"Martyrs" (2015) d/ The Goetz Brothers

Remember how much you were affected the first time you watched Martyrs, the highly evocative, blood splashed 2008 French/Canadian cult classic from Pascal Laugier? Whatever feelings you might have encountered screening that particular piece of French New Extreme Cinema will be nowhere to be found should you choose to check out the 2015 American remake, as piloted by the Goetz Bro's, the guys responsible for 2013's Scenic Route, and starring Troian Bellisario and Bailey Noble. Of course, if you were anything like me, you wouldn't go into something like this expecting a return of much of anything, and I didn't, and what I expected, in the end, is what I got. In this, only the audience gets tortured...


"That cloud looks like Roman Polanski..."
In this loose re-imagining, a ten year old Lucie (Troian Bellisario) escapes from the warehouse that has been her prison and ends up in an orphanage, a introverted shy mess, until she's befriended by fellow orphan Anna (Bailey Noble), who realizes that her deep-seated psychosis should be treated with freshly stolen chocolate chip cookies and cloud gazing at the playground. Ten years later, we see that Anna's homeopathic madness remedy has failed, as she abruptly interrupts a family's breakfast with a vengeful shotgun full of shells. She calls Anna to the crime scene, relieved that the buckshot-stuffed cadavers before them are the ones responsible for her childhood imprisonment and torture, but Anna isn't so sure. In fact she tries to help the dying mother escape in between Lucie's bouts of self-abuse, where she believes she's being punished by a feminine creature that represents a young girl that she couldn't rescue at the time of her escape, but Lucie manages to finish her off, before trying to finish herself off, aware that her best friend knows she's fucking mad as lorries,  free-falling from the top of a staircase.


I now qualify as a martyr for sitting all the way through this one.
You might recall that Lucie slits her own throat, being faced with psychoses that refuse to disappear, despite having violently rid herself of her real-life boogymen in the original movie, well, that sort of downer has no place in the remake. She survives her suicidal tumble long enough to be set upon by the very similarly sadistic associates of the original family she's just fed lead-wiches to, and they reward Anna for returning their merchandise by burying her alive in the corpse-filled pit outside the house. While they get reacquainted with doing rotten off-camera things to Lucie, Anna digs herself out and dramatically bursts in to save her, with pistol in hand, only to find that they've put her on death's doorstep, and they've gathered around her with hopes of hearing transcendental secrets of the universe before she shuffles off her mortal coil. I'd share the finale with you, seeing how spoiling it has already been handled by the filmmakers themselves, but I'm left feeling angry with myself, having written too much about this thing already...


"The preserves are all over the floor and the guests'll be here in less than an hour...."
The screenwriter has stated he wanted to move away from all the signature on-screen violence in the original, and the results are surprisingly tame, by anybody's standards, and I'm not just addressing ultra-gore hounds here; even a mainstream crowd would be hard pressed to flinch at anything in the remake.With no bloody edge, and a useless rewrite of major plot points in the final reel leaves viewers feeling like they've just spent an unjustified hour and a half watching yet another pointless remake. Because that's what it is, and what it would have been, even if the filmmakers paid due respect to the nihilistic 2008 film, which really didn't need a remake in the first place, especially not one with positive Hollywood twists. See the Laugier film, avoid this one altogether. One Wop.


"There's so much happiness behind my tears, I pray you beat me for ten thousand yeaaaaaars(name that song lyric)!"

"Maniac"(2013) d/Franck Khalfoun

As somebody who actually saw the Lustig original in the theaters back in 1980 (go ahead, rupture my stones and call me a dusty old relic, let's see what you blouses look like at forty-four), it'd be effortless for me to portray the role of Pist Pisstofferson, for whom fun, time, and joy have all long since passed by, and spiritedly slag off this latest remake from the New Wave of French Horror's dynamic duo of Franck Khalfoun and Alexandre Aja as another unnecessary and unoriginal one in a pungent, growing heap, but I'll reserve such harsh judgment for more deserving movies. This particular remake is kind of a hoot. People seem surprised that an actor like Elijah Wood is as convincing and effective as a mentally unhinged psychopath as he is here, but I've been in his corner since Green Street Hooligans (cinematic thuggery wins me over every time), and though he isn't nearly as overweight as Joe Spinell was in the original, he manages to look every bit as sweaty and unwashed. That's impressive.


