Carrie (2013)

2013
Directed by Kimberly Peirce
Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Judy Greer, Portia Doubleday, Alex Russell, Gabriella Wilde, Ansel Elgort and Julianne Moore

First things first: I reviewed the original movie several years back on this here blog, in fact WAY back in April of 2010 for all three of you that are interested.  That was when I still had the "International Horror Registry" thing going on, meaning that I consider that flick to be one of the best horror movies...ever.  Worthy of ellipses because reasons.  Anyway, I didn't go back and reread that review, but I'm almost certain that I probably mentioned that it was one of many scary flicks that I saw for the first time on MonsterVision with Joe Bob Briggs.  I remember that night well.  The buildup, the awesome Brian De Palma camerawork during the prom scene, the multiple simultaneous shots as "They're all gonna laugh at you!" echoes on the soundtrack.  It was one of the few movies that actually left me a little disturbed when I went to sleep afterward.

A few months after that, I got around to reading the book.  Now, I've read a good portion of Stephen King's novels (well, up until a certain point - 1998 or so would be the cutoff), but the O.G. printed version of Carrie is actually one of his lesser works.  Which makes sense, considering it was his first published novel.  The awesome story is there, but the format is just weird.  It's told in a mix of traditional third-person narrative and Bram Stoker's Dracula-style newspaper clippings and journal writings.  And it doesn't really work.  So go figure that when a TV-movie remake came out in 2002 with Angela Bettis, they were MUCH more faithful to this book...and boy did that movie suck.  Ellipses because of suckiness.  Well, when the news filtered out in 2011 that they were AGAIN remaking this story for modern audiences, I wasn't too thrilled, to the point that I didn't see this movie until literally a week before I write this.  And while audiences generally liked this film, I was decidedly less than wowed despite an admittedly star-studded cast for a horror film.  Enough jibber jabber.  Let's get to it.

Alright kids, you want to know the point that I decided to give this movie a negative review?  When a YouTube video figures prominently into the plot.  Spoiler alert.  For the uninitiated, Carrie is the story of the titular character, an unpopular high school girl who deals with the horrors of bullying on a daily basis.  This is shown, in every version of the story that has ever been done, very early on in the story when she is in the shower after gym class and has her first menstrual period - something that she actually has no knowledge about, and thus freaks the hell out.  It used to be that the girls threw tampons at her while laughing and name-calling, but in this film...yeah, YouTube video.  Ellipses because YouTube video. 

Chloe Grace Moretz drew the honors of playing Carrie White in this film ahead of many competitors (including MEGAN FOX of all people, because nothing says "unpopular, tormented high school girl" like one of the most smoking hot chicks on the planet), and while she's nowhere near as effective as Sissy Spacek she does an admirable enough job in the role.  Compare her to the actress who plays her mother.  See, Carrie deals with bullying not only from her classmates but from her overly religious mother.  Piper Laurie's performance in the original is a thing of beauty; she was scary without ever being over-the-top.  Well, now we get Julianne Moore.  And while a lot of other reviewers pour on the raves over Moore in this flick, I thought she was over-the-top to the point of being laughable.  Those scenes that Carrie and her Momma share in this film have nowhere near the power of the similar stuff in the 1976 original.  It's glandular.

The rest of the plot pretty much spins along just the way it has so many times before.  Sue Snell (Gariella Wilde) feels terrible about her role in the shower incident, and asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort) to take Carrie to the prom.  Only some of the other girls aren't taking too kindly to the boot camp-esque detention that they were sentenced to.  Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday) and Billy Nolan (Alex Russell) capture a pig, kill it and plan to dump its blood on Carrie at the prom, and unfortunately this is another instant where the movie flies off the rails.  Doubleday and Russell did fine with what they were scripted to do, but much like Moore, the characters were just handled in such a ham-fisted way that made me want them wiped off the screen.  And not in the good horror movie "heel heat" way, either. 

Everything builds up to the stuff at the prom, as Carrie (of course) turns out to be beautiful and Tommy gradually begins to enjoy the company of this girl that he didn't really want to be with.  And then comes the pig's blood, and everything that comes after.  I also hasten to mention that Carrie has been doing all kinds of research about the power that she possesses, something that has caused all kinds of further riffs with her mother in the process, adding that little extra layer of emotional weight that really hit you in the gut in the Spacek-De Palma masterpiece but falls kind of flat here.  However, the prom scene in this movie is AWESOME.  Dark, bloody and protracted, it was purely and simply awesome.  They got that aspect of it right.  But then there's a weird twist involving Sue's character that felt really out of place.  I'll leave that up for you to decipher.  Or look up on Wikipedia, whichever method you prefer.

