Horror Remakes, Throwbacks and Thoughts

We’re going to talk about remakes today. And we’ll probably also segue a bit into the ‘80’s aesthetic that has seen a resurgence lately. I want to talk about remakes because, very plainly, The Wolfman with Benicio del Toro looks fucking awesome. I really like everything I saw in the trailers (with the exception of the reclining lady statue that turns her head and looks like she’s made of butter, not stone), but it is just that: a remake. How do I deal with that after reading and writing about the categorical shittiness of all remakes?

There are exceptions to every rule I guess, and more often than not a remake is an absolutely terrible idea, but I guess if the story has enough originality, and the visual presentation proves itself relevant, then a remake isn’t such a bad thing. It could just be the passage of time between the original and the remake that helps a remake’s perceived quality too. Ocean’s 11 is a remake, and the original one is boring as hell, so the new one is an improvement. Ringu was great on its own, and there really wasn’t a need for a remake, although I enjoy Verbinski’s version. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre got remade, and it was good. I liked R. Lee Ermy, and I liked the violence in the film too. Does it beat out the Tobe Hooper’s film? Not one bit, but neither does it negate the existence of the classic original.

Even if a movie comes out that has an original story, let’s pick on House of the Devil for instance, it might still fall into remake territory because it is mimicking a feel and time period. House of the Devil is a throwback to the ‘80’s type of horror/thriller. It’s really good, and everyone should go see it as soon as they can, but it invokes a time for horror movies that no longer exists. It’s remaking the sensation of going to the theater and watching a movie in the height of the slasher era. (Why does my computer spell-check “slasher” as wrong? That word belongs in every dictionary! Sorry for the digression.)

But no one harps on Ti West for making a remake, because the story is original and it’s not remade from an earlier film. Homage, remake, throwback, these words are pretty closely linked and the only thing that separates them is the quality of the film in question. A lot of people have been trying to cash in with on this throwback style. Rob Zombie is an obvious example. Say what you will about the final product he churns out, but as I’ve written before, I like his visual style. It’s over the top, but that’s not a degrading factor to me. It’s got his stamp all over it, and I enjoy seeing how he puts his frames together. But Zombie’s problem is story and therefore his films suffer.

Other movies just don’t follow through enough. A poster is like a book cover, and you should never judge a book by its cover. Perkins 14 had a really cool poster that looked like it was hand-painted from the ‘70’s. Unfortunately, Perkins 14 was not a good movie. They just didn’t take their quality craftsmanship from the poster and follow it through to the end of the film. (Please don’t post about how posters are made after the completion of a film…I’m just speaking in terms of how a film is received by its audience. In that case, the poster comes first.)

I like the throwback aesthetic that some horror movies are getting these days, and I find myself wishing that more films were made in that vein. But that makes me a hypocrite because when someone does a shitty remake, my stance becomes “Just go watch the original”. Maybe I should just watch more original ‘80’s horror and stop wishing that new movies were made in an older style. It’s the difference between House of the Devil and The Wolfman remake. The Wolfman is shot and made in a contemporary style, and so it appropriately updates the original. House of the Devil is shot to look as if it was 20 years old. In that way it’s more of an experiment in film technique. But it’s fun to see an older style incorporated into a new story just the same. Maybe the moral is to just ease up a bit, remake or not, throwback or not, a movie should just be judged on its own merits. A piece of shit film is just that, no matter where it came from or what it was inspired by.

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