With so many cool new twists and fresh takes on the modern horror genre we’ve seen develop over recent years, why revisit old films over again? With films like A Cabin in the Woods (2011), The Guest (2014) (yes, I consider this film to fall into the genre of horror), It Follows (2014), Hereditary (2018), and The Conjuring (2013), to name a few, I am often left wondering why major studios continue to produce, reboot, retool, and regurgitate once-revered horror franchises into bland, boring, and unimaginative films.
Here’s a quick list that stick out in my mind.
5. Friday the 13th (2009)
What happens when a filmmaker decides to cram the lore of the first four volumes of a classic original horror franchise into a Michael Bay produced reboot? You get this convoluted bland mess.
Not only are all the performances forgettable but its like they were cast directly from the WB network. Its one pretty face after another making a series of dumb decisions that inevitably lead to their uninspired death scene. If you haven’t seen this one yet, don’t bother.
4. Halloween (2007)
I know, I know. Halloween 2 (2009) was the real stinker. But Rob Zombie’s 2007 reboot had it wrong from the beginning because it ignored the very thing that made the first film so frightening. Michael Myers wasn’t terrifying in the first film because he was an abused overgrown ticking timebomb. Michael Myers was terrifying because he was so seemingly normal. Less history, more mystery, equals a much more compelling psychopath.
3. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2009)
Part of the charm of a Nightmare on Elm Street films is in rooting for the antagonist. I mean we all know Freddy is child killer but we almost instantly lose sight of this because he has such a wicked sense of humor and a flair for the theatrical over-the-top, campy kill. Whoever’s idea it was to cast a puny, soft-spoken Jackie Earl Haley as a serious creep, was a huge swing and a miss.
2. Pet Cemetery (2019)
With the exception of a good supporting cast member in John Lithgow the cast and their performances here are lackluster at best. Again, in terms of story, theirs is way too much exposition building up to nothing. In addition, the tone of the film doesn’t match the tone of the screen play. It’s almost as if the director couldn’t make up his mind in whether he wanted to make this a psychological horror film or a physical horror film and therefore we get stuck with an irreverent melodrama.
1. Child’s Play (2019)
The decision to cast Mark Hamill to voice Chucky was brilliant, but wasted here. Hamill was essentially voicing a broken electronic toy, so don’t get your hopes up for a Chucky/Joker amalgamation, it just isn’t happening here. The overall performances by the cast, lead by Aubrey Plaza, were decent, but the story pacing of the film suffers from way too much unnecessary exposition. The film would have been a lot more interesting had the screen writers played with the Andy and Chucky dynamic in the vein of Let the Right One In (2008), but instead we are left with the same, boring, horror tropes. Nothing new here.
Agree or disagree with this list? Sound off below in the comments.