Wednesday 12 March 2008

Rosemary's Baby is reborn...

..and already I wish for an abortion. Micheal Bays Platinum Dunes seems to be hellbent on re-making horror film that don't really need to be touched.

Rosemary's Baby
I usually don't mind about most remakes. As long as the makers can take the original idea and rearrange it into an interesting way I'm game. The new Hills have eyes had an intensity that I found missing in the original, while The U.S. Grudge had it's moments (definitely better than the remake of Ringu).

However Hollywood is constantly churning out remakes that many are considering sub-par. Hell, I'm sure the two remakes I used as examples are disliked by many.
What many people hate about these remakes is simply the lack of understand on what made the original movies so creepy to them. Those tiny little nuances that have kept films into peoples minds and/or nightmares will be lost.

Which leads me to the article about Rosemary's Baby. Considered a classic to many and well revered in horror circles. While melodramatic and dated by today's standards, Rosemary's Baby is still a great 70's tale of paranoia and fear. It's not like most horror films and its main theme is something that will scare soon to be parents until we are long gone; "Is there something wrong with my child?".

A film like Rosemary's Baby deals with it's characters and their story more than anything else. It's back story whispering cultural dealings of the day (Is god dead?) while telling a disturbing story about a young mother whose moved to a place where she knows hardly anybody and fears not only for her child but her own well being.

It's a grown up horror movie. Something we do see less of in these days of so called "torture porn" and self referential "satire". It is also something I don't think Micheal "maker of that toy movie" Bay's production company is up for. After watching how The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was slickly "re-imagined" I can't see Rosemary's Remake being a subtle re-working of anything at all.

Remakes, Re-imaging, Rip offs, Whatever. Like I said before I don't think there's anything wrong with a good re-vamp of something. Without Hidden Fortress there's be no Star Wars etc. But I don't feel that Platinum Dunes current style of glossy, MTV edited re-makes, filled with dirtied up beautiful people are the right to go for a film made by a director whose well know for his intelligent psychological movies.