Toasted Pixel Presents:
We Are Overrun By Surreal Horror Film Remakes
"Ring Two?! You mean this isn't The Grudge?!"
First came The Ring, which was a pretty cool Japanese horror film remake.
Then came The Grudge, which was a cool remake if you despise intelligent movies
that make sense.
Now comes The Ring Two, House of Wax, and the alien invasion movie
War of the Worlds. Arguably, NONE of these movies needed to be remade, as
the originals were so nonsensical that we don't need another two hours for each.
Let's first take a look at Ring Two. Its predecessor movie, The Ring,
was remade from a Japanese horror film, the premise being that murders were being linked
to a mysterious young girl. There was a cool mystery involved,
and the fact that a little girl was responsible made it all the more creepy.
It even had Naomi Watts in a wet t-shirt at the bottom of a well arching her back and screaming
a lot, which guaranteed its US sales. Fine. Good movie.
But we couldn't leave it alone. Now, America has remade the Japanese sequel.
Ring Two aims to terrify us with Naomi Watts getting wet
once again:
"You want to impress him? Let's practice one more time, mouth open this time..."
Problem is, how much more terrifying can the little girl be, now that we already
solved the mystery in the first film?
"I'm, GRUMPY! Hmph!"
A little girl scowling while covered in muck is NOT the key to horror, people!
It's the key to black and white Little Rascal movies on the Disney Channel, and that doesn't
scream murder mystery (although I'd much rather see a movie about Little Rascals being murdered
by little girls. That'd be awesome).
While we're on the topic of ambiguous roles for kids, we wanna know just how many movies
Ring Two plans on remaking?!
"I see dead people. And they're HEEEEEERE!"
Enough of these ring movies.
Next, we have House of Wax, a horror film that a total of twelve people have seen
by accident on late night Cinemax over the past 20 years. A classic horror film made in 1953
about a museum curator who uses real corpses in his wax sculptures, it's been remade by Hollywood
to be a teeny bopper slasher flick starring Paris Hilton.
PARIS HILTON
To the film's credit, however, it does play to her strengths.
Same role, different movie.
Our last preview is of War of the Worlds. The premise of the original
War of the Worlds is that aliens have been watching us for years,
figuring out exactly how to exterminate us. And at no point during that time
did they see hospitals, ambulances, anyone sneeze, anyone cough, Chinatown, or anything
else that
suggests that germs exist on this planet. And indeed, the aliens who kick our
butts with advanced technology for the entire film ultimately die of earth's diseases,
because they never thought to make their spaceships airtight.
Anyway, Paramount Pictures released a bunch of publicity stills from the remake,
starring Tom Cruise, to ensure no one will want to see the film. Seriously, if you're
making a movie about planetary destruction and interplanetary war, and aliens destroying
entire cities, it's sort of illogical to make your only publicity stills ones of Tom
Cruise crying, which these all are:
"He was bullying me! I'm telling on him! WAAAAAAAH!"
The images in which he's not crying are still unsettling in abusive parent ways:
It certainly is a great day for proud fathers of terrified albino children everywhere.
The sad thing is, we're going to watch all these movies. Every one of them.
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