I'm well aware that my plot description here wasn't the greatest, but I'm operating under the assumption that almost everyone reading this is more than familiar with the story of Carrie.  It really is a great one.  It's not an out-and-out HORROR film, although it definitely has lots of death and destruction.  It's more of a tragedy.  To be fair, everyone involved in this movie seemed to view it as such and take it seriously regardless of whether or not I liked them in their roles.  Moretz, again, was really good and sympathetic in the main role and deserved most of the praise.  Gabriella Wilde was also really good as Sue Snell, along with Ansel Elgort as Tommy, a guy that I really wish would get looks for things other than teen drippy roles.  It's artfully directed by Kimberly Peirce, with a script that only treads into truly dopey territory with the YouTube stuff.

The problem with the movie comes up every time we see someone that we're not supposed to like.  It starts with Julianne Moore and her Bible-smacking ways, but it manifests itself every time Chris and her bully brethren are onscreen.  I don't know what it is about the portrayal of bullying in modern films, but in the olden times (like...1998 and before) film-makers and screenwriters used to be really good at getting these scenes to come off as cruel and emotional.  Nowadays, you can just feel how hard they're trying to hammer home the "don't bully" message and make these characters SO cartoony that they're unbelievable.  That definitely manifests itself here.  There's also nothing as memorable as "They're all gonna laugh at you"/four simultaneous camera shots of death.  So that's -2 points on the cool meter.  Overall, though, it's just a story that was done perfectly the first time around in 1976.  In this reporter's opinion, it was done even BETTER than the novel.  So why bother?  Because we signed Chloe Moretz and Julianne Moore, that's why.

Time for my most unpopular rating in a while.  ** out of ****.  There's still no topping Sissy Spacek.  Still, this movie was definitely better than the 2002 TV movie - and The Rage: Carrie 2.  Shudder.  And that is it for RemakeUAry!  Valentine's Day approaches next month, and as such we'll be looking at some very fitting films...

The Crazies (2010)

2010

Directed by Breck Eisner
Starring Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson and Danielle Panabaker

This week's RemakeUAry review comes with a bit of an asterisk.  The reason?  I didn't even know this movie was a remake until after I watched it!  I remember seeing the ads for this flick when it came out in the early parts of 2010, thinking that it looked all kinds of badass, being excited for opening night, getting out of the theater, logging on to IMDB and finding out that it's based on a George Romero movie.  Now it all makes sense.  There's just a type of story that has that "Romero glow," kind of like the "Spielberg glow" that Joe Bob Briggs used to talk about on MonsterVision.  Only this glow is deciddly less glowy and much more depressing.  Wait, what?

First things first: I think this is a good film.  Not great, but good, and definitely worthy of the praise it got upon release.  And let me tell you something (brother), that is some high praise coming from me, because it goes against the grain of my zombie movie bias.  The Crazies might not  be an actual zombie movie per se, but it definitely shares some of the conventions of the genre.  Occasionally, it also devolves into some of the cliches that plague this not-so-little subgenre of horror.  Fortunately, there's enough twists on the usual flesh-eating conventions to redeem it, along with more than a few sequences that generate actual tension.  I say this is as someone with absolutely no biases when it comes to the source material, either, since...well, I haven't seen the original film and have no plan to.  With that, let's get to the blow-by-blow.

Welcome to the fictional town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, a state located a mere stone's throw away from yours truly and the land of some horrifically large STOP signs.  Seriously.  The town is set up to be representative of an idyllic little Midwestern town, something that I DO hold very near and dear to my heart, so the movie has +2 points going for it from the jump.  We meet our main protagonist, Sheriff David Dutten, played by Timothy Olyphant in a rare babyface role.  I'm so used to seeing this guy play weasely dickheads that seeing him here was admittedly kind of jarring, but the guy does a decent-enough job coming off as a relatable small-town cop that his resume of villain roles almost vanish from your mind.  His wife Judy (Radha Mitchell) is unfortunately not quite as cool, the local doctor who spends much of the movie with a pained expression on her face somewhat reminiscent of the heroine from The Screaming Skull.  Google it, kids.

