Greetings Movie Advocate regulars! Today we continue our special Christmas present to you, a series of 12 lists for the 12 days of Christmas. We're continuing today with lists of 2 movies we'd like to see remade. Agree? Disagree? Either way we'd love to hear about it!
Justin's List:
2. The Avengers
I really love the television show, it's a great combination of sexy, silly, and dangerous. Somehow I ended up seeing the movie in theaters in 1998. It was a profound disappointment. How could the easy cool of the TV show be lost so easily? I think Uma Thurman was a decent enough Emma Peel in spite of not being British, but overall the source material here deserved so much better. I'm not sure how well a new Avengers movie would be received. Would the stylish mod sensibilities and Peel as a liberated bad ass woman play well to the Jersey Shore loving US? Beats me, but I'd love to see a new take on this world.
1. Event Horizon
How do you screw up a spooky atmospheric psychological horror movie about a haunted space station returning from a doomed mission? Easy, inexplicably turn it into a monster movie for the last act. Don't get me wrong, the first two thirds of Event Horizon wasn't going to win any awards, but it deserved better than the quick descent into irrelevance that it got.
Ben's List
2. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
I know it's not very nice to say that Rare Exports is one of the top two movies I'd like to see remade. It's still in theaters for goodness sakes. I assure you, however, that I have only the noblest intentions. I love Rare Exports, the twisted new Christmas story about surveyors who excavate the real, monstrous Santa Claus, who has been buried under a mountain in Finland for centuries, and the ballsy kid who has to stop him from reigning terror on the earth. Rare Exports is a must-see primarily due to some batshit crazy twists and turns that are worth the price of admission alone, even if the story wasn't compelling, which it is.
(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!)
My big problem with Rare Exports is that they hint at how mind-numbingly terrifying the real Santa Claus is. The pictures our protagonist finds in his books at the beginning of the movie show a gnarled, horned Santa Claus towering over the forest in search of naughty children he can boil in pots. At the end of the movie, we see the outline of this Santa Claus encased in a block of ice. However, Santa is blown up by a ton of dynamite before he can be unfrozen and unleash unholy terror. The digital effects in the rest of the movie are slightly lacking, so I wonder if a 40 ft. tall Santa devil monster was avoided simply because director Jalmari Helander and his crew couldn't make the effect look real enough. I think the promise of this horrifying creature is reason enough to remake Rare Exports.
1. Dagon
Dagon, the 2001 direct-to-video adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft story The Shadow Over Innsmouth, is an awesome concept delivered with thick, haunted atmosphere and memorable creature effects. Too bad it totally blows. Dagon follows a yuppie couple who shipwreck and wash ashore in a dark, sinister Spanish fishing town. It doesn't take long to figure out that there is something dreadfully wrong with the residents of this town, and it turns out they worship a squid-deity named Dagon and have themselves begun slowly mutating into half-fishies over the decades. Lovecraft's brand of supernatural nautical horror really gets under my skin. We're just getting into an era where this could be pulled off convincingly in movie form, but unfortunately Dagon is not that movie. For starters, the acting is atrocious, bad even by the low standards of DTV releases. The worst is Ezra Godden as Paul, the most obnoxious, whiny protagonist in the history of the movies. Thank Cthulhu I've never seen him in anything else. The one exception to all this bad acting is Francisco Rabal, in his final role before his death, who is memorable here. The scene where he gets his face flayed is also memorable. The digital effects are distractingly bad. But really, the movie just doesn't quite hang together right. Dagon needs a big budget, a talented screenwriter, actors who can act, and a director at the helm who can find something to say with the material.