The Devil Is In The Details [movies]

[rec]

watch, remake, repeat

---

It seems that behind any great ideas these days there are the brilliant artistic minds that spawn them and then there are the teams of talentless hangers-on that inevitably run said idea into the ground.

I experience it every day and I'm sure most of you do as well -- a great original movie comes out, does better than expected, and before you know it, there are 15 pitiful sequels in production, each as worthless as the next and none of them featuring any of the original team that created the phenomenon in the first place.

Or perhaps you've experienced the joys of discovering a great new budding television show that was unlike anything you'd ever seen before, only to watch it disintegrate into a cesspool of meh-ness at the hands of some network big-wig who thinks he knows the magic formula to making everything better (ie, more like everything else that already exists).

But lately there's been a new trend to add to the already raging fires of mediocrity we call an entertainment industry in this country -- taking a wonderful little foreign film and remaking it exactly the same, shot for shot, but completely dumbing down the story. It's become an epidemic in recent years with Japanese horror flicks like "The Ring," "The Grudge" and "The Eye," even more recently with "Bangkok Dangerous" and the remake of the Spanish film "[Rec]" as "Quarantine."

"[Rec]" (pronounced as "record" between me and my cohorts) is one of those foreign genre films that is so engrossing that you're willing to forgive it for its minor shortcomings based on the fact that it is just so tightly made. It's a fresh take on the zombie horror formula, presenting it in a way that really hasn't been done before. But the real beauty of the film is in the effortlessness with which it is pulled off. The director doesn't waste time beating us over the head with an origin story - it's there, if you should choose to pick it apart, but it's not the focus of the story, just a little detail that helps expand the world if you're the kind of geek that gets off on stuff like that (and I most certainly am!).

The scares are ... well, they're scary. So scary, in fact, that my lady attempted to watch it by herself one night while I was working late and I had to spend 10 minutes on the phone trying to convince her that there weren't any rabid zombie old ladies skulking around the hallways of our apartment building.

All in all, it's a pretty great little flick.

The film is not without its flaws, however. The main character gets a serious case of the dumb-bitches toward the end; making a bunch of noise, crying, knocking over all the noisy stuff and freaking out when any human worth a damn would suck it up. STFU and concentrate really hard on not getting ripped to shreds.

And before you ask, yes, her whiny scared voice is really annoying, but at least she's not speaking English, right? For some reason incessant whining is slightly more palatable with that sexy Spanish lisp thrown in there.

The thing that really gets me though is that somebody out there saw this movie and obviously liked it just as much as I did, but instead of sitting back and saying, "Wow, what an awesome movie, I'm gonna go recommend it to some friends," they instead thought, "Wow, what an awesome movie -- I'm totally gonna remake this shit in English and it'll be frickin' sweeeeeeeeeet, bro!"

I just don't get it. To me, there's certain criteria that needs to be met before you waste your time and money redoing something that's already been made.

First off, the movie has to be old! I don't see the point of remaking a movie that's only been out for a year or two -- that's just lazy! Get your own damn ideas!

Second, there needs to be something wrong with the original that needs correcting, updating or refreshing. And no, I don't count "not being in English" as a flaw. It just isn't a good enough reason. I value awful English dubs higher than I value pointless remakes of perfectly good movies. If it ain't broke...

Obviously, there wasn't much that was broken about "[Rec]" because when I finally forced myself to watch "Quarantine," I was surprised to see that it was literally a shot-by-shot redo of the original. The plot was the same, the action was the same, the compositions were the same, the dialog was the same...wait, wait, I take that back...they did change a few lines here and there.

I guess there were some inherent problems with a few of the story elements that the producers just couldn't sit with. What were those issues, you ask? Well, have a seat because they're very important -- you see, in the original there is a Chinese family that lives in the building and many of the residents begin to place blame on them for the outbreak of a strange disease because they smell funny, they eat weird food and are just...well, really Chinese, I guess.

Obviously, that's a little racially insensitive, it might offend people, so I can see wanting to remove it, but oh no, that wasn't their fix. They found a more subtle, more ingenious workaround. They just changed them from a Chinese family to an African family! Brilliant! Problem solved!

Forget the fact that it's straight up racist to insinuate that a certain culture of person is below anybody else because of their traditions -- that's not even the point. People are racist in the world, they do have biases, so I don't necessarily have a problem with that being reflected in film, but think about this for a second -- that tiny little incidental detail is literally the only thing they changed about this movie.

What does that say? The only thing you think is worth changing is the object of racial disdain for a few characters? The only creative effort you put forth in the entire span of the production from beginning to end is a tiny dig on black people? That is what you consider important? Really?

Wow.