Yule Love It: inside (2016)

There usually comes a point while watching a remake when you have to make a conscious decision to forget the original movie. Some movies make that impossible. If a film is going to slavishly copy what has been done before then you just can't view it as one individual work of art. The same can happen, however, if the film moves too far away from the source material, making you wonder why they even bothered to create it as a remake.

I really like Inside, the 2007 horror movie from Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury that came along with a number of other extreme French horror movies during the first decade of this century. The two then followed that with Livid, another wonderful horror film, although one with a much more dream-like atmosphere throughout. I've not yet seen Among The Living, for all I know they may have been three for three at that point. I know that all seemed to be going well for them until they were tasked with delivering audiences Leatherface.

But I digress. I had deferred my viewing of Inside for so long because of my love for the original movie. I just didn't have any faith in a remake doing it justice. Enough time had passed though, so I figured it might finally be safe to give it a go.

The main story is the same, as you might expect. Things start with a car crash. Rachel Nichols is Sarah, a survivor of the crash. She's also very pregnant. It's Christmas Eve, Sarah is struggling with her loss, and considering what to do as motherhood approaches, when there is a knock at the door. It's a woman (Madeleine, played by Laura Harring) who seems to know Sarah. When refused entry, Madeleine eventually finds another way inside. She wants to take Sarah's baby, and will stop at nothing to get it.

The good thing about Inside is that it casts two women in lead roles that I always think should have more films under their belt. Nichols and Harring are both women I look forward to seeing onscreen, and both do their best with the material here, Harring having a bit more fun in the role of the villain (as you might expect). And that's about it for the praise portion of this review.

Inside is terrible. It mishandles any moments that it lifts directly from the original, and it also makes changes that don't work, despite obviously being put there to add some potential scares, tension, or kills. One main example is giving Sarah some hearing loss, which then allows her to have a hearing aid that can be lost and gained, depending on how director Miguel Ángel Vivas wants a scene to play out. Vivas also worked on the script, alongside the talented Jaume Balagueróand Manu Díez, and it's almost impossible not to put all of the blame for the lacklustre feeling of the final product on his shoulders. I cannot recall the last time I watched a horror movie that alternated so erratically between either underplaying or overplaying the scares. None of the BIG moments work as they should, leaving viewers underwhelmed, and simply bored, as it all winds to an ending that, well, I won't spoil . . . let's just say that it also fails to prove worthwhile when you think of the ending to the original movie.

Cynically designed to appeal to those who don't want to watch a nasty horror film with subtitles, this is the worst kind of remake. It loses the power of the original, mishandles everything that was done so well the first time around, and never shows an ounce of courage. Pitiful.

3/10

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June-Claude Van Damme: Derailed (2002)

And so it has come to this at last, the film that I deem the very worst yet in the filmography of Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg. There are still a couple of his films that I have never seen, at this moment, but I cannot imagine anything worse than this. Just how bad is it? Well it feels as if it was originally created as a vehicle for Steven Seagal. Not prime Seagal, no, but the Seagal of today. It's THAT bad.

Yet it still manages to avoid the very lowest rating possible, mainly because I have a soft spot for both Van Damme and Laura Harting, who at least has a sizable role here.

The plot sees JCVD meeting up with Harring and escorting her on a train journey. Going along with them is a batch of a nasty viral weapon, a very dangerous strain of smallpox, that has to be kept safe. Harting stole it, some baddies want it, action thriller hijinks ensue.

It's easy to pin down what doesn't work here because there is pretty much nothing that works. From the script to direction, this is a film almost farcical in how slapdash and cheap the whole thing feels. The motivation for the characters never feels anywhere close to plausible, things are overly complicated at times when a simpler approach would have worked better, and I should mention that the the writers, Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch, also decide to get Van Damme's family (wife and children, with his onscreen son played by one of his actual children, Kristopher Van Varenberg) on board the dangerous train. That is the sort of thing that might prove amusing in some of the other scripts that Anderson and Gierasch have written, including some fun creature features, but it feels far too contrived here.

Director Bob Misiorowski has, unsurprisingly, not directed any other movie after this one. Considering the lack of skill on display here, I can only be thankful that he's yet to find another idea he wants to turn into an ugly mess. Had it not been for the presence of the two leads here, this would be a film without any redeemable qualities. Visuals, score, special effects, all are poor. In fact, some of the special effects and stunt sequences in the second half of the film are SO bad that you would be forgiven for thinking that you were watching some spoof co-created by the Zucker brothers. I defy anyone to watch the moment that features Van Damme riding a bike across the top of the train and tell me that they believed it was really happening. I made more realistic set-pieces when I was a child playing with my Action Man figures.

Nobody else in the cast is too recognisable so I won't bother listing them here. Tomas Arana plays the villain of the piece, and does so on a par with many of the other supporting players, sadly. Susan Gibney is a little better, playing Van Damme's wife, but, bearing in mind that it's better to say nothing at all if you cannot say anything nice, I won't comment on anyone else.

If this wasn't a Van Damme movie then I would never have checked it out. If Laura Harring hadn't been his co-star then I probably wouldn't have made it beyond the first 10 minutes. Not recommended. Not recommended at all. You could say that the title was picked as much for the state of Van Damme's career as it was for the relevance to the plot.

2/10

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Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! (1989)

It turns out that Ricky Caldwell, the killer in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 isn't dead. Nope, he's just been in a coma for some time, allowing him to change into Bill Moseley (taking over the role from Eric Freeman) and establish a psychic connection with a blind girl named Laura (Samantha Scully). Laura is about to head to her grandmother's place for the holidays (with her brother, played by Eric DaRe, and his girlfriend, played by Laura Harring), which also seems to be the cue for Ricky to get up and start killing people again. And we all know who he's aiming for.

Directed by Monte Hellman, this is laughable stuff from start to finish. The script, by Carlos Laszlo, makes no effort to shoehorn any logic into the proceedings, which means that everything simply develops from the ridiculous into the more ridiculous.

Whether it's the fact that this killer moves even slower than any other onscreen killer that I can think of, the whole cast of characters being so hard to care for, or even the scene when someone stops to give a lift to a man hitch-hiking, despite the fact that his brain is visible through the liquid-filled jar contraption sitting at the top of his skull . . . . . . . this film provides plenty of unintentional (?) laughs.

Moseley is given nothing to do, besides shuffle around very slowly and kill people occasionally. Scully is required to act blind and throw out sneering comments every other minute, which she does. Eric DaRe is fine, but I was much happier with any scene that featured Laura Harring (billed here as Laura Herring), simply because I have a big crush on her. Robert Culp is a cop trying to get to Caldwell before he kills again, and Richard Beymer is the doctor who may have accidentally created the link between the killer and his target.

Not quite as bad as the movie that preceded it, but it comes close. Thankfully, if you watch it in the right frame of mind then you will find plenty to enjoy. Just not in the way that the creators intended.

3/10

http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Deadly-Better-Initiation-Toymaker/dp/B002P8LKCM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386762884&sr=8-1&keywords=silent+night+deadly+night+3