Rabid

I'm not a huge fan of the Soska sisters. Their most acclaimed movie, American Mary, doesn't do anything for me other than show some potential, and I usually don't like remakes, so as you can see, I'm not the target viewer for this film. I must say that it started horribly, terrible directon, terrible make up, the rhythm was completely off, and the performances were at soap opera level (which I blame on the directors). But after a while the movie started getting some momentum and things started getting better, with some genuinely good shocks and some nice make up effects (I especially like the face after the accident), but that was not enough to salvage the movie and it ended on a sour note with a pretty bad ending. Overall, the low budget and bad direction don't allow this to be more than a mediocre experience of a totally unnecessary remake.

I'm not the biggest fan of remakes or reimaginings but i wanted to watch a movie in the evening and i thought let's give Rabid a chance, since it's based on the work of Cronenberg. I thought it was really well made for the first 45 minutes, i thought it was going to be an arthouse movie since they focused so much on the main character (and her struggle) who suffers from facial deformity which was caused by an accident. And then came the moment where they came up with a great scene which definitely pays tribute to Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, which is one of my favorite scenes from Rabid. After that the movie slowly turns into mediocrity, i love horror but i didn't expected that they would ruin the second half of the movie by turning it into a zombie movie. A real turn off if you ask me, any work of Cronenberg doesn't deserve to be treated like this. There were a few interesting points towards the end but it doesn't save the movie as a whole, what a shame.

Not close to the original atmosphere and tempo, very disappointed of the works of directors since American maRY I SUGGEST to check the 70s version first.

Typical. Fairly well done but sort of all over the place. Super funny unintended scene towards the end. Worth a watch. More sci-fi than terror with a bit of a soap opera feel.

I thought it was important to watch the original. I couldn't do that beforehand, but only after I watched the Soska sisters remake. But it is different in many aspects so it wasn't too bad doing it this way (I usually like to watch an original first and then the remake if I can). The effects here obviously up the ante, but the original had some great ones too.

One of the main differences here is that we get to learn our main actress first, before the inciting incident. This may feel like time wasted or as a nice little touch. Let's go for the latter. The Soskas do have an affinity for Cronenberg and you can tell. They also assembled a nice cast overall, even though someone like CM Punk (can't recall his real name) is quite a cardboard cutout and very cliche for example. But you can tell he has fun with his litle role as is anyone else involved.

The Soskas did change enough for it to make sense to watch both movies. So if you are into horror movies, and don't mind a bit of social commentary thrown in for good measure, you could do worse