"May I photograph your stiff?", queries the innocent Anna (Nora Arnezeder).
Frank (Wood) has some serious issues, thanks in major part to a psychologically destructive upbringing from a nymphomaniac called Mom (America Olivo)( who's more concerned about scoring her next 80's style-flashback double penetration than her son's mental well-being), not the least of which being constant crippling migraine headaches accompanied by vivid hallucinations that force him to abuse his prescribed anti-psychotic meds, as he tries to carve out a living for himself in the family business, antiquing and restoring vintage department store mannequins. Being a slight, unthreatening creep unhampered by girlfriends does allow for the pursuit of hobbies, as we see Frank enjoys a number, himself, like stalking and murdering random women, scalping them, and nailing the pulpy trophies to the foreheads of his favorite dummies in his secret hideaway. I collect first editions of books, but everybody's got their own bag, man.


"I warned you not to sing 'Frodo of the Nine Fingers' within earshot of me again, tonight!"
After Frank blows through several victims like an e-date, a young clubber, and a gallerist, in the same way yours cruelly goes through a pack of cool mentholated doogs on any given evening, he meets a beautiful young artist named Anna (Arnezeder), who's seemingly the only girl in the city who's able to see past Frank's awkward, lonely exterior and free the beauty and art that's trapped within as they get to know each other. Actually, rather than the dimepiece she portrays, to score Frankie-boy's dummies for her upcoming art exhibit, she turns out to be just another dime a dozen, self-serving egotist chick with a jerk off boy friend, that you find yourself cheering on to get the next close haircut. In the end, his fragile grip on reality slips away, and he's forced to face physical manifestations of his broken subconscious, with similar results to the original's conclusion...


"Owwwwww! Awful touchy about that tv movie 'Day-O' you did, aren't you?"
For every thing I wasn't stoked about seeing (the CG gore comes off clunky and artificial in a few spots, as per usual these days) here, I found two that I enjoyed (the first person perspective was effectively executed, allowing for some inventive shot selection throughout, and French newcomer Nora Arnezeder is an acceptably cute replacement for legendary Hammer vixen Caroline Munro, as the film's main eye candy on display), but I still can't avoid the inevitable comparisons to the original film, whose downer vibes and groundbreaking gore still have people talking about it over thirty years later. Though this is decent enough in it's own right, nobody's gonna be talking about it thirty days later. On the scale, the Khalfoun remake peels back a bloody chunk of scalp to reveal a respectable deuce. Check it out, and let me know what you think.


"That's the last time I smoke bath salts in Gandalf's dressing room..."

Evil Dead(2013)

You’d have to think the vast majority of naysayers vs. Uruguayan newcomer Fede Alvarez’s wincingly gruesome spin on the low budget 1981 Raimi cult classic are frustrated fanboys of “The Chin” who didn’t stick around past the credits for his tidy cameo,  or perhaps the ultra-brutal tongue-bifurcating,  self-amputations by electric carving knife, and close ups of syringe needles being pulled out of eye sockets played mostly straight was too close to the spirit of the original ( to which there are a lot of subtle tributes within ) for some, and not close enough to the Stooge-esque slapstick Raimi turned to in the subsequent sequels. I thought it was a pretty respectable success on most levels,  with some genuine moments of eerie atmosphere and harrowing doom purveyed by an able cast and led by a stand out performance by Jane Levy. Gorehounds should also be at full mast at the sheer volume of spilled blood here, rivaling even Peter Jackson’s splattery zomedy, Dead Alive(1992). Behind all the blood-letting is an admirably loathsome display of practical special effects, the likes, I’m pretty sure the major releases haven’t seen in ages, executed with a hint of well-paced comedy in the form of Mercedes McCambridge-flavored demonic profanity, and who doesn’t enjoy that, I ask you. All-in-all, an enjoyable ride for horror fans to embark upon, for sure, considering the number of recent genre remakes that bite the bag.  Keep remaking horror movies like this, and you may be onto something, Hollywood. Three WOPS. 


“We are sooo splitting up, tongue!”

"It's Alive"(2008)d/Josef Rusnak

To the the wake that includes the two sequels that followed Larry Cohen's minor horror hit, It's Alive(1974), you can now add one pretty bad remake, courtesy of the man who was a second unit director on the legendarily pungent 1998 American Godzilla.Cohen himself gave the Rusnak production a seething review, saying, "It's a terrible picture. It's just beyond awful.".He ain't just whistlin' Dixie, either.Besides the little homicidal mutant, there's little discernible common ground between the movies save for the inconsistency that plagues both productions, with this one played completely straight with no comedy...or at least no intentional comedy therein.The imdb listing for Bijou Phillips, who's the female lead here in case you were wondering, calls the actress "multi-talented" and I'm gonna go out on a limb here in guessing her equestrienne, singing, and modeling skills far outweigh her acting chops.I honestly can't remember her in her other genre roles in Hostel:Part II(2007) or the Wizard of Gore remake(2007)(Okay, I haven't bothered with the latter one to date, sue me).Director Rusnak doesn't do much to hoist the production out of the gutter, generating no suspense whatsoever with his pedestrian style, further hindered by a mutt of a script that chucks logic and reasoning out the nearest open window.As much as I openly despise the vast majority of horror remakes the industry has been otiosely churning out in recent years, I really wanted to dig this one, but everything about it sucks like getting arrested the day after Christmas, and uh, yeah, I've experienced that, too, for those of you out there keeping score.Downward.

