Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls

What a waste of perfectly good film stock. This movie tried far too hard to be artsy instead of concentrating on finding a good script, director and actors. The performances were abysmal and wooden. This was a remake in name only incredibly misleading. I found my concentration drifting constantly because this mess wasn't worth my attention span. I admit I'm a huge fan of bad movies but this was worse than bad-it was completely uninteresting.

The eleven year-old girl Alex Grant witnesses her mother being raped and killed at home by the carnival clown Louis Seagram (Larry Miller). Many years later, Alex (Bobbie Phillips) works with her younger sister Sandra Grant (Shawnee Smith) in the Mermaid Inn that was owned by their mother. Out of the blue, Alex is attacked by Louis that was hidden in the backseat of her car on the day of the anniversary of the death of her mother. She struggles with Louis and drives her car into the sea to protect her sister. Then she swims back to the shore on the area of a carnival. From this moment on, Alex has nightmares and daydreams with Louis. What is happening with Alex?

"Carnival of Souls" (1962) is a low-budget cult movie with a story that seems to be an episode of "Twilight Zone". "Carnival of Souls" (1998) is not a remake and only borrows the title and a small part of the original storyline. The plot is boring and totally predictable, sort of a combination of "Jacob's Ladder" with "Carnival of Souls". The result is an average and forgettable horror film. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Parque Macabro" ("Macabre Park")

This is perhaps the worst movie I have seen in my entire life, and I have seen some really bad films. This movie was extremely boring, had zero plot, and no decent acting to speak of. The limited special effects are nothing noteworthy, either. I had a hard time staying awake, and when it was over, I wished I had fallen asleep instead of subjecting myself to such torture. I can't believe that Wes Craven would put his name on such a dismal failure. If you were thinking of watching this film, don't waste your time or money. Rent something better, such as the original Carnival of Souls (1962).

This movie jumped around so much, my stomach felt like a lotto tumbler. I can't believe they made this traipse! I couldn't make any sense of what was going on. It would just go from one scene, then reveal that to be a delusion, only to go to another scene, which was a delusion, then return to the first. Multiply that by about ten times and that's how confusing the movie got. And, to boot, nothing happened! What a rip!

Carnival of Souls (1996)

* (out of 4)

Worthless remake of the 1962 film has a young girl seeing a man brutally murder her mother. This man just happened to play a clown at the local circus and years later the girl, now an adult (Bobbie Phillips), begins to be haunted by visions of him. I'm not one who is against remakes as I usually like seeing how a different artist puts their spin on a familiar story. This remake only borrows a few elements from the original film with writer-director Adam Grossman making up the rest on his own. What he added is pretty silly stuff and it's really a shame because I think a straight remake could have been much better. The entire subplot dealing with the pedophile clown just adds up to nothing in the end and if you are familiar with the original then the biggest twists are already going to be known. While watching the film I couldn't help but think that perhaps the director's original story might have been a good one but at the same time you can just tell that it wasn't getting on film. The entire movie is meant to make one wonder about what's really going on but you never really have this happen because it's just so poorly made and executed that you really don't care. Another major problem is that the film lacks any real atmosphere and there's certainly no scares to be had. Even what murders are in the film are all forgettable and in the end you really start to wonder what the point of the film was. Phillips offers up a fine performance but sadly she isn't given much to work with. Larry Miller plays the clown and to say his role is weak would be an understatement. The beautiful Shawnee Smith appears briefly but she too is wasted. Wes Craven served as Executive Producer but it seems he was just cashing a paycheck and not really paying attention to anything that was going on the screen.