First of all, I'm not much of a fan of the original, which is slow and turgid and often teeters on the edge of boredom. There's not enough wrong with it for me to dislike it, but there's not enough good about it to make me like it either. It stands in no-man's land. The remake is much more fun, though it suffers from some of the same concerns, such as uneven pacing and a basic plot that just isn't that hot. How, you might rightly ask, does the remake manage to be much more entertaining than the original despite following it incredibly closely? Well... it's tough to say. The budget plays a big part in it, honestly. Watching people sit around, or wander around to different locales is a lot more appealing when you can make it look really good in the process. It's also helped, somewhat, by the performances. Mia Farrow is fun and over the top as the creepy nanny. The colder performance in the original was fine in and of itself, but this goofier turn adds a bit of life to the film. Furthermore, the central character of Robert Thorn is much better this time around. This isn't to say Schreiber gives a great performance; he's merely okay, a little dull, frankly. But his turn worked much better than Peck's original did, as Peck made Thorn into a pompous buffoon whom I actively disliked. (Peck also managed to overact without actually conveying any emotion. That's quite a feat.) I don't feel an overwhelming amount of sympathy for this Thorn, but not hating him does help the film, as he is the protagonist and all. (And, as the film goes along and things get worse and worse I did start to sympathize with him a bit.) Some Seamus kid plays Damien, and he's been much criticized, and not without some reason. One of the relative strengths of the original was that it didn't try and make Damien be all scary and evil, what with that being a pretty tall order for a little kid. Here Seamus mostly just glowers, umm, evilly, and he is something less than terrifying. It coulda been worse, though, and he doesn't get too much screen time. Julia Stiles takes over the role of Kate Thorn, and she has an extraordinarily round and squishy looking face. I didn't notice too much else about her. (I must say, however, that her performance was not conspicuously bad, as I anticipated it might be.) Also of note is Pete Postelthwaite as one of the various crazy priests, Father Brennan. It's the standard Postelthwaite role, twitchy and creepy and overdone, but I've always liked it before, and he continues to entertain me now. Lastly, though he doesn't do much, I couldn't help but mention the appearance of Italian horror veteran Giovanni Lombardo Radice as another priest. I hate to be the guy who gets interested when some smalltime actor from obscure, forgotten film randomly shows up in something big unexpectedly, but his appearance did amuse me. This time around Radice gets his face melted, though we don't actually see it happen on screen...
Again, this is a big-budget affair, particularly for a horror film, coming in with a budget 30 times greater than that of the original. It's all up their on the screen, and the film looks great. Sorry folks, but the money does help a lot. Take, for example, the graveyard scene. The scene is pretty much the same in both versions in terms of content, but the new one is still multitudes better because it actually looks good, as they had the time and money to find an appropriately ominous setting. This could be said of most of the film, as a matter of fact. It's an odd combination really, the somewhat silly plot and often wacky performances combine with an ultra-sharp look, making this film classy and hokey at the same time. Also reducing the hokiness factor somewhat is the absence of the lame Gothic sounding music of the original. What they replaced it with is undistinguished, but at least it doesn't hurt the film.
The various death scenes, like most of the rest of the film, are largely the same, aside from the sharper visual style. This isn't uniformly true however, as their is a bit of not so great CGI work, but there ain't much of it overall. Most notably, the decapitation scene has been reworked to some degree. Nowadays a decap isn't liable to impress anyone too much, but it is pretty well done, anyway. The impalation was the best death the first time around, I thought, and it's pretty cool here too. Probably the best one. It does have a bit of the aforementioned unfortunate CGI, but it makes up for it in other ways.
All that said, I'm not really sure who the audience for this film is. Horror aficionados will, for the most part, dislike it for the modern aspects, and hate it for being a remake. And I dunno if it'll appeal to stupid teenagers too much either, probably finding it too slow (as I did, frankly) and moody. (It does make some concessions to the newer style of horror, but I don't think enough to win most of them over.) Nevertheless, I thought it was fun, if far from remarkable. So I guess you gotta be like me, having a taste for both modern and 70's style horror (the golden age of horror films, if ever there was one), and a sufficient affection for the genre to take the good aspects of the film while not being especially bothered by the bad parts. If you can do that, you'll probably have a good time.
Again, this is a big-budget affair, particularly for a horror film, coming in with a budget 30 times greater than that of the original. It's all up their on the screen, and the film looks great. Sorry folks, but the money does help a lot. Take, for example, the graveyard scene. The scene is pretty much the same in both versions in terms of content, but the new one is still multitudes better because it actually looks good, as they had the time and money to find an appropriately ominous setting. This could be said of most of the film, as a matter of fact. It's an odd combination really, the somewhat silly plot and often wacky performances combine with an ultra-sharp look, making this film classy and hokey at the same time. Also reducing the hokiness factor somewhat is the absence of the lame Gothic sounding music of the original. What they replaced it with is undistinguished, but at least it doesn't hurt the film.
The various death scenes, like most of the rest of the film, are largely the same, aside from the sharper visual style. This isn't uniformly true however, as their is a bit of not so great CGI work, but there ain't much of it overall. Most notably, the decapitation scene has been reworked to some degree. Nowadays a decap isn't liable to impress anyone too much, but it is pretty well done, anyway. The impalation was the best death the first time around, I thought, and it's pretty cool here too. Probably the best one. It does have a bit of the aforementioned unfortunate CGI, but it makes up for it in other ways.
All that said, I'm not really sure who the audience for this film is. Horror aficionados will, for the most part, dislike it for the modern aspects, and hate it for being a remake. And I dunno if it'll appeal to stupid teenagers too much either, probably finding it too slow (as I did, frankly) and moody. (It does make some concessions to the newer style of horror, but I don't think enough to win most of them over.) Nevertheless, I thought it was fun, if far from remarkable. So I guess you gotta be like me, having a taste for both modern and 70's style horror (the golden age of horror films, if ever there was one), and a sufficient affection for the genre to take the good aspects of the film while not being especially bothered by the bad parts. If you can do that, you'll probably have a good time.
