The Wizard of Gore

The original had no other selling point than gore, but gore has become unfashionalbe (or more realistically, it's become impossible to outdo comeuppers and ages poorly)(and God, I hate CGI gore). So this one does what any smart horror movie that isn't any good should do: Cast people horror fans love. Is this movie good? No. Can I stop you from seeing a movie with Crispin Glover, Jeffrey Combs AND Brad Dourif? If so, you don't know the horror of being a horror fan.

It's kind of like Naked Lunch only done by Uwe Boll.

All the gleefully psychedelic nonsense of the original is sapped out in some misguided and half-assed attempt to turn this into a super edgy and cool psychological thriller. All those weird camera angles and poorly-mixed colors do a nice job of simulating a gas leak, but can't hide how stunningly incoherent and pretentious the story is, or how little the people involved really understand what makes paracinema worthwhile.

however backwards herschel gordon lewis was in his approach, he loved his films enough to ramble dodgy country tunes over the top of them. there is no such heart in this remake. and it looks like 3am digital television.

Literally all that saves this film from being a total waste is Crispin Glover. The pacing is an improvement on the original but that's not the point.

I hate remakes, but I love Crispin Glover. This movie changed so many things, and then it had a dream mood throughout the entire film. If they want you to be in a dream mood and then tell you everything is the opposite of what you think, they can't make the whole movie in a dream mood like this. I hated the ending most of all, not just because of what happens to Montag. The movie felt unrealistic from start to finish, I'm glad this didn't come out in theaters.

If it was bad enough that the plot resorts to the pretentious and uninteresting plot twists, the sort where they are trying to get the viewer to question what is reality but usually causes me to switch off, the pseudo edgy mood, with emphasis on violence, sleazy sex and popular alternative culture (the Suicide Girls who star in this), comes off as the director trying to be cool but is as unsettling as a basket of kittens.

" It's not really a scary movie, no matter how you slice it, but this remake offers plenty of the stuff promised in the title, in addition to a divertingly circuitous "whodunnit" aspect that works a bit better than one would expect."

To say I was disappointed would be to say that I enjoy drinking fresh squeezed kiwifruit juice from an empty pork & beans can while jumping naked on my Mormon neighbors' trampoline the night after Boxing Day. It doesn't make sense...much like this movie. A failed attempt to go all goth-artsy psychadeli-noir results in a muddled 90 minutes of boredom inter-spliced with Crispin Glover alchemically formulating bat-shit from crazy. Recommended for people without eyes.

Blah