Director Patrick Lussier serves up the gory gags early and often in this remake, which is bigger and glossier than the modestly budgeted Canadian original of the same title, but which has its (disembodied) heart is in the same place. This new Valentine fully, unapologetically embraces its slasher status, which means the characters do groan-worthy things like checking out a strange noise or tripping over invisible obstacles when trying to run from the approaching killer. It means that the audience is showered with 3D entrails and subjected to straight-faced deliveries of silly dialogue. Jensen Ackles and Kerr Smith star as romantic rivals who also happen to be leading murder suspects, but genre veteran Tom Atkins, a familiar face to fans of Night of the Creeps and Maniac Cop, has the more emblematic presence. The technology here is new – fancy digital processes are at work – but the charm is strictly from the old school of 3D gimmickry and goopy gore. The film revels in its own disreputability – from wholly gratuitous full-frontal nudity to a giggle-inducing dislodged eyeball – but it doesn’t wink. (Everyone may behave as if they’re in a slasher flick, but no one behaves as if they’ve ever seen one.) It’s sick, sticky, unreconstructed, and ludicrous from its first frame to its larky cheat of a twist ending. It delivers, dear readers, exactly what it promises: a film for anyone who’s ever wanted to duck a pickaxe between bites of popcorn. You know who you are.
by Victoria Large | Source: Digital 3-D screening
18 Jan 2009 11:50 AM | Comments (2)
I was about to post essentially the same review. I had a great time and was especially pleased that MBV3D didn’t try to get all cheeky and post-modernist on the audience. Fun stuff and it helped quell the boiling rage I felt during the trailer for the needless Last House on the Left remake.
I will also chime in in agreement on this review. Although my devotion to the original film remains slavish, the new film really goes all out with the 3-D gore in a way that’s sort of epic. Considering that the original film was apparently massively sanitized before release, I can’t help but think the gore here might have been closer to what was intended.
Plus, dudes— the EYEBALL! THE FREAKING EYEBALL!!
David Carter
18 January 2009
5:19 PM
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