Rabid

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.

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.

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.

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.

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