Day two is Bad Remake. And I’m not planning to watch a bad remake on purpose. So I noticed this is free on YouTube and heard the originals aren’t great (with a reminder on the RPGnet thread) and remembered the trailer looked like goofy fun so...
2.
Witchboard (2024)
Is it a good remake? Couldn’t tell you. Is it good on its own merits? No. Is it fun? At times very much so.
Director and co-writer Chuck Russell previously made the 1988 remake of The Blob, which is really good but eclipsed by the classic original, and which worked because it was focused. This is... not.
A pendulum board (not a Ouija board - the film spends some time establishing that this is Serious Business and Ouija boards aren’t, after the original was about a Ouija board but they now have their own official movies) made by a 17th century witch is stolen from a New Orleans museum on the orders of an occultist wannabe supervillain, gets lost and finds its way to our heroine after she follows a cat in the woods. After her boyfriend’s fortunately well-informed ex explains it, she tries it at the pre-opening party for the boyfriend’s restaurant and it’s interrupted by a burning crow coming down the chimney.
This is not enough to put her off testing it, and the next thing it does kills one of their friends. The cat returns and steals his severed hand. This cat is horrible, he’s great, no notes.
Various other bad things happen, starting as low-rent Final Destination ish coincidences and segueing into nightmares and the like. And then our heroine starts being sorta evil herself, which at least leads to the cat killing her former drug dealer. (Seriously, love this cat.)
So the ex suggests consulting an occult expert and oops it’s the supervillain. This goes badly, in a way that’s normally the final twist of a movie but here hits an hour in, which I really liked.
It avoids my pet hate of having witch hunts be justified by actual evil superpowered witches by making the witch take a turn to superpowered evil after being hunted and persecuted, then later has the ex assure the boyfriend that Wicca is cool and the supervillain’s friends are good witches, which the audiience already know they’re not. The fact that his minions look like a Vampire LARP could qualify as a hint.
So the board does a whole slew of supernatural bad stuff without picking a lane, Madison Iseman as the heroine (who should know better than to mess with magic boardgames after the Jumanji sequels) and Antonia Desplat as the villainess both get to show acting range and Jamie Campbell Bower as the villain gets to show off his lack of same.
The effects people are very busy, this would make a good film to put on the background of a Halloween party except that guests would sometimes pause to go “what the fuck” at some of the images. At one point a hallucination looks like the Pitch Meeting video essay thumbnails, which makes me wonder if this was an attempt to get one made. And there’s a related moment which is a reminder that Russell also directed The Mask.
It’s an absolute mess full of half-baked ideas that could have worked. Recommended if you feel like being perplexed and occasionally amused, sometimes deliberately.
The medium: YouTube
Gameability: This already feels like a horror game that went totally off the rails. I could grab several of its barely-used setups for something World Of Darkness and some get accidentally Buffy-ish.
No comments:
Post a Comment