The Horror Thread

[Toe]

43 minutes ago, Ct1021 said:

Rewatched the Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 remake yesterday. It's not good.

Spoiler

There's a point in the middle of the movie where they make it seem like Freddy may have been falsely accused of his crimes, which would have been an interesting direction for the character to make. Then, just a few minutes later, they just throw that away.  

What - you don't like that?! 

[Ct1021]

4 minutes ago, Toe said:

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There's a point in the middle of the movie where they make it seem like Freddy may have been falsely accused of his crimes, which would have been an interesting direction for the character to make. Then, just a few minutes later, they just throw that away.  

What - you don't like that?! 

I would have really liked that twist; that would have been clever. Instead, they just went with the same story as the original, which just did it better.

Fair, but the original did the same thing...

[Toe]

19 minutes ago, Ct1021 said:

 

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I would have really liked that twist; that would have been clever. Instead, they just went with the same story as the original, which just did it better.

 

Fair, but the original did the same thing...

But it looks way better in the original without the CG.

[Gabriel]

I feel like any kind of reboot for Nightmare on Elm Street needs to really just go for broke. When they did the remake, they talked a big game about exploring the darker side of both the human crimes and the nightmares of Freddy Krueger. Then we got the movie that came out, which ended up being studio drivel.

There's definitely room to look at the character and mythology through a new lens, but it's gotta be the right director and writers. They've gotta have reverence for the original series and understand what made it work, while also pushing boundaries on the darker stuff. I'd love to see Clive Barker or the Soska Sisters get a crack at the Dream Demon. If this was twenty years ago and he sharpened his craft, I'd even have loved to have seen Dee Snider's take. Strangeland was a fantastic debut film for him... but back to the original suggestions, neither Barker or the Soska's are shy about their content. They both push the envelope, but everything they do is done for a reason, so it's not just gore or shock for the sake of doing it. There's an emotional or psychological connection between their characters and their actions.

[Monkey D. Lars]

Still haven't watched the remake. 

[Gabriel]

22 minutes ago, Monkey D. Lars said:

Still haven't watched the remake. 

I own every Nightmare film, including the remake. I've seen the remake twice, and have been wanting to watch it again as soon as I finally get it out of my storage unit.

Make no mistake though, it's not good. Not even if you forget about the original series and view it as its own beast. It's about on par with stuff like Ghost Ship, Thirteen Ghosts, House on Haunted Hill, etc... you know, the stuff that was getting pumped into theatres at a crazy rate about fifteen to twenty years ago. Of course, it's below those in terms of quality.

I was working at a video store when the remake came out, and so many teens were telling me how much they really liked it. I heard a lot of comparisons to Jennifer's Body, but they're not apt in any way. Jennifer's Body is still one of my favorite horror movies from that time period. It poked fun at the tropes and garbage of its contemporaries. The Nightmare remake doesn't do that. It takes itself too seriously to do that... but not seriously enough to be scary.

I get what they were going for originally... the idea that Freddy Krueger shouldn't be a wise-cracking and actually somewhat likeable figure. That he was a child molestor, murderer and monster in his actual life... and that as a demon, he should be horrifying based on the fact that he's vastly more powerful and less limited in how he can accomplish his terrorizing of the children of Elm Street.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, studio interference and re-writes made a complete mess of the film. There's no consistent tone. They try to make him scary, but then Jackie Earle Haley cracks a joke like he's trying to be Robert Englund and it just doesn't work.

Some of the acting was bollocks, but Kyle Gallner is a favorite of mine from this time period in horror. (See: Body, Jennifer's). At the end of the day, the faults of the film don't really lay with the acting though. I feel like Haley did his best to make it work and his effort is commendable. It wasn't ever going to be easy for anyone other than Englund to put on that glove and fedora. It's just a classic case of studio interference screwing with the writing and the people in power not understanding the genre or the lore enough to do it justice.

The script was written... then re-written... then given to the director, who proceeded to "tinker" with it through production. It wouldn't shock me to find out that this film had similar issues to Prometheus, in that the original script is probably far superior to the finished product but needed to be altered for various reasons... except the alterations ended up removing the things that probably would have held it together better... before finding its way to the director, who continued to change things because they could.

How the company behind the Friday the 13th remake managed to bungle Nightmare on Elm Street as heavily as they did is just astounding.

[Toe]

I think the Friday The 13th remake works because it's more straight forward. As long as you're not putting him in space or some sort of body swapping worm creature, Jason Voorhees is a hard character to screw up. 

[Gabriel]

16 minutes ago, Toe said:

I think the Friday The 13th remake works because it's more straight forward. As long as you're not putting him in space or some sort of body swapping worm creature, Jason Voorhees is a hard character to screw up. 

I really enjoyed the changes they made though too. Jason building traps and tunnels around Crystal Lake just makes sense. Dude's been out in the woods on his own for how long? Plus, Jared Padalecki is just great.

