Hunter Stephenson posted this rant at SlashFilm Saturday morning which pitted Rob Zombie’s Halloween against Marcus Nispel’s Friday the 13th and backed up my assertion that Jason is not, in fact, Leatherface.
It’s nice when people agree with me. Especially when we’ve never met.
Aptly listing Nispel’s movie’s faults and pointing out that Freddy vs. Jason actually made MORE money (relatively speaking), Stephenson’s rant is a brilliant dissection of why this movie didn’t work, how it could have and touches on just what is wrong with horror these days.
“Dunes’ go-to director Marcus Nispel makes the same movie over and over—oooh, look, forests backlit like there’s a little league game going on nearby, scary—and he doesn’t seem to grasp that Jason Voorhees—’tard sack or goalie mask—is not a generic Leatherface,” he begins, and continues by noting about Texas Chainsaw, “Nispel took Tobe Hooper’s film—a priceless cornerstone of the horror and thriller genres that should be discussed in film classes, not just in Summer School—and calibrated it for the shallow ’00s torture trend, coating it in the shimmery, metallic aesthetic of a Vegas strip club. Platinum Dunes, truth in advertising. Nispel toned down the graphic intensity for F13th, but forgot to explore and nail the sense of fun-by-death, corrupted innocence and modern world-ditching isolation that defines why people dig the franchise. A pair of succulent breasts and an ethnically-diverse cast do not equal pass go.”
I’ll let you read the rest of this thoughtful article yourself. I know that I’m getting a little incensed with the horror that’s coming out these days, especially since studios continue to remake the old classics.
After I read SelfStyler’s article entitled ‘Horror: Rest in Pieces‘ over at FilmCrack, I had an argument with myself. These movies have gained iconic status over the years, but in their own time weren’t they just the same ridiculous nonsense that we’re accusing the remakes of being? And, while I’m discussing this with myself, shouldn’t we take into account that they are – in fact- being made for a new generation, therefore, do the film makers actually have an obligation to do anything more than reimagine? Do they actually need to placate the original fans? Will the movies’ target markets hold these movies up as the icons that we hold the originals to in 20 years? The problem is that I can’t actually answer these questions for myself. Evey time I think I’ve come close to finding an answer (eg. yes, they do have an obligation to do justice to the original and also placate the fans, etc) it just makes me feel old. It’s impossible to answer since we’re not the age we were then and everything we watch today is viewed through considerably wiser, more seasoned eyes. In short, we’re older so we demand more. I continue to maintain that Nispel’s Friday the 13th was a great slasher movie – it just wasn’t Jason.
So while I continue this argument with myself I’ll continue to see these horrible, horrible remakes in the hopes that at least ONE of them will be good.
