Rating: *
Review Date: 3/30/18
Produced By: Debra Hill, John Carpenter
Music: Graeme Revell
Cast: Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, Selma Blair
A pointless and unnecessary remake that makes John Carpenter's low budget original look like a cinematic masterpiece. The story and characters are pretty much the same, but the location has moved from California to an island on the Oregon coast. The founding fathers of Antonio Island committed horrific acts of atrocity to ensure the prosperity of their community, and now the ghosts of the past have come to claim revenge. Except that none of it makes sense and the ghosts seem to act randomly without any purpose or persistence. There's no real resolution and the ghosts just decide to disappear, leaving the survivors lost and confused.
Admittedly, the only reason I watched this was because of Selma Blair, but seeing Maggie Grace in her underwear was a nice bonus. The story is disjointed, the acting is terrible, and the dialog is appallingly bad. The characters are awful and Tom Welling is ill-equipped to carry the film as the hero. Selma Blair steps into Adrienne Barbeau's role as the sassy radio DJ Stevie Wayne, but has precious little to do other than look gorgeous. The film tidies up a few details from the original story and has some nice compositions here and there, but overall the visual effects are poor and the cinematography is dull and uninteresting. It makes you realize Carpenter's genius and skill for being able to get the most out of what he had to work with in the original film. It's not a particularly scary movie, and it mostly tries to frighten you with obnoxiously exaggerated spooky sounds. There's no tension and no character development, and the whole production comes across as an incompetent and incoherent mess. Even though the original isn't very good, you'd be better off watching that instead.