The movie starts off with a bang, literally, and an opening bit that definitely qualifies as memorable.  Sheriff David is at a local baseball game when one of the residents of the town shows up in the outfield brandishing a shotgun and looking very, very sweaty.  In a horror movie, you know this means bad news.  The scene ends with the shotgun-wielding dude dead and a mystery about why this came to be, and it doesn't take long for several like-styled incidents to take place across Ogden Marsh.  These bits were definitely the highlight of the movie - as David and Judy make their way through the story, they periodically come across some more zombie residents and increasingly bigger, more violent set pieces.  Sometimes resulting in the death of one of their side character companions.

I've noticed in the last ten years or so that the frequency of a side character who steals the show is becoming a pretty common thing.  The Crazies belongs to one particular character, and that would be Russell Clank.  Russell is David's right-hand man and deputy, much more trigger-happy than his boss, and you get the impression that Joe Anderson really loved playing this role.  Enthusiasm like that is infectious in movies, especially ones that take themselves as seriously as this one does.  Unfortunately, the other main side character is played by Danielle Panabaker.  I've seen her in a few movies, and she's always just kind of makes me go "yeah, this person sure does exist."  Not an especially good actress, not especially charismatic, not especially attractive, just average at everything.  Fortunately, she's also the first big character to die.  Spoiler alert.

Of course, at some point we have to put everything together as to what is causing everyone in town to become so violent and look like extras from a very different type of George Romero film.  The answer is that a downed military airplane deposited its "Trixie" virus biological weapon into the town's water supply...and, well, there's your answer.  As the movie goes on, the action gets decidedly bleaker, with a chess match going on between not only our main group of characters and the mad humans but also our main group of characters and a trained government hit squad.  'Cus it's not a movie like this without some scummy military operatives.  Fortunately, we care enough about Olyphant, Anderson and even Radha Mitchell by this point that it actually has some emotional weight, to the point that when the expectedly depressing ending arrives, it managed to not piss me off too much.  A little, but not too much.  It was at least 37% cooler than The Tommyknockers.

As previously mentioned, I've never seen the original film that this one is based on.  But one thing that I CAN gleam for comparison's sake is how this movie feels compared to all of the other remakes that were popping up around this time.  In that regard, The Crazies really shines.  The reason?  Very unlike the Platinum Dunes movies, you can tell that everyone involved in this movie from director Breck Eisner to the screenwriters to the actors took this movie deadly serious.  Sitting in the theater that night, I remember this feeling extremely refreshing after sitting through all of the stuff that Michael Bay and his cronies had unleashed upon the world in recent years.  The powers-that-be here were trying their damndest to make a badass film, and it shows.

That doesn't exactly translate into scares.  I didn't find The Crazies to be an especially scary movie.  It's got some cool setups and payoffs to its admittedly kind of weary alternate take on a zombie movie premise, but scary?  Not at all.  Having said that, it DOES stick with you after the ending credits roll and make you think about what just happened, just like the O.G. 1978 [i]Dawn of the Dead[/i] did all those years ago.  Call it the Lick Ness Monster Romero Love-Hate Symplex, which I just realized kind of sounds like a sexually-transmitted disease.

Rating time.  *** out of ****.  For the record, that's the highest-rating so far in the New Year's RemakeUAry, mostly because this one actually tries to be a film and not just a cash grab!

The Hitcher (2007)

2007

Directed by Dave Meyers
Starring Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, Zachary Knighton and Neal McDonough

And now we're up to the McDonald's of horror remakes - Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes company, which went out reduxing/regurgitating just about every scary property they could get their hands on in the mid-to-late-00s.  This place is a factory.  I think it's a little unfair to say that it's a factory of crap, per se, but there is definitely a mass-produced smell associated with almost every movie that comes out of Platinum Dunes.  Kind of like that episode of Seinfeld with the smelly car.  Since that's the best metaphor I can come up with, you know this one is gonna be good.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Platinum Dunes formula: (1) Take source material; (2) "Gritty" it up with as much faux camera grain/Michael Bay shakicam as possible, (3) Add a bunch of jump scares.  Oh, those jump scares.  Platinum Dunes can't be blamed entirely for the proliferation of jump scares in the 21st century, but they're undoubtedly the biggest practitioner.  Man, it really is amazing how just the mere mention of Michael Bay makes me go off on all the ways that this guy has single-handedly ruined movies since 1995.  But let's get to The Hitcher.  I've only seen the original movie one time, way back in 1997 some long-ago afternoon on TBS and recall thinking that it was decent but nothing to write home about.  Still, it was a goddamn work of art compared to what Bay and his Bay-ites came up with in 2007.  Folks, this is pretty much THE Platinum Dunes remake.  Not offensively bad, just offensively mediocre.  Offensively mediocre.  I should copyright that.

