Worst
“The Omen” (John Moore, 2006)
“The Omen” remake was so creatively bankrupt that, after some initial development, Fox just said “fuck it” and reused David Seltzer‘s script for the original, vastly superior “Omen” (directed by Richard Donner and released in 1976). The studio then installed hack du jour John Moore in the director’s chair and listlessly filled out the cast with bland performers uneager or unwilling to bring even a remote sense of freshness or unpredictability to the production (Mia Farrow, making a long-awaited return to the screen, just screeches maniacally). Moore pointlessly photocopies sequences from the original – the photographer’s decapitation (now with digital blood!), the priest’s impalement, the army of menacing dogs – making everything more blatant and less elegant than its predecessor. There’s no surprise as to whether or not Damien is a demon child, since they cast a kid that you would cross the street to avoid, and the couple (Liev Schrieber and Julia Stiles) are too young – they lack the desperation that made the original scenario work on such a profoundly sad level. When “The Omen” franchise started out it was sharp and scary – a religious chiller for the nonbelievers who had already been disillusioned by the horrors and atrocities of the sixties and seventies – but it quickly devolved into low budget schlock, a kind of proto-“Final Destination” where Damien would trigger all sorts of crazy things to happen and kill people. “The Omen” remake leans more on the elaborateness of the sequels, while somehow pummeling the original script into a shapeless pulp. Satanically awful.
“Nightmare on Elm Street” (Samuel Bayer, 2010)
Wes Craven has had pretty good luck with remakes of his films – both “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Last House on the Left” turned out to be lively takes on the original material – but the “Nightmare on Elm Street” remake, shepherded by the folks at Michael Bay-run production company Platinum Dunes (who also remade “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “The Hitcher,” “Friday the 13th,” and “The Amityville Horror“) – was an out-and-out disaster. What made “Nightmare on Elm Street” particularly unforgivable was that it was released in an era when, thanks to modern technology, literally anything is possible; the nightmares and dreamscapes of “Nightmare on Elm Street” could have far surpassed anything previously envisioned in the franchise (or anywhere else for that matter). Instead, director Samuel Bayer (who helmed the influential “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video for Nirvana) and screenwriters Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer, turned in a remake that was gravely unoriginal, neither expanding nor improving on Craven’s beloved 1984 feature. Future girl with the dragon tattoo Rooney Mara plays the Nancy character, who is menaced in her sleep by Freddy Kruger (Jackie Earle Haley, playing a burnt up version of his character from “Little Children“), a child murderer her parents killed many years earlier. The dream sequences lack visual splendor (Tarsem‘s underrated, uneven “The Cell,” released a decade earlier, is still more impressive), the script is humorless and dull, and, most damningly, it isn’t scary at all. In fact, it’s a total snooze.
“The Fog” (Rupert Wainwright, 2005)
The original “The Fog” isn’t exactly the crown jewel in the John Carpenter oeuvre, but it is commendable and quite scary – it’s sort of like a Robert Altman movie mixed with an Irwin Allen disaster thing; a small scale drama of intersecting, sometimes overlapping plotlines and malevolent spirits (back from the past to exact their revenge). Typical of Carpenter, the original film is shot beautifully and features a wonderful cast of characters that included Adrienne Barbeau — who Carpenter was having an affair with at the time — Jamie Lee Curtis, John Houseman, Janet Leigh and Hal Holbrook. For the remake, which Carpenter and his co-writer (and wife at the time of the original “Fog”) Debra Hill produced, and the loose structure of “The Fog” remains – an odd, milky vapor overtakes the small coastal town of Antonia Bay and people start mysteriously dying – but everything else has been replaced, gutted, or substantially underplayed. A lame, PG-13 movie that toothlessly depicts the murders and minimizes any sexual activity, “The Fog” was a slog, through and through. The digital effects pale in comparison to the practical ones from 1980 and Wainwright, a limp horror director more notable for his appearance on “The Millionaire Matchmaker,” can’t manage to make any of the scares or gags connect in any kind of meaningful way. It doesn’t help that the ghostly pirates were thoroughly outclassed by the “Pirates of the Caribbean” two years earlier. Shiver me timbers!
