Geek Syndicate Issue 6 | Page 12

Geek Syndicate
The Mist instead. • Fright Night (2011) – or let’s just completely waste David Tennant instead. • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003 & 2006) – because messing it up once only, just wasn’t enough. • Friday the 13th (2009) – note to Jared Paladecki: sometimes the career road from TV to cinema is strewn with the Devil’s own pot-holes. Rather than conducting ndividual post-mortems on these, we’re just giving them a collective: “Why? What were you thinking? Did you not watch the original enough times? Why would you cast him/her, or set it there? What an earth possessed you to write that THAT into the script?!” and the final questions: “Did you have a film school teacher? Do you have lawyer? Sue your teacher!”

Image © New Line Cinema, 2003

Future Remake Rules
Finally, let’s look at our candidates for a twenty-first century make-over. Before we launch into that, again - we thought we’d set out our stall with some rules. Here are our “remake commandments”, or at least, the very worst reasons to remake a horror movie: • “But the original is a classic!” – We like to think there are certain films that you remake at your peril. Especially if there is a famous twist that everyone knows about, direction that is considered cutting edge, or performances worthy of Oscar. So, Hollywood, if you’re listening, leave the likes of “The Sixth Sense” alone… forever! • The remake will inevitably be watered down for lower certificate rating – this probably was our golden rule… the “but we wanted to open it up to a wider audience” excuse. Watering down an R to a 15 serves no purpose for a horror film – yes, The Thing & Let Me In, we’re talking about you!

Why have one bad remake when you can have two?

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Image © New Line Cinema, 2006