Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Horror goes through phases – it always has. Being a relatively cheap and easy genre to produce (but not necessarily to get right), there’s always enough money in the studio coffers to earmark for making whatever the current trend is. A few years ago it was remakes of foreign films. A few years before that it was about knocking off the Wes Craven/Kevin Williamson Scream look and feel. Right now it is all about the remakes. And while I hold no grudge against remakes as they are, like any phase you have really good examples of the movement, and then you have the ones that kill it.
My Bloody Valentine finds itself squarely in the kill it category.
I certainly understand why someone might want to update or even remake the original MBV – there’s a lot to love about that low budget, splatter fave. The ominous Miner killer, the lovable group of authentic feeling salt of the earth blue collar types and the great character story between two good friends (who really FEEL like good friends) fighting over the same gal – a gal they both seem to genuinely be in love with. But everything that works in the original is manhandled here. The film seems less about telling a great, mythic, slasher story and more about putting gore and nudity into 3-D. Not that there’s anything wrong with that sort of endeavor – but when a good story suffers at the hands of special effects…
And that’s exactly what happens here. There’s TONS wrong with this film. It is a frustrating, sigh inducing, cheap labor that takes short cut after short cut in order to put as much blood on the screen as it can…without ever really earning the fear and mood that should come with this level of ultra violence. The first major sin of the film is that when they sat down to reinvent it, someone on the creative team clearly said “Hey, you know I’m digging on this movie, but why does the killer keep using boiling water and shower heads and ropes to kill these kids when he’s got a perfectly good pickaxe in his hand? WE should make a film in which ALL of the deaths happen with the pickaxe. Otherwise, why is he carrying it?”
And the result of that conversation is a complete lack of ingenuity in the kills. A good slasher movie has two things going for it in the kill category. The first is that the deaths never get repetitive. The second is that each one is more dastardly, more sinister and more mind shatteringly fucked up than the one before it. We need to believe, especially at this point in our cinematic sophistication, that not only is this maniac so warped that s/he desires to kill LOTS of people, but that their mind is so fractured that they delight in creatively killing us or cleverly displaying our corpses when he’s done. But MBV’s Harry Warden just wants to kill. With his pickaxe. A lot. The film operates upon the premise that you will be so awed by the 3-D effects during the killings that it won’t matter that you’ve just watched the same death for a 20th time. While some might argue that “No, it’s different. This time when he got the pick through his head an eye came out. That’s TOTALLY different from the time that guy got a pick through the head and his jaw came off.”
No. It’s not.
The second great sin of this film is that they make the fatal mistake dealing with the law of diminishing returns. The film opens with a historical look at the origin of Harry Warden. Then we show up at what is the climax of the original – the party in the mine. Mind you, this is the first 3 minutes of the movie. Then we show up at a hospital where they’re treating and restraining Harry Warden…only to discover he’s killed EVERYONE there. 2 dozen bloody, gutted corpses are strewn about. They never show us the killings and it feels like an almost supernatural level of gore. It doesn’t FEEL like anything…but silly. THEN, we get a shortened sequence of the third act of the original – complete with just about as high a body count.
So now we’ve seen this guy kill half a party and discovered that he’s killed everyone in a hospital. And we’re supposed to be impressed when he kills a teen girl or an old man on his porch?
The third and final sin of the film is that they cheat. The film delivers an ending that just plain cheats in the worst way possible – one of those endings in which they have to go back and show you what REALLY happened earlier in the film because they were lying to you the first time so you wouldn’t guess who the killer is. When they finally get around to taking the mask off, the revelation is not only unsatisfying, but truly obnoxious. I would have figured by now that most film makers out there would know not to try to cheat an audience like this. BUT no. There are still folks out there who think they can shock us with such a cheap and easy trick.
No, this film has one thing and one thing only going for it. 3-D. But that wasn’t enough for me. Blood flying at the screen and a 3-D naked women running around for 4 minutes could not make this worth enduring the lame character development and the inability to create a real, authentic feeling mythology. While the film isn’t entirely sparse (there are a few good kills with the pick and a pair of moments that really are interesting turns on the original) it is not a film good enough to EVER warrant seeing outside of the 3-D. This film is all about the gimmick, and lacking the gimmick it is a relatively soulless horror film that shows off the very worst of what horror remakes can be.
Now keep in mind that this isn’t the angry voice of nostalgia talking. Until recently I held no special place in my heart for the original. I saw it when I was 13 in the midst of a slasher film binge and was unimpressed. The original, you see, had been gutted during a short lived reaction against ultra-violence after the death of John Lennon. With most of the truly great special effects removed from the film (effects by the team that would immediately follow the film up with a relative unknown sci-fi horror film, The Thing) it lacks the gore to compliment the strong story – something I didn’t fully appreciate as a 13 year old. But if there’s any good that’s come of this film, it is that they’ve rereleased the DVD with all the good stuff cut back in. And it really holds up.
It holds up so well that watching it after the remake I realized that there wasn’t a single thing the remake did better, outside of the addition of 3-D. The cast was prettier but didn’t feel as real. The murders weren’t half as inventive as the original. Hell, the original is loaded with tons of brilliant foreshadowing – much of which you don’t realize until the deaths of each of the folks involved. The mythology of the original is better. The character development is far richer. And even though the ending of the original cheats a little as well – it is far more forgivable a cheat than the remake, mostly because the original never lies to you.
I think Lionsgate is out of their mind for showing this on so much as a single screen sans the 3-D. There is zero reason to watch this without body parts flying at you or 4 foot wide 3-D quim. It’s just another lame, dead on arrival roller coaster ride that has the benefit of being the first of its kind for this generation. Once the dust settles and we have several more entries into the 3-D cinema world, this will go down as just another terrible horror film that seemed really cool until Coraline or Avatar came out. If you see this, do the 3-D. Otherwise you’re just cheating yourself out of ten bucks and two hours.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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