Completely unpleasant remake and an insult to Bob Clark´s 1974 version, which, while no masterpiece, was a tense and disturbing shocker that deserves a lot of credit for influencing the modern slasher film.
But after Clark´s original, and John Carpenter´s 1978 Halloween (which was a masterpiece), things began to go downhill as rip-offs, clones, remakes and sequel after sequel were churned out, and now after thirty years of slasher films the genre has been stripped to a skeletal structure and become unbearable.
Thirty years of slasher films! Other generations had westerns and musicals but our defining cinematic genre may well be nothing more than maniacs killing women with sharp objects; and each “new” film simply diminishes the impact of the true classics, pictures with violence, yes, but also art, social commentary, disturbing realism.
Of course that doesn’t stop studios from making money, and it doesn’t stop director Glen Morgan from assaulting us with this over-the-top, sickening mess full of gratuitous and repellent violence, almost all of it against women.
Eight or nine scenes of a psycho gouging out victims´ eyeballs and eating them is fine for most films, but somehow becomes repetitive here. Enough.
