Remakes

This past year was defined in part by the number of remakes, either released or announced, that plagued the silver screen. Many were films that were welcomed with open arms (My Bloody Valentine 3-D) while other were denounced by the horror community before being embraced with open arms (Friday the 13th). Naturally, any mention of a remake is bound to be met with the inevitable "Why?" no matter how obscure or ridiculous the original is. This certainly goes for the remake of Let the Right One In, the brilliant Swedish vampire-romance that was not Twilight.

The Matt Reeves-directed (Cloverfield) remake, retitled Let Me In, officially has a release date. According to those fine folks over at FEARNet, October 1st is the day when it will be unleashed on the big screen, giving horror fanboys another remake to officially complain about. The film stars Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz as Oscar and Eli, renamed Owen and Abby, alongside Richard Jenkins and Casey Jo- I mean Elias Koteas.

Let Me In is currently being filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico and will be distributed by Overture Films. A detailed synopsis can be found after the jump.

A few months ago found us relaying how producer Guillermo del Toro had pegged Wendigo and The Last Winter writer/director Larry Fessenden as the director of the American remake of The Orphanage. A few months after that, however, the horror community got word that Fessenden was, despite spending two years massaging the script back and forth with del Toro, parting ways with the project, citing a divergence in casting desires as the reason. And now that a little more time has passed, Variety is reporting that the remake of the Spanish spook house has a new director in the form of Mark Pellington.

Genre aficionados will, of course, recognize Pellington as the man who pitted Richard Gere against a spectral doomsayer in The Mothman Prophecies. That makes this, for me, great news. I'm rather fond of The Mothman Prophecies; which is a statement not a lot of people seem to be on board with, but I'm okay with that. I still find it to be a tightly paced, captivating thriller that swells with tension as its prophecies of death resolve into reality. So if anyone is going to attempt to recreate the scene in The Orphanage that finds a psychic medium wandering sightless through haunted corridors, I'm actually happy it's the man who delivered the creepy-as-hell phone call between Gere and the Mothman -- because even if you think TMP is boring, you have got to admit that phone call made the hairs on the back of your neck tingle.

Larry Fessenden's script appears to be the one del Toro and New Line have decided to shoot from, though no start date or cast is set. I'd personally campaign for someone like Maria Bello as the American match to the original's Belen Rueda, but one can assume that if Fesseden left over a casting disagreement, the studio was probably looking to cast a bit younger. Either way, considering the studio has been slowly developing the film since '07, it likely won't be much longer before news begins to drip out on that end, as well.

Come April 16th of 2010, the world will be introduced to Alexandre Aja's remake of the 1978 icthyan classic Piranha. Not content with making a normal remake infused with all the requisite blood one would come to expect from a film that deal with man-eating fish, the remake will be made in 3D. Unless the film features plenty of piranha jumping out of the water, I don't really see how effective the 3D can be, but fingers are crossed.

While many (and as much as I hate to admit it given my distaste for everything Aja has done, myself) are incredibly excited for this film, fans of the original will get the opportunity to see the original in all its bloody glory on Blu-Ray. According to Shock Till You Drop, the Shout Factory is set to release the Roger Corman-produced classic - complete with "Roger Corman's Cult Classics emblazoned across the top - on April 6th., a mere ten days before the release of the remake.

Unfortunately, there are no special features listed for the release, and Arrow in the Head also reports that Amazon has listed a later date, that of May 4th, for its release date. To reiterate Arrow's point, the April 6th release date sounds more plausible, as it coincides with the release of the remake, but weirder things have happened.

Now I just need a Blu-Ray player. And a TV.

I'll admit that this particular remake doesn't have a heck of a lot going for it on paper. Are any true blue horror fans really looking forward to it? Breck Eisner, offspring of Michael, is racing Rob Zombie for the remake crown. Somehow, this priveleged pretty-boy managed to get his hands on not only the Crazies, but Flash Gordon, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and my precious, the Brood. With a track record like that, I'm becoming convinced that he's part of a cabal that was assembled for the sole purpose of pissing me off.

That said, I'm drifting towards giving him the benefit of the doubt. The latest trailer, available below, tickled the horror part of my brain. Timothy Olyphant usuallly acquits himself nicely (see Deadwood) and if there's a Romero film that's great, but definitely could be improved upon, it's the Crazies.

The film's conceit is simple enough. People start going berserk in a small town. Before long, it becomes clear that the water is tainted. While Sheriff Dutton (Olyphant) tries to deal with the situation, the military moves in with a 'scorched earth' mentality. The sheriff and a few others realize that getting the hell out of Dodge is their new main objective.

The poster to the right is taken from one of the many spooky images from the new trailer. The deviants at Bloody-Disgusting have a shiny, engorged look at it here, if you need to biggie size it.

After the jump is the second trailer. Check out the nifty official site, as well.

The Orphanage is one of the best horror movies of the past decade. It features one of the most terrifying scenes I have ever seen, and simply proves as proof that young children are simply terrifying. Like most good foreign horror films, the possibility of an American remake is always looming on the horizon, and The Orphanage is no exception. Back in August it was reported that writer/director/producer/actor Larry Fessenden was reported as being behind the camera for the remake, which was co-written by Fessenden and the inimitable Guillermo del Toro, who produced the original.

But things change, for better or worse.

Arrow in the Head got an exclusive bit of info from Fessenden himself concerning the remake on a recent visit to the set of Stake Land, a post-apocalyptic vampire film produced for Dark Sky Films. While there is still hope for Fessenden's script to be used, all signs point to a new director coming on board in the future.