Safe to say, Shane MacGowan wasn't suckling at this particular teat.
Somewhere in New Mexico(or Bulgaria, if you happen to be paying attention), pregnant collegiate Lenore Harker(Bijou Phillips) skips out of her classes before the semester's end to have her baby with architect/beau Frank Davis(James Murray) and his invalid brother(Raphaël Coleman) at his disjunct little bungalow in Larkspur(again, Bulgaria, for anyone with eyes), amidst the protests of her bestie, who figures she's just gonna drop out of school once she's immersed in child rearing.After an abnormally rapid prenatal growth spurt and one strawberry preserves-splattered delivery room full of mutilated neonatologists, obstetricians, and nurses later, the unsuspecting parents take their new bundle of joy(deformed monster in some shots, completely normal looking toddler in others) home amidst the bustle of clueless investigators and police dogs.When the snaggletoothed little bastard isn't perforating his mammy's tits while breastfeeding, he's sneaking out of his crib off-camera to hungrily hunt, kill, and devour a pigeon.Even after Lenore catches him feeding on a cat, she throws the battered carcass into the trash and reprimands the baby for his predatory bloodlust like he's crayoned up a wall or something.It's only a matter of time before little Daniel re-expands his food chain to include eastern bloc extras with names that end in "ova" and "eva" who've had their voices ADR'ed to sound more American.The wheelchair-bound Chris returns books to the school library and interacts with classmates in head-scratching subplot sequences that look to have been mostly excised and left on the cutting room floor.What purpose does he serve in this movie, again?

Then the buggy-eyed rubber baby bumped her...
After growing increasingly concerned about Lenore when all her attempts to call her go unreturned, Marnie decides to pay her old friend a visit, earning her a CGI-baby fist punch through her facepiece after she discovers her boyfriend's remains in the back of a pickup truck full of Christmas trees(He eats hot baby-powered CGI death just off-camera during a smoke break).When Lenore stumbles upon the carnage, she merely hides the corpses in the basement before her husband, who seems disinterested in any of the goings on(or maybe he's just not a good actor), gets home.After Sgt. Perkins'(Owen Teale) investigation leads him to take a deputy out to the Davis place, getting to meet the pint-sized purveyor of polishing off face-to-face while in his unofficial-looking squad car.Not only equipped with a ravenous propensity for flesh n' blood, Daniel can also apparently shrink to the size of a pea, saving the effects team a lot of unnecessary headaches in trying to depict the child's fiendish murders, which greatly resemble a Tazmanian Devil cartoon whirlwind.Somewhere along the line here, Lenore confesses to Frank that she took an abortion pill upon becoming pregnant, but the guilt of her actions led her to pray that the baby somehow survived, despite it.Some acting would have helped here.After a tensionless square off in the darkened basement, Frank manages to trap Daniel in a garbage can(!), but after dragging it off into the woods, he can't bring himself to shoot the infernal thing, and when he pulls the lid off, his son makes minced meat out of his labonza for the effort.Lenore fetches her child and returns to their burning house with it, as Frank and Chris marvel at the horrendous CGI flame effects from outside.Eighty minutes?Felt like two eighty, ferchrissakes.

CG-Ay yai yai.
As you may remember, we stamped a single Wop upon the Larry Cohen original, while the remake with the 'advantage' of all the advances in technology and filmmaking techniques that have come in the past thirty-four years still somehow manages to earn the same marks as its predecessor.Deceiving really, since the Cohen movie is infinitely more entertaining with its grindhouse charms and muddled effects than this recent puddle of abysmally-paced sludge, showcasing some unapologetically lazy cgi(whether you're talking the continuity-defying creature effects or greenscreened scenery outside moving vehicle windows, it's all pretty rotten) and lifeless acting performances whose 'suck' is intensified by some flaccid dubbing that rivals an early eighties Godfrey Ho production.It's a pity, too, because, in the right hands this one could've improved upon the original, instead of existing as yet one more crappy remake that insults the intelligence of horror fans worldwide.As promising as monster babies may seem for genre freaks, you're gonna wanna abort this one in the first trimester, folks, trust me.

"I warned you about building a diversified portfolio, but you didn't listen to me!"