PLATINUM DUNES: THREATS & UPDATES

It's interesting how people respond negatively to these remakes. I'm not knocking the original movies or the remakes, I'm honestly curious. The originals were popcorn movies, and Platinum Dunes has merely made popcorn-ier versions of them for new audiences. Are the remakes duller than the originals? If so, I can understand that. I've seen many of the older films (and enjoyed them), but it doesn't seem like "style over substance" remakes are really that much of an artistic betrayal here. It just seems like writing another pop song: the underlying structure is the same, but the production is updated for the times. Admittedly, I'm not a committed horror fan, so I'm aware I could be missing the point by a mile on this.

Outside of Jason or the first Chainsaw they have been pretty awful. They have added nothing to horror cinema its merely high dressed product. They recycle and they do so poorly. After seeing True Grit i'd be curious to see what the Coen's can remake next when I see a studio that hands a remake to filmmakers with no vision and generally actors who have little to do with the new fast food script what can I expect?

If Platinum Dunes is involved apparently very little.

It's not the remaking in itself that bothers me. It's that it is pointless and oftentimes inferior to the original. For example, F13 and TCM weren't actually half bad. I enjoyed both quite a bit. Everything else they put out though was marginally less pleasant than getting hemorrhoids after eating a plate of jalapenos.

They also seem to put so little effort in to making their movies any good. Most every quote from them is usually about how profitable it could be or how high profile the brand name of their acquisitions are. I realize movie producers aren't altruistic purveyors of art, but these guys seem to not even give a glance toward quality. Having said that I don't hate their entire output. I like the Chainsaw remake and thought The Unborn was okay. The best thing about the Friday remake was Derek Mears. If they make another they should keep him. Leave Freddy alone though.

I found their remake of The Amityville Horror to be better than the original in some parts. One big change they did that I liked a lot was the Priest role being smaller. Rod Steiger seemed to be acting in another movie in the original one.

PD's Friday the 13th remake is lots of fun and one of the better Jason movies. 

Everything else we've gotten from them has been pretty terrible (I didn't like the Chainsaw remake or the prequel).  The Hitcher was the bottom of the barrel so far, but Elm Street was close.

As a committed, life-long horror fan my problems with Platinum Dunes are many. I have creative issues with their films (I think TCM is the only one worth half a damn), but that is subjective and not relevant to anything on its own (I also have creative issues with Happy Madison's films, but I wouldn't say "they're what is wrong with comedy these days"). Also, while I think it is lame that the company is all about remakes, that alone also isn't much of an issue either - after all, Dark Castle was originally founded with the sole purpose of remaking William Castle films and I never bitched about that (in fact, I thought it was a neat idea). There have been and always will be horror movies out there making money that I don't like. I hate the SAW series, but whatever, I just don't see the films. My big problem with Dunes boils down to this... I think they are making things harder for independent horror films, which have always been the life blood of change and innovation in the genre.

Dunes' films are what I'd call "over produced" - basically getting a top tier camera crew and eventually an expensive marketing push to candy-coat a moist turd. It was a clever approach for Dunes and it proved extremely influential, as far as how all the other studios/companies have been functioning since Dunes burst on the scene. But now horror films need to have a certain "look" for theatrical distributors to be interested, and I think that is placing the emphasis on the wrong thing. It used to be that you needed a lot of gore to get distributors interested, and while I don't think that is necessarily any less shallow of the distributors, it at least fostered a contextually interesting creativity in the filmmakers. And more importantly, indie filmmakers are fully capable of finding a talented young FX artist and doing some impressive things with gore and make-up (working around your budget is where a lot of brilliant things can happen), but there is a glass ceiling for how slick you can make your film look without a professionally sized and equipped camera/production design department. I think this is creating kind of a class system in the genre.

Of course, none of this is actually Dunes fault. They can't/shouldn't be held responsible for how the industry responded to their success. And they are certainly not the only ones to blame.

That said, I think it is very damning and creatively bankrupt that they have not tried to use their success/$ to produce more original horror films (even if they aren't good). To me that demonstrates that they don't actually care about the genre. Cause no one who REALLY is interested in horror movies would be creatively satisfied just remaking things. They'd want to become the new Hammer, using the success of their remakes to pave a whole new avenue in the genre. Dark Castle moved away from their gimmick fairly quickly and wound up giving us SPLICE. Whereas Dunes continues to show its true colors.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joshua Miller 

Cause no one who REALLY is interested in horror movies would be creatively satisfied just remaking things.

Yep, that's what it all comes down to. Nice post. Ideally they should be using some of that sweet remake moolah to subsidize something fresher, and different.
 

In the New Yorker piece linked in the front page, DelToro said something that something that really fits this discussion. He said: “in the terror genre, an artist, unbound by ‘reality,’ can create his purest reflection of the world—the cinematic equivalent of poetry.” This is what all these remakes, no matter how good any of them end up, have no hope of achieving. In this genre there are literally no constraints to the maker's vision. Death, time, the very laws of the universe are malleable. It just seems so wasteful and superficial spending time and money, remaking someone else's nighmares. 

Wow Josh, amazing post.

Platinum Dunes is synonymous with soul-crushing mediocrity. They exemplify the word on very level. They foster it and generate it as if it was part of their mission statement.

The problem of PD remakes is the fact that they're never made with the basic intent to be good. No one comes to see these flicks because they think that the trailer looks interesting or that the story is neat. Most of them come because it's THAT BIG HORROR TITLE they know but haven't seen yet. Because the predecessor is fucking old. Others know all of these flicks and are curious how much they fucked up such a remake this time.

And it always only works once. It doesn't matter to anyone that the ANOES remake did 120m - an amazing number for a horror flick. Most of the audience simply didn't like it and wouldn't return. Which is okay for PD because they just pick another horror classic and start over again. It's a shame to such franchises, because this way they stop being franchises. Die hard horror fans would always return to see another one, but they - we - are actually not enough to raise the 90m PD is interested in. They're big players. Not interested in a 30, 20 or 10m win. Which is actually usual for most horror flicks. Which is enough for most horror flicks. I also think it's stupid. Look at Saw or Final Destination. It's possible to achieve sequels that fill that 90m quota. That only works though if you make something people enjoy and want to revisit. Something they remember. People will remember ... okay, they probably won't remember Final Destination, but they will remember Saw. Saw writes horror history. Even if you don't like Saw you gotta agree that every decade should give birth to new franchises. Eventually, there will be one you really enjoy. And what do those guys at PD think about that? Not "let's create something original too" or "let's build a new franchise... even if it's based on an established one".... but "when will we able to buy the Saw license to do our Saw remake?".

And like Josh said, that becomes a big problem for original horror productions because distributors look at PD and begin to agree that only a 90m win is worth the work. Now that is a great future for a niche when it get's reduced to dtv, with big budget one-shot re-re-remakes taking the spot light. Again and again.

I'm kind of happy that more people are coming around to what's going on in the genre. I recall more than one poster stating that "who cares if they're remakes, there's more horror out there, and that's a good thing". That always struck me as a seriously bizarre bit of logic, but it was pervasive and ruinous.