I tried; I REALLY tried to act like I had never seen the John Carpenter masterful ghost story.
I tried to look for any bright spots in this remake. Really.
*Here there May Be Spoilers*
It tried...once. To expand on the original story of the Ill-fated ELIZABETH DANE, the clipper ship of lepers that was trying to establish an isolated community on some prime Oregon (originally California) Real Estate. We got about ten minutes of sporadic flashbacks to Captain Blake and his doomed maritime colony...gratuitous flashes of potentially leprous individuals...many absurd off-camera killings. In short, it COULD have shown, using the technology Carpenter didn't have, leprous-ghosts seeking revenge; a flashback story behind Captain Blake, his wife and colony and the greedy, frightened '4' ancestors... But it didn't. And what in the heck was with the ending???
What it did do, was take what was originally a well-fleshed story, with characters in peril...and turn it into a diseased, pustulant, rotting corpse that didn't even have the nerve to bombard us with gore, FX, or nudity to camouflage the dung-heap it was. I saw it on a Free Cinemax Preview...and still wanted my money back.
I tried to look for any bright spots in this remake. Really.
*Here there May Be Spoilers*
It tried...once. To expand on the original story of the Ill-fated ELIZABETH DANE, the clipper ship of lepers that was trying to establish an isolated community on some prime Oregon (originally California) Real Estate. We got about ten minutes of sporadic flashbacks to Captain Blake and his doomed maritime colony...gratuitous flashes of potentially leprous individuals...many absurd off-camera killings. In short, it COULD have shown, using the technology Carpenter didn't have, leprous-ghosts seeking revenge; a flashback story behind Captain Blake, his wife and colony and the greedy, frightened '4' ancestors... But it didn't. And what in the heck was with the ending???
What it did do, was take what was originally a well-fleshed story, with characters in peril...and turn it into a diseased, pustulant, rotting corpse that didn't even have the nerve to bombard us with gore, FX, or nudity to camouflage the dung-heap it was. I saw it on a Free Cinemax Preview...and still wanted my money back.