On today’s show I get to chat with one of the most powerful men in Hollywood – Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks Animation – about their new film MONSTERS V ALIENS and the introduction of their new 3D technology. I also chat with the director of the film, Conrad Vernon.
I caught a preview screening this week of THE UNINVITED, a 2009 American remake of the 2003 South Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters, which is itself apparently based on a Korean folktale “Janghwa Hongreyon-jon”.
Trailer below:
The film was released back in January in the USA, so it’s taken a few months to get here, which still annoys the hell out of me. And the industry wonders why people download films on an ever-increasing basis. Jesus.
The Plot:
Anna, played by Australian actress Emily Browning, is a 16 or 17 year old girl is released from a mental institution where she had been admitted for cutting her wrists. She discusses a strange recurring dream she’s been having with her shrink. The dream involves her sick mother in bed in the family’s boathouse, with a bell tied to her wrist so she can tell the family when she needs help. In the dream there’s also a watering can, something weird is going on inside the family home, crows picking at food on the dinner table, then the boathouse explodes, killing Anna’s mother. The shrink says she’ll work out what it all means in time but now she should go home and finish what she started (the suggestion is that she’s got the hots for a young lad and she should get it on with him).
She goes home to discover that after the death of her mother, who did actually die in the aforementioned explosion, her father has hooked up with the nurse who was looking after their mother. The nurse, Rachel, is played by the very hot and versatile Elizabeth Banks (Scrubs, Zack & Miri Make a Porno).
Anna’s older sister, Alex, tells her that Rachel has been helping their father through the ordeal of losing his wife, “helping him three times a night”. Alex and Anna obviously both don’t like Rachel and you get the feeling that the dislike is mutual.
Alex and Anna start digging into Rachel’s past and determine that she’s a fake and that she might have killed the children of another couple that she worked as a nurse for. The wife of that guy also mysteriously died and he also ended up in a relationship with the nurse.
Meanwhile, Anna is getting visits from dead children in the middle of the night and sometimes even in the middle of the day, telling her she’ll be next. Typical J-Horror stuff, dark, creepy visits, bodies all malformed and blackened skin, spooky stuff, but once you’ve seen one J-Horror film, you know what to expect.
Once the girls work out that Rachel is a phony and she knows that they know, the battle to see who survives is on.
There is a twist at the end, a staple of many American horror films, and this one, while better than some, was a bit of a let down.
MY THOUGHTS:
This film is pretty pedestrian. It tries a little harder than the recent FRIDAY THE 13TH remake and, like that film, it hits the typical scary notes, but it really doesn’t explore any new territory. It’s horror-by-numbers. Apart from the twist at the end, which doesn’t save it, the films is very predictable stuff.
While I was watching it, I ended up pulling out my iPhone and debating someone on Twitter about Israel, only looking up at the screen when I heard the soundtrack go into the “something awful is about to happen” music cue.
I haven’t seen the original film but, from reading the synopsis online, it seems that the ending of the American remake has been significantly altered and watered down. Only go to see this if there’s nothing else on. Better still, go to Quickflix and order a few of the original J-Horror films (The Ring, etc) if you haven’t seen them. They will scare you silly. Don’t watch them in the dark and don’t watch them alone.
6/10.
SO CLOSE is a cheesy-but-awesome Corey Yuen (The Transporter, Hero) film. It’s basically an assassin film with hot Hong Kong babes as the stars. The plot is terribly cheesy, as are the fight scenes, and it has so many plot holes that, if it were an American film, I’d be scathing about it. But somehow they all just make me smile in this. There is something adorable about Hong Kong cheese. The film stars Shu Qi (The Transporter, The Eye 2), famous for getting her start in soft porn before going on to become an award-winning actress. At 32, she’s made over 60 films. Damn, those Chinese know how to work it!
Meh.
Okay so I saw this last night. While it wasn’t a complete waste of time – it does contain the stock standard horror cliches that make you cringe and jump, even though you know it’s coming, manipulating deep-seated responses in our limbic system – it is a very predictable, very ho-hum remake of a classic film. The final 3 seconds will make you cringe or, as I did, yell out “OH FUCK OFF!” at the top of your voice.
Perhaps for kids who have never seen the original, this will be an introduction to the mostly-woeful-but-highly-profitable Friday The 13th series.
However it doesn’t take the audience anywhere new. Over the last few years we’ve seen the whole ‘horror porn’ films such as the SAW and HOSTEL series, as well as the J-Horror films, which took horror to new levels. The new F13 film doesn’t bother to try to match those. It sticks with the “young hottie gets a machete in the head” approach. There is nothing inventive, nothing surprising, nothing that makes you think or gasp in surprise. It’s straight boogie man in the night stuff.
Don’t bother. Rent out the original on DVD instead.
