I wonder if someone is planning on remaking Candyman any time soon. If we left it to the people who
remade this movie, then it would probably be about a guy who buys candy and kills hookers because he
is allergic to bees or something like that. I'm being facetious, of course, but I wanted to give you an
example of how bizarrely different this remake of the classic cult flick by the gore maestro Hershcell
Gordon Lewis really is. If you've seen the original 1970 film about the cheesy magician killing innocent
women, then great, forget this version exists. However, if you are a glutton for punishment, then read on.
Directed by Jeremy Kasten and written by Zach Chassler, this horror movie remake suffers from
over-plotting. Our story, which is about as convoluted as a pretzel deals with a new magic act that has
just started up in this Christmas-light-strewn ghetto in Los Angeles where Edmund Bigelowe, editor and
publisher of an underground newsletter, is well connected. He goes to see the opening night act with his
girlfriend Maggie (played by an anemic Bijou Philips from Hostel 2) and there they meet Montag the
Magnificent (played by the king of bizarro camp Crispin "Back to the Future" Glover). Montag's act
revolves around the murder of a naked woman, which is then revealed to be just an illusion as the
people flee from their seats. The acts include him slicing a girl open and yanking her intestines out,
throwing bear traps at another girl and watching her body parts get cut off, and barbequing another girl
in a giant metal cow, and then cutting her cooked head off.
So far so good right? But days after the show, the girls that "died" in the show start showing up
dead...exactly like they died in Montag's show. Edmund, who is afterall a reporter, feels there is a story
here and begins to investigate Montag and his strange assistant, and begins to uncover a larger truth
that he is more a part of than he thinks. I'll stop right there and not spoil the twists and turns toward the
end of the film (mostly because I don't completely understand them), and I'd defy anyone (yes, even the
director) to prove to me that the story makes any sense. So many twists and turns are taken and clues
come and go that I found myself reeling about halfway through. There comes a point in these kind of
movies where I just stop caring because I know they're trying to eat shit and come up with a surprise
ending of some kind. No matter of exposition or internal monologue will convince me once I have
reached this point, because I have already stopped giving the movie the benefit of the doubt.
Picture a David Lynch film made by the people who shot and directed Battlefield Earth and you'll
have a pretty good idea what this movie is like. They had a great idea, and they decided to shit on it by
trying to make a mind-fuck movie, which only ends up pissing the audience off. It was all so simple, and
then they decided to throw in their first twist and then it seems as if they got carried away and went
plot-twist crazy like M. Night Shyamalan on crack. Yes, the film is pretty gory and yes there is a ton of
naked chicks, but that can only get you so far when the film is trying to rewrite itself every five minutes. I
do have to say that the casting was great. Brad Dourif (Chucky's voice from Child's Play), Jeffery
"Reanimator" Combs in a wasted roll, and Crispin Glover all bring a certain kind of B-movie class to
the proceedings, but that doesn't help one bit. This is as annoying as misfires get.
| - Jose Prendes |
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