Rabid

What to say about Rabid?

Frankly, I found it more comical than anything else.Its premise is pretty weak, not helped by an at times rather corny plot with often silly horror scenes.

On the upside, the acting is fine and does include appearances of well known Canadian actors.

Moderately watchable but by no means frightening or disturbing.

5/10 from me.

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.

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'm a big David Cronenberg fan but I've always felt that Rabid was one of his weakest efforts. That the Soska twins chose this one to remake cannot be faulted. Since Cronenberg himself did a remake, let's not be overly judgmental. The twins do an okay job but don't really add anything to the original concept. I liked this Rabid slightly more than the original but neither of them are going to set the world on fire. All these low reviewers are hateful asshats. Watch and judge for yourself.

So what did I actually watch? I really don't know. I was hoping this movie would be at least a decent remake, or a good B movie. However, at the end I was just wondering WTF it was supposed to be. It's quite different from the original, but not as good, or thoughtful or provocative (I mean, the original lead was an adult movie actress, the new one is a beautiful, established soap opera actress pretending to be ugly).

It's shot well, features good SFX and gore, but many scenes look like their from a telenovela or CW YA TV show. The acting was atrocious at times, the story too convoluted. The last 20 minutes are totally bonkers, unexpected and, in my opinion, unnecessary. But I gotta give the Soskas respect for doing their own thing. Unsuccessfully, but still, they tried. I enjoyed their first feature 'Dead Hooker in a Trunk' a lot more.