From what I remember of the original flick released all the way back in 1986, it was something of a minimalist film with very few performers.  Just Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh (and man, what a hottie she was back in the day), C. Thomas Howell in slightly less cool Soul Man mode and a long chase across the light-filtered deserts.  In a lot of ways, this film does the same thing only it amps up the annoying quotient by 1000%.  The basic premise is as follows: young lovers Grace (Sophia Bush in her One Tree Hill prime) and Jim (Zachary Knighton) are traveling to spring break when they run across the nastiest hitch-hiker in the history of the world.  Said hitch-hiker is played by Sean Bean, a guy I've always been a big fan of.  And no one can say that he didn't give his damndest to this performance.

Yeah, he's not quite as menacing as Hauer, but Bean is a dude who has a really unsung ability to vanish into every role he does.  From 006 to Boromir (I think? It's been a while since a former friend force-fed those movies on me something like 17,000 times), and that is some journey.  In this flick, Grace and Jim cross paths with his character in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, and it's a decision that they will come to rue.  They eventually run into him a short while later at a gas station and pick him up, and this is where the real meat of the story begins, with the hitch-hiker (who introduces himself as John Ryder) takes the couple hostage and gives us the "I want to die" line that dotted all of the commercials for this flick in the lead-up to its release.

What ensues is admittedly a pretty out-there odyssey of death.  It really is the best descriptor that exists for how this story unfolds, as Grace and Jim repeatedly run away from Ryder, only for him to catch up with them and nonchalantly kill everyone that the protagonist characters are now surrounded by.  Hotel operators, police officers, the entire Swiss military, you name it, he can cut through everyone with ease.  Now, I'm pretty sure that the '80s original also doesn't explain Ryder's ninja skills, but this guy is overpowered to the nth degree.  As such, there really isn't a whole lot in the way of suspense here.  The guy is just invincible for 3/4 of the movie's running time until the script comes up with a few chance happenings that weaken him and allow somebody to catch him off-guard, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  There's also more blood than there was in the original movie, and a lot more LOUD NOISES.  That shouldn't surprise anyone either.

For an indication of what we're dealing with, there's this big long bit that kicks off Act Three that sums up pretty much the whole movie.  Grace and Jim have just escaped from Ryder again after he takes out a squadron of police cars and a helicopter BY HIMSELF.  Instead of calling the National Guard, they make their way to a hotel.  Within short order, Ryder shows up and puts a knife to Grace's throat, trying to rape her...and this 100-pound female is able to evade the dude who can kill 100 people with his pinky fingers.  This leads to Jim disappearing, and this ridiculous bit involving him tied up between the business ends of a tractor-trailer that's very reminiscent of that assisted suicide scene in the P. Dunesy version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Meaning, unneeded grit and gore. 

So, you've probably gotten the impression that I didn't enjoy this movie.  And you would be right.  However, there are a couple things that it does pretty well.  First and foremost is the performance of Sean Bean.  While the script gives him almost 2008 Joker-esque powers of persuasion and the ability to know what every character is going to do at any given time, there's no doubt that Bean absolutely loved this role.  He hams it up in the best possible way, and whenever he's onscreen, it's +5 cool points just for his presence alone.  For what it's worth, Bush is also decent in her role although the script goes a bit too far with how much of a badass this woman walking around in a tiny skirt and go-go boots is by the end of the movie.  But call that personal taste. 

What didn't work?  Pretty much the rest.  I left out an entire subplot involving a police lieutenant doing a very Keystone Cops job in trying to tie all of the murders to Grace and Jim, slowly realizing that maybe...just maybe...it isn't these two J.C. Penney models committing all of the heinous acts.  That one-sentence wrap up will suffice for how interesting that plot thread is.  Knighton is also very forgettable as Jim.  Unlike Howell in the original, he pretty much screams "cannon fodder" from the get-go.  And while there are stakes in the movie due to how good Bean is in the Ryder role, there are none whenever it's Bush and Knighton onscreen together.  Spoiler alert: they're not terribly likable, but that's one of the tenants of Michael Bay and Platinum Dunes.  Why make good characters when you can make them bland?

