I couldn’t quite remember the original Asian version of this except that I loved it, though bits and pieces came back to me as I watched this remake. Oddly, though this is to me as good a remake as The Departed or Dark Water (okay, I haven’t seen the original of the latter yet; what I’m saying is they’re good movies, great movies), I can still see myself watching the original again more readily. But for what it is, this is perfectly gripping. Jessica Alba’s performance is at turns surprisingly naked (not like that, perv) and she does the blind thing better than expected. Parker Posey is wonderfully cast as her sister. The ending absolutely made me sit up in the same way I remember the original doing, and I think anyone who hasn’t ever heard of it before will be in for a pleasantly thrilling surprise.

I don’t know what to say about this one – it’s a horror movie I’ve certainly been meaning to watch for a while, being as its one of Clive Barker’s few post-Hellraiser works as director. But your heart really sinks even as the opening credits roll – Scott Bakula, Famke Jannsen, who? and who?

The magic stuff is good, I guess; though frankly I’d sooner see something entirely unrelated like The Prestige or, a little closer, one of the F/X movies; there’s a noiry Blade Runneriness about the opening, and it winds up a little Temple of Doom like. More than anything, I noticed how easily could’ve simply been another Hellraiser sequel like, say Deader, being as the way that series went. That might have made it, if only slightly, memorable. As it is, it’s just a forgettable disappointment all round, really.

That this went straight to video despite the success of the Dawn of the Dead remake and despite the presence of Ving Rhames and Mena Suvari in the cast was about the worst omen a zombie movie could have, and I’d read some pretty bad things about it. As always, though, I seem to come from a different place than most interested parties on this one; I wasn’t that crazy for Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn, though the original Day has its moments it’s still no original Dawn, and just last year I had, some might say, the misfortune of seeing Day of the Dead 2: Contagion, which I actually found myself kinda liking.

There’s nothing wrong with this one at all – that they even include to an extent the “docile zombie” element from the original is all I need to forgive any of its failings. No, that element isn’t probed as beautifully as Romero did; but they come closer than Snyder’s Dawn which, even though they used a mall and everything, completely missed the point of Romero’s original. The gore is fantastic, and frankly I’m baffled as to why anyone thought this wouldn’t do well on the big screen.

Lord … Ed Wood meets Herschell Gordon Lewis with a dash of John Waters lol. And by no means does this have even the semi-historical significance of either of those first two guys’ work – letting alone the artistic merit because, well, it’s best left alone, right? – nor any of the bite of the last. It actually makes me feel better when I watch a movie like this alongside a movie like Cathy’s Curse ‘cos it kinda reassures me and hopefully anyone reading that I’m not just a blind sucker for anything weird and obscure and dodgy lol. While Cathy went in the box with some of my favourite horror movies, this goes more with the forgettable likes of Mother’s Day, Bloody Birthday and Black Christmas – not to mention of course most of the HG Lewis stuff. I guess everyone has their own preferences. This one’s just not for me, and given the content, though I hadn’t expected it, I really would’ve thought otherwise.

You probably couldn’t get a more precise blending of The Exorcist and The Omen (and, hey, throw Amityville on the pile too) than this if you literally cut them together lol; and a lot of the production values at best leave a lot to be desired, at worst demand the need for new underwear.

But this holds together well enough with decent performances, a proper old creepysad score reminiscent of Christian Gaubert’s for The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, and, in fact, almost by virtue of those very same production values that will leave a lot of watchers howling. If you’re into obscure 70s horror, you’re in for a treat. Yes, for the second time this evening following certain moments in AVPR, I almost had an accident when Cathy appeared claiming, “My name is Laura” with what can only be described as sh*t smeared on her face in an hilariously awful attempt to mimic Dick Smith’s makeup on The Exorcist that actually manages to outbad Seytan ... but overall, I think it’s some kind of gem to go in the box with the likes of Happy Birthday to Me, Sleepaway Camp II and Slumber Party Massacre II. I should’ve saved it for Halloween, really, but I couldn’t wait.

I honestly wanted to start this review by basically saying, WTF did you expect? I kinda-sorta-liked the first AVP movie. And this one begins, if anything, better than that one did; throughout, it’s certainly slicker and better in the visual effects department. But between the earth teens storyline and the, “See? No Monster!” scene, just … oh my God. I appreciate that this movie is aimed solely at fanboys but come on, cinema is a broad enough medium that you can be so superficial and at least partially fulfilling in other ways; the first movie showed that in its ending. It’s been a long time since I saw it, but I swear, even Predator 2 was better than this under the gore and visuals.

