I have to say right off the bat that this is not exactly a reboot of the Child’s Play series of movies. In fact, it continues the naming convention of the last two movies by ending with ‘Of Chucky’. What it is, is a reboot of the tone of the series. The previous two movies in the series were a step up in special effects but they ratcheted up the comedy. They were good but they were not exactly horror movies. In fact, the series was funny from the get go and only got more ridiculous as it went. This movie resets the series a little. This time around they mixed in a lot more horror into the mix. In fact, a lot of the horror aspects are psychological as we get a lot more suspense than cheap scares. Of course, there are a lot of ‘gritty’ reboots these days but this is not one of those. This movie gives the dog its teeth back and I felt more creeped out by the series than I have been in a long time. The movie felt like the original Child’s Play without the hokey Eightiesness of the original. Not to say the original is bad, it just ends up not being as scary as this one is. It still has the sarcastic edge to it and there is no need to worry, Brad Dourif is still great in this one. In addition, we get a great performance from his daughter Fiona Dourif and a whole new cast of characters. This movie breathed new life into the series with the seventh movie. It also finally summed up all of the lore of the series in a way that makes sense. They have promised a sequel that will follow this new course, but it has been around three years. I still hold out hope. I definitely recommend this one for fans of the franchise and newcomers alike.
The Evil Dead (2013)
A Quasi-Reboot of The Evil Dead (1981)
Here is another movie that I thought was a reboot but is actually just another movie in the series. Well, sort of. A little research turned up that the movies are connected by an after credits scene and there were possible plans to connect the two franchises at some point. Heck, that is something that can potentially still happen now that Ash vs. The Evil Dead has entered its second season. The movie follows a different group of young kids who journey to a cabin in the woods (not that one). The backstory really resonated with me on a personal level but I do not want to spoil it. The story is very similar to the original and the sequel. Young people get terrorized by the titular Evil Dead, a kind of undead/demonic/eldritch hybrid that Sam Raimi and Friends came up with in the Eighties. While the three movies are similar, the newer one has some key differences. The new one has higher production values and a female lead which was a good start in differentiating it from the original. The movie is full of similar beats and moments from the original but they happen in a different order or a different way this time. It gives me the feeling that the Evil Dead have a modus operandi, a way they almost always use to end people. Watching the show reinforces that. However, the newer movie lacks the humor of the original movies. As it stands on its own, the movie is fast-paced and horrifying in all the best ways. I do have one big complaint. They redid the tree rape from the first movie and that really was not necessary. It was still a great horror movie and I definitely recommend it.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
So I thought I would finally check the remake to one of my favorite horror franchises because it was on television and why not? The movie was not endorsed by Wes Craven but neither was Nightmare 2 and, while it was really weird, it was not horrible. The movie is endorsed by Robert Englund for what it’s worth. Everybody else kind of follows Wes Craven’s lead because fans and critics pretty much hated it. I am not in the camp of people that automatically hates reboots and remakes. I can list remakes and reboots that are better than the original. The movie is shot differently than the original series. This movie is shot pretty straight forward with darker tones and really cool CGI effects. Gone are the rock and pop soundtracks and, because the thing is produced by Michael Bay, we get a composed score instead. Jackie Earle Haley is good at being a villain and his laugh and voice as Freddy is appropriately chilling. However, they took away two things with this remake. First, they removed the humor which did a lot to throw you off guard and make things more unnerving. Second, they removed a lot of the dream-like quality of the original series. A lot of the deaths were completely out of left field and had a beautiful symmetry and horror to them. Here, the deaths looked cleaner and a little more realistic. Overall, I think the movie is alright and had a lot of potential but it lacks a lot of the imagination of the original series. This is more of a problem because the movie keeps throwing reminders of the original series at you which only makes me pine for the weird, eighties quality of the original. Check it out if you’re bored but there are definitely better horror movies out there.
Weekly Update:
– I started watching iZombie season 2
– I continued watching Supernatural season 11
– I started watching Arrow Season 4 again
– I tried watching American Horror Story: Hotel again. Not great.
