Shock gets an early look at the “remake” and Lordi’s first film!
ShockTillYouDrop.com has been slavishly bringing you the latest news from the American Film Market where we got early looks at films like Rec (review forthcoming), Diary of the Dead (a worthy entry in Romero’s zombie oeuvre) and Mother of Tears. And while many genre offerings there unraveled on the big screen, others played out in abbreviated sales reels to entice potential buyers. We schmoozed our way from room to room at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica and hustled for horror, putting on a tap dance like a dancing monkey before production company reps hoping we’d be rewarded with a peek at the secret arsenal of atrocities they had tucked away for the future.
Shock first got on board for eight minutes from Nu Image’s Train, a loose remake (and we mean loose as a goose) of Roger Spottiswoode’s Terror Train starring Jamie Lee Curtis. What we witnessed was a spoiler-filled highlights riff on the film from beginning to end. No fear. Nothing will be ruined here, but we’ll say this: If the original 1980 film was a reflection of the slasher film era, this update by Gideon Raff is undoubtedly a hellspawn of our current state of torture-fed horror. Thora Birch is the final girl this time, one in a pack of student athletes traveling abroad who are nailed (split open, carved, etc.) on the rails by some unfriendly passengers of the foreign variety. Torture doesn’t appear to be the motive per se, what we gleaned appeared to fall more in line with Turistas and it’s focus on organ harvesting, still, Hostel-influences ran rampant throughout scenes of large apron-wearing goons making mince meat out of the young ‘uns. Lots of money shots (gore, baby, gore!), an unsettling scene of someone having their exposed vertebrae chiseled and not a lick of David Copperfield in sight. We now see why Raff was so quick to dismiss this film as a straight remake.
If Dark Floors (pictured) was a starring vehicle for the Finnish rock group Lordi, we wouldn’t have known it from the five minutes we were privy to. Quite simply, the movie looks awesome and a conscious attempt to not make a shitty horror film with a group of musicians. The set-up we watched was simple: A father visits his ailing autistic daughter in the hospital and wheels her into a full elevator of folks in an attempt to remove her from the facility. When the elevator doors open, however, the hospital is a quiet tomb. But time proves this remaining group is not alone and they’re being stalked by a band of monstrous beings – enter Lordi, but again, we barely got to see them in the preview. The atmosphere is thick (reminiscent of the “Silent Hill” games) and the tone is being played straight and sharp as a razor. Don’t write this one off yet, fiends!
Source: Ryan Rotten
