First Omen, more often than not, these remakes, sequels/prequels are often underwhelming and disappointing.
Two more new horror remakes have arrived on streaming and digital platforms recently, and here are my thoughts on them.
Speak No Evil
The original Speak No Evil, a bleak and soul-crushing Danish film from 2022, landed the third spot in my list of favourite genre films of that year.
It was a fantastically executed feel-bad classic that plays like a cross between Funny Games and Force Majeure, a cautionary tale about the perils of being too polite/civil, punctuated by a series of unforgettable mind games and invasion of boundaries that are guaranteed to make the audience squirm.
For Hollywood to come out with a remake just two years later is really quite fast, considering how long it takes for a Hollywood film to go through pre-production, shooting and post-production these days.
Directed by James Watkins (of The Woman In Black fame, but for me he’ll always be the guy who did Eden Lake) and starring James McAvoy, Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis, this film, like the original, focuses on two families who meet while on vacation.
One family is from the United States, but are now based in the United Kingdom, consisting of husband Ben (McNairy), wife Louise (Davis) and daughter Agnes.
The other is a UK-based family consisting of husband Paddy (McAvoy), his much younger wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and son Ant, who’s unable to speak due to what Paddy describes as a birth deformity.
Like the original film, the Ben family will be subjected to an increasingly uncomfortable number of mind games and invasion of boundaries by Paddy, but as I suspected beforehand, judging from the amount of plot reveals in the trailer, this film goes on quite a bit further from where the original ended, which means that Ben’s family will fight back, Hollywood-style, resulting in a more conventional and audience-friendly horror flick.
I enjoyed it for what it is, but still preferred the unrelenting bleakness of the original, which had me thinking about it for quite a while.
You’ll forget about this remake in no time at all, even if it’s an enjoyable experience.
Salem’s Lot
As an 80s kid, I’m pretty sure that a lot of us had sleepless nights watching the TV mini-series adaptation of Salem’s Lot by director Tobe Hooper from 1979, especially that scene with the floating vampire kid trying to enter his friend’s bedroom through the window.
As someone who hasn’t read the classic source novel by Stephen King, I just enjoyed that two-part mini-series as an experience that’s not too dissimilar from the It mini-series or even the child adventure films from that era like The Goonies and Stand By Me.
Having sat through this new remake of Salem’s Lot by director Gary Dauberman (who wrote the two It movies and directed Annabelle Comes Home), I think I have now found the perfect example of how a film can be completely undone by being too fast.
Reportedly scheduled for theatrical release in the fall of 2022, only to eventually turn up for streaming on Max last week, it’s quite obvious that what’s being released now has been chopped up to meet a runtime of below two hours.
Having now read reports that Dauberman had originally delivered a three hour-plus cut of the film, my fears and suspicions were duly confirmed, and I’m finding it difficult to make a fair assessment of this two-hour version that’s being shown on Max because I know that cutting out one hour from a movie can really cripple what’s originally intended.
What I can say is that this version feels like a fast-forwarded version of events that all of us remembered (and loved) from the book or the first mini-series.
It’s almost like just going from point A to point B, to point C and beyond, without any breathing room for the characters to develop, and for them to develop their relationship with each other, which was what made me fall in love with the original mini-series in the first place.
There’s some good stuff in here, for sure, so I can only hope that we will one day get to see Dauberman’s original three-hour plus version of this movie.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
