Carnival of Souls

Alex Grant (Bobbie Phillips) is haunted by carnival clown Louis Seagram (Larry Miller) who murdered her mother in front of her as a child. Seagram gets out and ambushes her in her car. It turns out to be a dream. She runs her mother's dockside bar with her sister Sandra (Shawnee Smith). Sandra is always pushing Alex to sell the place. She falls for a mysterious stranger (Paul Johansson).

This horror has nothing scary at all. It's a series of dream after dream after dream. Larry Miller could have been a creepy scary clown if the movie actually tried to be good. This movie doesn't try. The bar set looks cheap. It's suppose to be on a dock and yet it has a brick-lined basement. The whole thing looks bad. I also hate that it's sold as "Wes Craven Presents". I don't know how much he got paid but it's not enough no matter what. I've seen worst but this is pretty bad.

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).

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.

The pits! God knows why Wes Craven insists on slapping his name on the front of drivel like this, it's only going to ruin his reputation.

I've not seen the first film that this was based on so I can't compare them.(please someone do the honors & tear this film to pieces)

Far too many prolonged dream sequences got me reaching for the fast forward button, characters you don't really care about, gorehounds will hate it & a naff ending just about sums this film up. one out of ten.

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.