‘Night of the Demons’ (2010)

I really don’t like remakes of pretty much anything post-1980. In most cases, the gore in those films is superior to anything we see in 21st century CGI cinema, so I just don’t see the point. With that said, I obviously cringed at the thought of a “Night of the Demons” remake. Everything about the original film is a perfectly executed Halloween horror movie. There is no way to improve it. If you shoot it exactly the same, shot by shot, with more attractive actors and actresses with the latest in High Definition technology, you would ruin it with too much gloss.

Then I found out that it would be starring Edward Furlong and Monica Keena – two actors I really enjoy. Suddenly, I wanted to love this movie. A few months later I saw an extremely fun trailer for the film. I have to admit, it looked cheesy, but it also looked really fun. Unlike most of these do-overs, I wanted to see this film for more than just an opportunity to complain about how much remakes suck.

I am torn on how I feel about the film after viewing it. Let’s start with the bad: I have nothing against Shannon Elizabeth, but her performance shows that Angela is out of her range. The character is a key player in the story and the role is botched. But it is very difficult to lay blame on any cast without pointing a finger at the director. Especially when there are other actors doing poor work. Not to say that the acting is absolutely terrible. There are positives that I will get to shortly.

The writing is less than stellar as well. A few of the non-demon related scenes are absolutely ridiculous and caricature. I cringed during a scene in which a drug dealer is being fellated while he talks business with Furlong’s character. It was just so contrived and… sucked (no pun intended). But they actually replayed a clip from it after the end credits, as if they were particularly happy with that scene. Somebody cashed the hell out of that shock ticket back in the 90′s. It’s not impressive anymore.

Finally, almost everything about the original is vastly superior to this film. It takes longer to get some demon action, when the demons do finally show up, they are less menacing, and there is very little suspense leading up to the kills. The filmmakers really seemed to struggle to work in revamped versions of the most famous scenes from the first film and they all felt very forced, as well as inferior.

Now for the good: Edward Furlong, though a bit bloated looking, killed in this movie. He did a great job salvaging a sub-par character. He and Monica Keena delivered the best lines of the film, and really saved it in that regard.

And though I complained about the writing earlier, there were some good points as well. Some of the concepts in the story are amazing. One example is a demon with super nipples that it uses as weapons. Bravo. There were also some brilliantly conceived kills, but I don’t want to ruin the few awesome surprises in this film.

The directing is stylistically solid for the most-part. I hated the dance scene, but director, Adam Gierasch picked a great song to use for it in Type O Negative’s “Black No. 1″. Another brilliant move was to cast original star and scream queen, Linnea Quigley in a cameo. Other than that, I thought the look and feel of the movie was great.

After all is said and done, I would say, “Watch it, but approach with caution.” This film would have been infinitely better off if it had been marketed as a stand-alone title as it already feels more like a weak rip-off than a remake of the original. I think it would have also been more enjoyable, as opposed to watching the filmmakers butcher a great, relatively little-known film’s legacy.

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