I dont' know whether cinema audiences have got less sophisticated over the last 30 years or whether film-makers have just assumed they have. I do know that the average age of the contemporary cinema-goer has dropped quite sharply so maybe film-makers have made the assumption that younger audiences are less sophisticated or perhaps less demanding. Either way, the problem with this film is that it feels obliged to spell everything out, every step of the way, as if the audience is too thick to be trusted with mere hints or clues. In my review of THE DEAD OUTSIDE, I complained that the film was confusing rather than ambiguous. I'm afraid that in this review I'm going to complain that the film is obvious rather than ambiguous.
I will concede that it has been a few years since I saw the original so I stand to be corrected on any of the points I'm about to make but I recall it being unsettling as opposed to graphic, and troubling as opposed to horrific. In the new version, the unhappily married couple are depicted as being two unpleasant people from the outset, so much so that I felt little sympathy for them when things turn nasty. I don't recall that about the original; they are unhappy in their relationship, sure, but nowhere near as spiteful and vicious as these two.
There's still something in the water, 30 years on. |
Similarly, the glaringly obvious nature of the remake is rendered clear by having Peter discover dead bodies among the wreckage of the other campers' site; indeed he gets trapped with a corpse in a submerged VW camper van. I think that sequence also gives you a clue as to the film's intention; unlike Eggleston's film the remake is a pretty straightforward, out-and-out horror movie. But for me the one thing that typified the film's brutal attention-grabbing sensibility was the sequence where the couple pull in at a bar to buy some liquor. There is a massive neon sign outside the bar which reads "EGGLESTON MOTEL". That sort of deliberate and obtrusive in-joke is either going to pass over the heads of the casual movie fan, and is therefore unnecessary, or is going to stand out like a sore thumb to the movie buff, who knows and probably likes the original. This kind of thing really annoys me; probably the worst exponent of it is Tarantino. A more fitting tribute to the late Colin Eggleston, who died in 2002, would have been to leave his film to stand alone.
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