I love the original CARNIVAL OF SOULS, and it was one of those projects that when I heard they were remaking, I rolled my eyes and thought, "Now why go and do a silly thing like that?" Then when I heard Wes Craven was behind it (producer not as director) I got excited. Then I found out that it was starring a buncha unknowns (good, so did the original for me). Then I heard that the director of SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK...AGAIN was behind it, and call me silly, but I had some fun with that flick, so it peaked my interest. This flick is only a couple of weeks away from coming out in the USA, and I hadn't heard a word... till now...

You don't know me -- I'm a film fan from Germany who attended the world
premiere
of "(Wes Craven presents:) Carnival of Souls" at the Fantasy Film Fest in
Munich.

I thought you might be interested in a review. I scanned the whole internet
yesterday,
and couldn''t find any, so I guess I'll be the first internet reviewer if
you decide to publish it.

But there are two flaws: First, I'm not a native speaker (ie writer) of
English, so there might be
some grammar mistakes, unidiomatic expressions etc. Please feel free to
correct or change whatever
you think sounds clumsy or incorrect.

Second, I didn't see the original version of Carnival of Souls. So I can't
tell how good or bad the film
is in comparison to the 1962 classic.

Ok, here's the review:

Wes Craven presents: Carnival of Souls

Director: Adam Grossman, starts 21 August (according to imdb.com)

The film starts with the classic horror film tragedy: 11 year old Alex sees
her mother being raped and killed by her
mother's friend Louis, who works as a clown at the local fairground.

Cut -- 20 years later. Alex is still living in the same house. She and her
sister work as bartenders in the bar which
once belonged to her mother. Then the horror starts: Alex starts to see
Louis, who died years ago, again.
She has terrible nightmares and visions, and re-lives the past.

That's basically the whole story, and I wont't tell you the ending here.

The main problem of this film is that nothing really happens: After three
or four nightmares and visions, it becomes
just plain boring and repetitious. You know that the horror is just inside
Alex' head, and that she can not be hurt --
in contrast to Nightmare on Elm Street which has a similiar theme. The
nightmares all follow the same scheme
and end with Alex waking up, feeling disoriented and frightened.

The shock effects itself are very poor and cheap -- imagine someone
suddenly grabbing you from behind,
pushing a halloween mask in your face and screaming at the same time. A
terrible shock -- but very
boring after two or three repeats. There is no development in this film.
All there
is are switches between dream and reality,
which are not always convincing.

Gore fans can skip this film completely -- there is no blood, just plain
old-fashioned hunt-the-girl-horror. The music
is standard, suspense-generating, adding to the atmosphere, but nothing
special.

The acting is very average, too. Shawnee Smiths plays Alex as a very bitchy
character. It seems that she has only
three emotional expressions: terror, anger and boredom. Although her looks
are very pretty, you are never
emotionally affected by what she is going through. So all you can do is sit
it through and wait for the Finale,
which gives the story a little twist, but can't really help the fact that
the film is a complete failure.

So sum up, this is a very average B-picture with a lousy story, cheap
thrills, and uninteresting actors.
When I stepped outside of the theater, I didn't meet or hear anyone who
liked this film.
So cross the town to avoid it.

the Maestro..