Rating time.  Let's give The Hitcher version 2007 * 1/2 out of ****.  Again, not offensively bad, offensively mediocre.  And you'll forget it roughly .005 seconds after watching it.  Avoid.

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

2004

Directed by Zack Snyder
Starring Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer and Ty Burrell

You guys all know (and by "all" I do mean seven people) that I rail on zombie movies quite a bit.  There's no point going into the whole diatribe again, other than that I'll just reiterate one final time that it feels like there have been 17,000 of these things in the past decade or so in addition to everyone and their goddamn mother now watching The Walking Dead despite never having seen a horror movie in their lives.  Yeah.  Elitism.  And I swear that's the last I'll mention this ever, although I am reasonably certain that I said so for the last zombie movie I reviewed.  So...nothing means anything anymore, and nihilism rules here at the Lick Ness Monster Blog.  And that, my friends, might be the most random paragraph I'll type this year.  The blog has peaked, and it's time to retire.

Well, you guys aren't quite that lucky.  I realized that I completely forgot to mention that this particular little mini-series of reviews actually has a name - the New Year's RemakeUAry, as I'll be covering nothing but remakes throughout the first month of 2018.  Last week was Psycho, and this week is the 2004 Dawn of the Dead.  Folks, there were some big names behind this movie, with Zack Snyder in the director's chair for his feature film debut and James Gunn penning the script.  I'm always fascinated by the career trajectories some guys take, and somehow this film served as the ascension point to both guys becoming Kings of the Movie Industry.  Capitalized because Fuck You.  I'm not a big fan of either guy but I can't necessarily fault the Movie Gods for this judgment because this flick was quite successful.  A $100-million+ gross on a $25 million budget is always a nice take, especially for a horror movie.  And while I'm not especially fond of the flick, it does have its moments.  Let's get to some specifics.

As is commonly the case with horror movie and a big part of what makes them so awesome, this film has a dynamite slam-bang setup sequence.  We meet young nurse Ana (Sarah Polley, and what the hell ever happened to her?) at the end of a long shift who goes home to spend some quality time with her husband.  The following morning, one of their neighbors appears inside the house looking quite strange and...um...decayed.  I think you know where we're going from here.  Cue the husband biting it, followed by a cool opening credits montage that clues us in on the zombie apocalypse overtaking the world.  Within the next twenty minutes, we're introduced to most of the major characters that take us through the rest of the film - police sergeant Kenneth Hall (Ving Rhames), electronics guru Michael (Jake Weber), and criminal dude Andre (Mekhi Phifer) along with his pregnant wife.  Within short order and a few close calls later, the characters make their way to a nearby Milwaukee shopping mall where they barricade themselves inside against the zombie hordes, and the basic premise of the movie begins.

I'll give the George Romero original some credit here; in this reporter's opinion, it got a lot better use out of the mall itself.  For all of the bitching I do about zombie movies (and I do it a lot - to the point that anybody reading this right now is probably already checked out), that flick did a great job making the mall and its surroundings feel claustrophobic.  This one doesn't have anywhere near that effect.  Instead, it's all about action.  Already inside the mall are a group of guards who are proficient in the use of firearms, and they need it against these zombies since they freakin' RUN.  Now, I'm sure that Zack Snyder and James Gunn didn't invent running zombies, but I'll be damned if this wasn't the first I'd ever seen them onscreen.  It's kind of a double-edged sword; it was different and unexpected, but a lot of the tension was lost since the fast action resulted in a lot more of the "boo scare" horror that I've grown to hate so much in recent years.  Still, at least they look cool.

Since we're inside the mall now, it's time to get to some side plots.  The script by Gunn definitely has some unique twists on the original material here.  Eventually, another batch of fresh humans shows up at the mall where they are welcomed(ish) by the original group of characters, resulting in a bit where Kenneth watches one of them slowly turn in front of his eyes.  There's also the pretty emotional story of Andre's wife who has been scratched by one of the creatures, and that birth scene...man, it's something else.  Kind of sick, but something else.  And then there's the whole saga of our characters trying to communicate with a survivor taking up residence in a building across the lot from the mall that gives us some of our opportunities for the humans to venture out into danger, often to get attacked and bitten.  Gotta have more zombies and conflict, ya know.  Oh, and there's also a couple romantic subplots that terminally bored me the first time I saw the movie and still kinda suck all these years later, so the less said about them the better.

