August 1, 2018
Written by: Todd Farmer, Zane Smith
Starring: Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, Kerr Smith
Budget: $15,000,000
Tagline: Are you ready for your heart to be broken? He's going to do it.
Trivia: The first two characters killed on screen are named Jason and Michael, a homage to characters from the Friday the 13th (1980) and Halloween (1978) series where the killers are non-speaking. A direct reference to the films is how they die - trademark features of the characters.
The night before I watched the originally, and I thought I'd watch the remake to see the comparisons. Full Disclosure: The movie is made to be watched in 3D and I don't have the glasses so I did not get the full experience and some film moments are cheesy because they were create for 3D. That being said, I liked the remake! Being a remake, it outdoes the original in gore and nudity and has And of course a different twist ending. The storyline is similar to the original with Tom returning to his mining town and there being sexual tension between him, his ex-girlfriend Sarah, and her new boyfriend Axel. And of course, a killer wearing a mining uniform and mask is killing people in a mining town around Valentine's Day. However, there are a lot of changes to the story to make it interesting and not just the same movie but with modern special effects.
The story begins with an explosion at a mine in 1997 and the rescuing of Harry Warden, who is now in a coma, and who killed five other trapped miners to save his oxygen. The next year Harry awakens from his coma and murders an entire hospital. The hospital murder fest is done off camera but the viewer is given glimpses at the aftermath with bodies and blood covering the place. The gore is intense with bodies ripped apart and splatter absolutely everywhere. Afterwards, Harry goes to the mine to murder a teenage drinking party. He chases them into the mine and kills most of them but Sarah, Axel, and Tom survive... Tom only barely when the cops shoot Harry as he's about to impale Tom with his pick axe.
The rest of the movie follows the same basic plot format as the other with people being killed by the pickaxe wielding masked psycho. There are several of the classic scenes from the original: A woman is found killed and in a dryer, a person gets a pickaxe through the eyeball, etc. And we get some new classics: Shovel cutting a girl's head off at the jawline, pickaxe through bottom of chin and out the mouth. Of course each of these moments has much more blood and gore in order to outdo the original (Scream 4 Rules for Horror Remakes).
There is one scene that seems excessively gratuitous. A random trucker and lady bone in a hotel room and afterwards the trucker reveals that he filmed it and makes some awful comments. So the lady completely naked chases him outside to shoot him where they both encounter the masked killer. He quickly kills the trucker and then chases the still completely naked woman into the hotel where she runs around naked and tries to fight him off. According to the IMDB trivia, this scene was not supposed to be as gratuitous as it came out to be. The woman was supposed to cover herself with a blanket when she goes outside but she kept dropping it so the actress told the filmmakers to just do it without the blanket. Later, the cops find her in a heart shaped jacuzzi with her heart cut out and the room covered in blood.
The film is really enjoyable but it misses some of the low budget quaint quality that the original had. This version takes place and is filmed in Pennsylvania instead of Canada so we miss out on the regional accents that made the original so charming. Being filmed in 3D, the movie takes every opportunity to thrown things at the camera which probably looked great in 3D but without the 3D these moments are just cheesy.
Overall, I still really liked the remake. I liked the extra character development they did with the three main characters turning them all in more well rounded characters. One is cheating on his wife and has a pregnant girlfriend, all of which is causing him so much stress he seems ready to snap at any moment. The other is guilt ridden while still pining for his true love and torn between selling the mine and leaving behind his past or staying for Sarah. And Sarah who is married and torn between her toxic marriage and the new guy. Also, it has a pretty cool twist ending. Hint: Think High Tension.
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