Speaking of, Jensen Ackles' My Bloody Valentine remake was quite good as well. I hope those two stay in the horror genre when Supernatural comes to an end.

[GhostMachine]

I saw the Nightmare remake once. That was more than enough. Gabriel summed it up quite nicely. But another thing I didn't like about the remake is the twist that

the kids lied about Freddy

.

They're going to do another remake, or possibly a series on HBO. I think its a bad idea.

 

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by GhostMachine

[Ct1021]

@Gabriel I love the changes the remake makes to Jason too. I just love the vision of Jason running as opposed to his usual stumbling walk.

[Toe]

28 minutes ago, Ct1021 said:

@Gabriel I love the changes the remake makes to Jason too. I just love the vision of Jason running as opposed to his usual stumbling walk.

Well, that's because he's alive. In Friday The 13th Parts 2 through 4 you see him move a lot quicker.

Spoiler

Once he's a reanimated zombie Jason, he's more slow and deliberate. 

 

[Monkey D. Lars]

Anyone else here watching Joe Bob?

[Toe]

On 02/05/2020 at 08:30, Monkey D. Lars said:

Anyone else here watching Joe Bob?

Love it. I'll sometimes skip movies if I really don't like them (like Halloween 5 during the Halloween Hootenany) but otherwise I love sitting and watching these movies and learning about how they were made. I've seen Chopping Mall a half dozen times, but watching it with Joe Bob and everyone else on Twitter was fun.

Here's something for fans of Friday The 13th - https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/5/7/21249688/friday-the-13th-jason-voorhees-actors-stunt-stories

[Your Mom]

I'm watching the Invisible Man. 10 minutes in I have a knot in my stomach and feel sick. I'm not going to make it people  

[Gabriel]

We re-watched John Carpenter's Vampires last night. It's so very 90's, but it is one of my all time favorites. Great villain, awesome tunes, and a whole who's who of actors phoning it in, but in a way that really just works for the movie.

After 11 years together, I also finally got my wife to watch Wishmaster. For some reason, she had this idea that it was just some horrible B-Horror garbage without any redeeming qualities and regularly makes fun of me for quoting it or talking about it. She enjoyed it more than she wanted to admit. WISH, GRANTED! I'm hoping I can get her to watch the sequels now. I mean, the second one shouldn't be a hard sell because she didn't dislike the first, but the third and fourth ones I don't think she'll go for. The quality drops off pretty hard, though I still find them enjoyable.

[Monkey D. Lars]

16 hours ago, Your Mom said:

I'm watching the Invisible Man. 10 minutes in I have a knot in my stomach and feel sick. I'm not going to make it people  

Did you make it?

[Toe]

1 hour ago, Gabriel said:

We re-watched John Carpenter's Vampires last night. It's so very 90's, but it is one of my all time favorites. Great villain, awesome tunes, and a whole who's who of actors phoning it in, but in a way that really just works for the movie.

After 11 years together, I also finally got my wife to watch Wishmaster. For some reason, she had this idea that it was just some horrible B-Horror garbage without any redeeming qualities and regularly makes fun of me for quoting it or talking about it. She enjoyed it more than she wanted to admit. WISH, GRANTED! I'm hoping I can get her to watch the sequels now. I mean, the second one shouldn't be a hard sell because she didn't dislike the first, but the third and fourth ones I don't think she'll go for. The quality drops off pretty hard, though I still find them enjoyable.

I couldn't finish the 4th one. It was terrible. It really sucks that 3 and 4 don't have Divoff back as the Djinn.

[Gabriel]

6 minutes ago, Toe said:

I couldn't finish the 4th one. It was terrible. It really sucks that 3 and 4 don't have Divoff back as the Djinn.

Andrew Divoff's Djinn is easily one of the most underrated horror villains. He was spectacular in the role. I feel like Wishmaster is one franchise that could really use a reboot or remake. There's so much that can be done with it given the technological advances we've had since these movies were made... and they can go to so many more darker places now than they could have then.

I'd love to see a new Wishmaster franchise follow the titular Djinn throughout time. Do the first movie set in ancient Egypt like a dark-as-fuck Mummy, and get someone like the Soska Sisters on board with their penchant for body horror.

[Your Mom]

3 hours ago, Monkey D. Lars said:

Did you make it?

I did! Once it got past the abusive boyfriend part and into the typical horror movie stuff I was ok. It was tense the whole way through and I really enjoyed it especially the ending

[Monkey D. Lars]

13 hours ago, Your Mom said:

I did! Once it got past the abusive boyfriend part and into the typical horror movie stuff I was ok. It was tense the whole way through and I really enjoyed it especially the ending

Glad you liked it! I liked it too! I think they are also rebooting the Wolfman with Ryan Gosling.