"The Orphanage was two years of waiting. Working on the script with Guillermo was a very exciting experience, but then I got into a casting miasma and that's where the thing is; I think they're gonna do it another way, actually. So I think I'm out of it. Hopefully they'll still use my script, but I'm not sure I'm directing it anymore. That's Hollywood for ya."

Although The Orphanage redux most likely no longer has Fessenden attached to sit in the director's chair, he's keeping busy producing a trio of films, with the aforementioned Stake Land being included among the bunch.

As many others with our celebrated obsession are apt to do, I successfully watched a horror film every day last month in honor of Halloween. This task of course required me to double my efforts to improve upon my one-horror-film-every-two-days agenda that I follow every other month of the year. I love this genre with an ardent fervor, but I am sorry to report that there are holes in my knowledge just like there are in anyone else's (except for Weinberg of course). For example, this project allowed for my first viewing of American Werewolf in London; freaking transcendent experience. But I am just as excited to explore the uncharted seas of schlock as I am to face down the legends.To wit, I offer you the much maligned House of Wax.

Let me start by reassuring you that I harbor no delusions that House of Wax is the greatest horror film ever made. Its flaws are visible from space. But I remember when this film hit our shelves at Blockbuster, back when I was but a counter jockey with aspirations of becoming the mechageek I am today, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. Two obstacles kept me from burning a free rental on this film: I had not seen the original with Vincent Price and the remake film starred the harbinger of all things evil known as Paris Hilton.

The Nightmare on Elm Street reboot is cause for much consternation on account of the fact that A) It's a remake, B) It's a remake by Platinum Dunes, C) It's a remake of a beloved classic, and D) It's a remake by Platinum Dunes. That last one deserved two spots.

Although the film doesn't open in theaters until April 30th, the interwebs are all a-twitter over how the film might turn out. Well, Ain't It Cool News gave us a heads up on a review submitted by "Skin Peeler" of a test-screening of the film in El Segundo last week, and suffice it to say, the review leans more on the side of negative than it does positive.

On the positive side, the film is touted as being darker than its predecessor, something that could go either way among viewers: "Bay and the director obviously wanted to Dark Knight/Saw it up by adding a layer of grit and reality to A Nightmare on Elm Street. The art and makeup departments did an excellent job. Freddy looks like a freakish burn victim, many of the dream and flashback scenes are dark and have that Silent Hill feel."

This sounds like a good thing to me. While I enjoyed the snarkiness of classic Freddy, I do like the notion of updating the character to be darker and more real. Plus, anything compared to Silent Hill (a horrible film but epically creepy in its execution) in terms of inherent creepiness is A-OK by me.

Everyone knows Platinum Dunes was the driving force behind 2003's Marcus Nispel directed remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (as well as its 2006 prequel), but what you might not have realized is that the studio had only signed with the film's original rights holders on a picture-by-picture basis. And now that Platinum Dunes has moved on to Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, their interest in 'ole Leatherface has waned. Enter Twisted Pictures, the company best known for milking the blood drenched bones of the Saw franchise, who have now acquired the rights to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family.

Now say what you will about Platinum Dunes two at-bats with the cannibalistic inbred Hewitt family - I actually think Nispel's film is one of the more respectful remakes of the new wave of Hollywood's catalog digging - but at least Michael Bay's company kept the film in its 1970s setting. Twisted Pictures, according to Variety, plan to not only bring the Hewitt clan to the present day, but they're going to bring all the meat-hook slamming, skin-wearing, chainsaw-revving imagery into the third dimension to boot.

Yes, The Fly is getting remade again. No, it's not necessary. Yes, I have never been more interested in a remake in my life. Why? Because David Cronenberg is the best director still walking this Earth and making movies. The Fly is the second best horror film of all time. These are facts. They are not malleable, they are carved in unobtanium and frozen in carbonite.

Okay, so maybe that's a little bit of hyperbole, but it goes to show just how highly I regard the filmmaker and that particular film. So if he wants to return to a film he made in 1986 in 2009 and remake it, I say bring it on. It could be a Michael Haneke'esque shot-for-shot remake of the original Jeff Goldblum, Gena Davis awesomeness, and I'd be okay with it. Because it's David Freaking Cronenberg and The Freaking Fly reunited once again (in something that isn't a stage musical).

Now the bad news is that David Cronenberg will be working with 20th Century Fox on the picture. Things have changed just a tad in the 23 years since Cronenberg first brought The Fly to the studio. Fox has garnered a reputation in the last few years of being particularly restrictive of directorial vision (both Matthew Vaughn walking off of X-Men 3 and all of the overrides Alex Proyas received during the production of I, Robot comes to mind), so the only thing that could possibly make me lose interest in the project would be if Cronenberg gets shoved aside in order to serve some higher studio agenda.

Sorry, as much fun as it would be to see the bearded Texas Chainsaw Massacre originator rock a cover to 'More Human Than Human', I regret to inform you that Tobe Hooper is not out to revive the Rob Zombie band that died out a decade ago. Instead Hooper is reaching back nearly 8 decades for the inspiration to remake White Zombie, the 1932 film Rob Zombie loved enough to name his band after. According to Shock, that is, who has been hearing word of Hooper's interest in taking the director's seat for a remake produced by The Haunting in Connecticut exec Steve Whitney.

The Victor Halperin directed original about an engaged couple who fall prey to a wealthy man's ill-conceived wife snatching plot is fitting source material for Hooper, who has always favored family centered horror. There is no word yet on whether a Hooper led White Zombie will keep the Haitian setting or opt for a distinctly more American backdrop for the tale of a jealous man who employs a witch doctor to make a zombie out of his unrequited love. There's also no hints as to who Hooper could find to fill the shoes of genre legend Bela Lugosi, but I'd like to just toss out Benecio Del Toro. He's already busy revisiting a popular monster from the black and white era, why not just give him the set?