Yes, still, if you’re complaining – and I am – “what did you expect?” is certainly a valid response … but jeez, it scares me to think anyone over the age of 13 is paying for this crap.

No, no, no, old review below! You bad old review, you!

lol. I’m even annoyed that I used The Quote in that otherwise damning review, ‘cos I was gonna start with it this time around. Oh well, I’m gonna do it anyway.

“Would you ever say, ‘Stop. If you loved me, you’d stop’?”
“Not in a thousand years.”
“Not in a thousand years … that’s my girl …”

Quite honestly, I could end the review right there. That single scene alone goes through me like electricity every time I see it. I’m sure everyone at some time or other has read a book or seen a movie or watched a TV show and wanted the story to go some way it never … not in a thousand years … would conceivably go, right? Well that scene for me, every time I see it, is just one of those inconceivable deliveries for me.

It’s the scene that always comes to mind when I tell people that this is one of the most romantic movies ever; what I always even forget myself is how romantic the rest of the movie is too. Sure, people are dying and those deaths are being investigated … but it’s always Florence or Sardinia etc … Lecter’s hand brushing Clarice’s hair on a carousel … it’s just got such a romantic approach to everything it touches. Even Hans Zimmer’s score knows it. I just love it.

1st September, 2005:

I still love the ending of this movie (“Tell me, Clarice, would you ever say, stop, if you love me you’d stop?” “Not in a thousand years.” “Not in thousand years…. that’s my girl … this is gonna hurt …”), I just get such a kick out of the fact they took the whole love story thing to its weird but perfect conclusion (my favourite moment in Silence of the Lambs is when Lector’s finger brushes Clarice’s) but the rest of the movie is pretty dull. It’s all interestingly designed and slickly produced and the acting is all round stunning, but for some reason it still drags.

One thing I do love about the movie is its dream-like quality – there’s almost no other way the movie could’ve worked, so literally insane is the direction the novel takes. Almost the entire movie here feels to me like Clarice’s flashbacks in Silence, and that makes so many of the movie’s flaws (eg. no matter how good Julianne Moore is as Clarice, she’s no Jodie) somehow palatable. However, even viewed this way, after a while it just feels a little pointless.

The classic. I think. This is one of those movies I’ve watched so many times both for fun and for study that I can’t help but quote vast chunks of it out loud as it plays. There are just so many things about this movie that, to my surprise every time, lift it far above the quality genre pieces the other installments in the series are.

It’s a perfect screenplay, to start with. Syd Field talked a lot of nonsense (I realised, eventually) about screenwriting and his “paradigm” is broken down with every recent passing week, but one of his books I’d still recommend is “Four Screenplays” which simply broke down four screenplays – this one, Thelma and Louise, Terminator 2, and Dances with Wolves – and showed why his system worked, owing a lot of course to Joseph Campbell, whose thoughts on mythology are overwhelmingly present here too – I think Jodie Foster in particular is fond of talking about the mythical aspects of this movie whenever she’s asked about it.

It’s interesting to me to notice that all those four screenplays, all produced between 91-92, have some seriously powerful women in them – Clarice Starling, Thelma and Louise of course, Sarah Connor, Stands with a Fist – and one of the most stand-out things about Silence is that it was made at a time when doing the whole feminist thing still actually meant something, before people started to see such things with an eye for cynicism and post-modernism.

I like the lightness here too, though, and it’s something I noticed while watching Hannibal is yet another thing I think they got right (in comparison to the very straightlaced Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising) there; “If this door should fall down or – heh-heh – anything else …”, “No … no, you ate yours,” – I think part of the reason I for one really didn’t object to Thomas Harris thinking a romance was spawned here is because of how the sharp minds of Clarice and Hannibal right from the off even resembled one another in the humour department.

It’s really just one of those perfect movies you can’t say much of for or against, being as it’s there in front of you as it is and it couldn’t be any other way. Even though I practically know it by heart, I still love it, could even watch it over again right now just a few days after watching it before. It’s classic Jodie, definitive Hopkins, perfect in genre; basically, more deserving of the Oscars it received than just about anything since. What else is there to say?