Time to continue beating on the dead horse.  The original movie had a really good finale because we spent a lot more time with a smaller group of characters.  Thus, when their mall abode got busted up, we were invested.  This time around, there were just SO MANY characters and smaller plots to keep track of...and that same effect wasn't there.  There's this whole scheme that they come up with involving outfitting a tractor-trailer with all sorts of weapons and driving out of there, and I dunno, I liked it better when it was called The Road Warrior.  And that's original Mad Max, not that new piece of crap.  Come at me, bros.  Second time in as many weeks I've snuck that cringe-worthy phrase in.

Alright.  With that, it's time to dispense some of that beloved Lick Ness Judgment on this bitch.  My favorite thing about Dawn of the Dead version 2004 is that the performances are awesome.  While the characters aren't especially deep, everybody in this film gave it their all, especially Rhames and Phifer.  Throughout the '90s and early 2000s, I dare say that no actor was better at playing the badass role than Ving Rhames.  Marcellus Wallace ain't no bitch, indeed.  The creature effects stuff from Heather Langenkamp (yes, that Heather Langenkamp - Nancy Thompson herself from A Nightmare on Elm Street) and her production company is top notch.  And the movie is also scary when it wants to be, particularly during the first trimester.

However, it's also plenty NOT scary when it wants to be, which unfortunately is most of the running time.  This starts with the whole issue of the running zombie.  In nerd circles, you could probably find no less than 147 debates going on at various online forums about whether running zombies are scarier or less scary than slow zombies.  Put me in the slow crowd, for all of the reasons that I spelled out a few paragraphs ago.  But even in the movie's quieter moments, with various characters slowly turning over into flesh-munchers inside the mall, it's a lot more about the effects and the slam scares than it had to be.  This film just doesn't stick with you as much as the 1978 classic did.  That is about the best summary I can give of this otherwise pretty presentable remake.

** 1/2 out of ****.  I give Snyder and Gunn credit; they tried their ass off to make a new movie and put their own spin on the source material.  The result is a movie that you can enjoy for what it is, but it's not any more than that.  And 'that' is a 2000s action movie.

Psycho (1998)

1998

Directed by Gus Van Sant
Starring Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen and William H. Macy

I've spoken in the past about the Roger Ebert Movie Companion book that led me to discover a lot of movies from the past as a kid.  I'll never forget reading his review of Halloween, an honest-to-goodness classic slasher flick that got a four-star rating and a line where Mr. Ebert said that the movie was "comparable to Psycho."  Fuck me if that didn't whet my appetite to check it out.  I actually saw the sequels first on a particularly awesome "USA Up All Night" marathon where Gilbert Gottfried was searching for a copy of the original film at his parents' house to show and just wound up settling for them.  A few months later, my awesome sister rented it for me at the often-mentioned Greatest Video Store Ever.  And it was awesome.  I've loved Psycho since sixth grade, I watched it something like 287 times throughout middle school, and then the news filtered out in 1998 that Gus Van Sant, fresh off the success of Good Will Hunting, was doing a shot-for-shot remake.  Wut?

I'm not going to lie to the people.  I loved this flick when I first saw it back in the day.  Since I watched the original version so many times, I already knew every shot and followed along with every line of dialogue.  I even thought that the stuff Van Sant added was cool, because it made me feel like a genius for noticing that they were added much like all those asshats who kept saying "oh yeah, that's new" during the Star Wars Special Editions.  Fortunately, I've gotten a little smarter since then.  Honestly, though, I don't think this movie is QUITE as bad as a lot of people say it is.  Is it unnecessary?  Yeah.  Is it a total waste of time?  Eh, probably.  But I'm not gonna lie, I still dust it off to watch every couple years or so.  I think what really killed this movie more than anything was the CASTING, because oh boy were there some disasters on that front.  Like, every single main character.  More of that as we delve into the abyss of one of Hollywood's biggest misfires of all time.

