I remember discussing the trailer for this a few months ago, I hope I didn’t use the monster here that day. The film is quite possibly as dire as the trailer made it look, since they clearly didn’t screen it for reviewers. Hence the lack of a Rotten Tomatoes score on it’s opening day, which is today. One thing I do know is that while it’s possible to make a good scary two hour horror movie, its a harder task than making a 90 minute one.
There was a lot of discussion yesterday on my mixed feelings about horror action. I should have been more precise in my remarks. I meant the modern sort of action, which is so huge and blockbustery. There are lots of good horror action films, like Dog Soldiers. That was still a fairly intimate story, however, which used the classic Cabin in the Woods template. An entire army fighting an army of werewolves and it’s not really a horror movie anymore.
Horror just doesn’t scale well. I think that’s one reason zombies have become so popular. On the one hand, they are very cheap monsters, allowing for low budget horror. Conversely, the whole ‘zombie apocalypse’ thing allows for huge movies, which mainstream Hollywood is much more comfortable producing these days.
Rings seems to go for that apocalypse thing (which Pulse and its remake already covered), which i think really misses the essential personality of the original story. Meh, whatever.