– This week’s theme is “Revisiting Horror Franchises”
– I kept watching Flash Season 2
– I watched more of Legends of Tomorrow Season 1
I first heard of this musical during my tenure working in professional theater up in the boonies of New Jersey. There were five years up there but I think it was during A Streetcar Named Desire when a friend of mine named Jason played it for me. It’s probably a rare Venn diagram where Musical lovers meet Horror fans. I got a kick out of it when he played the soundtrack but I kind of forgot about it because I did not have a chance to go see the show. I am a huge Evil Dead fan and when I stumbled across a performance on YouTube, I just had to jump on it. The show is adapted from the first two movies which makes sense as Evil Dead 2 was mostly just an extended remake of the first film. First, if you’re wondering, the music is really good. The music is catchy as hell and extremely campy. In fact, a lot of the show is really, really campy in all the best ways. The show is pretty self-aware and there are plenty of allusions to the movies, Bruce and Sam. I think I watched the original Just for Laughs performance and it was really good. There’s plenty of gore to satisfy fans of the series but also enough comedy to keep you laughing. As I said, it basically shows the story of Evil Dead 2 but there are references to all three movies. The guy who played Ash is particularly good at doing Ash without doing Bruce Campbell. Check this out if you can before the lawyers take it down.
Cannibal: The Musical
So I had heard about this a long time ago but I never was able to check it out. People were so overjoyed and surprised when Trey Parker and Matt Stone succeeded on Broadway with the Book of Mormon. I was not really surprised since it was the third full musical they had written together. They had written, produced and directed Cannibal: The Musical and South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut a good while before the Book of Mormon opened. The South Park movie is actually a musical with a lot of heart but it is definitely heavily South Park flavored. Cannibal started life as a short student film but evolved into a feature length film. It was distributed by Troma and it definitely has a lot of the Troma trademarks. Mostly it’s just the cheap but gory practical effects that are done with such glee. Parker and Stone’s comedy definitely clicks with the usual wackiness of Troma and you can see a lot of their future in this first project together. At one point, you can even hear somebody doing Cartman’s voice. The movie is a dark comedy about several men trying to travel into the Colorado Territory in 1883. Several flashforwards show one of them (Trey Parker) on trial for cannibalism. The musical numbers are all incredibly bouncy considering how gory some of the scenes are. The musical is a fun time and it was obvious that everybody had a lot of fun putting it together. It led to great things in the future and I definitely recommend it for those who do not have weak stomachs.
Young Frankenstein: The Musical
Mel Brooks is a great comic mind. He was always a legend at mixing very stupid comedy with very smart comedy and making it all work. A lot of his stuff was parody and Young Frankenstein was no different. It was a great little story of the heir to Victor Frankenstein coming to check out his birthright. It had some of the best comedians of the day including Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman who knocked it right out of the park. Feldman was particularly at the top of his game and most of the memorable quotes come from him. The movie still rates in my top fifty movies at a minimum. Mel Brooks struck gold with The Producers on Broadway and it made sense to also put another great movie up there in musical form. Like The Producers, I probably never could have gotten tickets to Young Frankenstein. The musical has a lot of the tongue-in-cheek humor of the original and, of course, has a lot of the same jokes. The music is more in the style of classic broadway which makes sense for a black and white movie made in the seventies. The show comes off even more vaudeville-esque and is pretty fun to watch. Like the other musicals on this list, they hit a lot of the feel of the original characters without getting stuck too much in doing impressions. If you have a chance to check this musical out, I definitely recommend it, especially if you are a fan of the original.
Weekly Updates:
– The theme of the week is “Morbidly Funny Musicals”
– I am catching up on Agents of Shield and it’s great
– Still watching Seven Deadly Sins and it is badass
– I watched a lot of YouTube this week
– I need to write about that soon
– I’m in the mood to watch some old cinema
– Happy Birthday to my Mom!