Forewarning: for this review, I'm just going to assume that a lot of you are familiar with the story of Psycho, so a good portion of this review is going to be on the differences (some slight, some massive) between the original and this film.  The first third of the story is focused directly on the character of Marion Crane, friendly, relatable office worker in a relationship with a guy who owes a buttload of money to his ex.  Of course, this means that I have to point out that these characters are played by the 1998 versions of Anne Heche and Viggo Mortensen.  See, kids, in 1998 Anne Heche was a big deal fairly quick.  I'm sure that was the reason she was cast, but while Janet Leigh was also a big deal fairly quick in 1960 she came across as extremely likable despite her character stealing a big wad of money.  Anne Heche...is not.  The '98 Razzies also singled her out for their "Worst Actress" nomination, and it was deserved.  Thus, the section of the movie that's meant to throw us for a loop by making us think the whole movie will be about Marion isn't really riveting.

Which brings us to Marion finding her way to the Bates Motel after a few close calls with the law.  The slow reveal of the hotel sign through the rain and the creepy house up on the hill is still cool to watch to this day, complete with the classic Bernard Herrmann score redone by Danny Elfman.  And then we meet Norman himself.  And...ugh. 

Now, folks, let the record show that I love Vince Vaughn.  I think he's one of the most talented dudes I've ever seen in all of my years watching movies, as he can play dramatic and violent roles with ease while also being one of the funniest motherfuckers of all time.  But as Norman Bates?  In the original movie, Anthony Perkins was awkward and endearing, but Vaughn is someone we know as being slightly dark and violent underneath the surface, and there goes the suspense.  He also says his lines fast; compare Perkins delivering the classic monologue about institutions and "the laughter and the tears and the cruel eyes studying you" to Vaughn's nervous skeeviness in the same scene.  Yikes.  Hard to imagine Heche didn't just run for the hills right there.  I remember reading Ebert's review of this film when it was released and laughing pretty hard at the following line: "The biggest difference between this movie and the original is that it contains a masturbation scene."  Yeah.  Spoiler alert. 

If you're one of the FEW people reading this who hasn't seen the original movie, I won't spoil what comes next, so I'll just leave it at this: a major character dies, and it's now up to a newly-introduced character and Sam Loomis to wrap up the plot.  Said new character is played by Julianne Moore, yet another terrible decision for reasons that aren't the fault of the actor in the least bit.  Moore is a really good actress, but she projects superwoman confidence where the character of Lila is really just there to be a placeholder.  You notice Moore, and not just because she's ridiculously hot.  And I just realized that I've barely mentioned Viggo Mortensen in this review other than pointing out that he plays Marion's lover.  Yeah.  You know, his actions and lines are the same, but Van Sant decided to give him the presentation of this cowboy-ish tough cool dude since it's pretty much the only role that Mortensen plays.  Suffice to say he's pretty grating.  All of it leads up to a finale that is actually comedic gold these days; the original's slam-bang double reveal at the end worked because it was short, sweet and to the point.  This one tries to be long, grand and well-choreographed, and as a result it falls totally flat.

So now the time has come to talk about what worked and what didn't work in this movie.  Still to this day, I admire the hell out of the direction and attention to detail that Gus Van Sant had.  It's clear with every frame - since almost every frame is a carbon copy - that he has a huge boner for Alfred Hitchcock, and nobody can say that he didn't want to bring this amazing story to a new generation.  Reportedly, he spent the entire production with a stopwatch and timer.  That's how dedicated he was to keeping everything exactly the same.  From a film-making standpoint, doing something like this had to be insanely difficult and I still appreciate it to this day.  If you're a huge fan of the O.G. version like me, you can't say that the guy did anything other than pay total reverence to it.  I'm well aware that this is most people's main gripe with the movie, but nobody ever said I wasn't an annoying contrarian.  At this point, it's almost a badge of honor.

Since I didn't really have to give a detailed plot description in this review, I've already touched on most of the stuff that doesn't work.  Specifically, a large portion of it is the casting - with the exception of the not-mentioned-until-now William H. Macy.  He shows up to play Detective Arbogast, and he's awesome.  But there's also just these little weird touches that occasionally pop up.  Interestingly enough, it was the stuff that Van Sant ADDED that sunk it.  The aforementioned "Norman beating the meat" and finale sequences are the biggest examples, but there's also the weird move of adding surreal dream imagery to the two murder scenes.  Three words to describe that move: W...T...F.  As a thriller, 1998 Psycho doesn't work because it's nowhere near the exercise in less is more.  Less is more, people.  It's one of my life credos, and it fits in almost every situation.

Rating time.  ** out of ****.  I don't think this flick is anywhere near the waste of time that almost everyone else does and still believe that a shot-for-shot remake of Psycho COULD be awesome.  You can't ask for a better template.  Come at me, bros.