Blood > Shadows

Ugh! The producers behind the Saw movies are remaking old RKO horror movies including the amazing I Walked With a Zombie. The thought of Jacques Tourneur's scary movie being turned into blood-flowing monster movie is sort of frightening - I still can't bring myself to watch the 1980s remake of one of my all-time truly super-duper favourite movies Cat People, also directed by Tourneur. His movies are all shadows, noises in the distance and suggested horror. What would the Saw people make of that? "No, no, no! More bloody teeth and bloody gushing wounds!"

I also fear that the makers will take the title literally and fill the movie with Dawn of the Dead-remake style action packed zombies. Cause, ya know, there aren't actually any zombies in I Walked With a Zombie. Not the traditional kind anyway - they're zombies via voodoo if I remember correctly.

Below is the original trailer for I Walked With a Zombie. Just 'cause.

7 Possible Reasons for Hostel Part II's Bad Box Office

So, my fear was that Hostel Part II would flourish at the box office this past US weekend and would better the opening week gross of the original ($19mil if I remember correctly). Instead, it didn't even make half of that - coming in with an estimated box office gross of $8.8 million. Naturally I am ecstatic, but then I started thinking of why. And I came up with this completely un-scientific list of seven possible reasons.

1. It's Summer and nobody wants to sit through a woman bathing in a steady stream of blood when they could be outside soaking up rays of sun, eating an apple or dancing an Irish jig at the beach.

2. The inhouse leak of a decent-quality DVD lead to a rush on purchases of the illegal DVD and so many people had already seen it.

3. Too many horror films released in the last few years have sapped the audience of enthusiasm.

4. Critics reviews as well as the growing storm over the film's controversial content turned potential audience members off.

5. The marketing was not effective and the film wasn't high profile enough to compete.

6. Kids bought tickets to other movies and then snuck into to see Hostel 2.

7. There was too much competition for males at the box office

You can watch Liongate (the film's distributer) churn out excuses 2, 6 and 7 to anybody willing with a straight face. But I suspect it's more a partnership between reasons 1 and 3. Here are rebukes and rebuttles for each of the reasons.

1. Okay, no, this makes sense. Aug-Oct and Jan-March are the only viable times to release a horror movie. Every horror film of the "torture" variety (as defined by Box Office Mojo) to have grossed over $20mil (there's only 8 of them) were released in either October (including the top four), January or March. But would Lionsgate dare question their (admittedly quite successful) marketing team?

2. Perhaps, but I doubt the amount of people who saw the DVD amounted to the excess of $8mil difference between this Hostel's opening to the last. Besides, the illegal copies floating around were unfinished.

3. Well, many of them were not only big giant flops, but a lot of them were also just really really shit. And, somehow, the original Hostel is seen as one of the better ones. So wouldn't a sequel seem like something made of money? How come the sequel to The Hills Have Eyes ($41mil gross on no buzz at all) made more in it's opening weekend than the sequel to Hostel ($48mil gross). Let it be known that The Hills Have Eyes 2 debuted with $9.6mil back in March before a final gross of just over $20mil.

Besides, if Lionsgate admits this, then they admit the reason for Hostel Part 2's failure was... the success of Hostel. No?

4. Clearly this means jack shit. The audience for these movies lap this up like a dog's breakfast. As we've seen before, the mix of controversy plus buzz usually ends up in nothing but fizz.

5. Uh, no.

6. Never mind the fact that pretty much every film they could have purchased tickets to without looking suspicious fell over 50% at the box office and that Ocean's 13, debuting at #1, actually made $37mil, right in line with the other two films of the franchise. And as the success of the original Hostel proved there was more than enough people in January last year to make that one a hit.

7. Well, history has shown that a majority of those who would go to see a movie like this, a horror sequel, will go see it on opening weekend. Ocean's 13 can wait. Surf's Up can wait.

So, I present to you, my hypothesis on why Hostel Part II dropped the big one at the box office.

MY HYPOTHESIS
The only reason as many people went to go see the original Hostel as it is was because there was nothing else at the movies (it knocked Narnia off the #1 spot, which had been there for three weeks) and it was an original movie and seeing that was better than seeing Narnia again. But once they found out it was actually kind of crap, they figured they'd skip the inevitable sequel. Especially when it's Summer and they could be at the beach or playing basketball or "cruising for chicks" or seeing something else at the movies.

I also suspect that #3 has a large part to play. So many lame horror movies all making the same amount of cash (somewhere between $10mil and $20mil), which means the same people are seeing them, but the other people that made the Saw movies and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the original Hostel hits are not. Hostel Part II was just not special enough to warrent people parting with their $10. The original must have turned enough people off (remember, it would have picked up fans from the DVD release too) to cause a sudden downturn, coupled with the desire to not see a sadistic horror show in the summery nights.

Of course, as I said, I doubt Lionsgate will say any of this. I suspect they will blame the leaked DVD (much like MGM did with Soul Plane when that crashed and burned, and Eli Roth is already calling for Dave Poland's head) and that there was just no room for Hostel 2 at the box office, when really there was or that their "internal research" shows a substantial ($8mil worth?) amount of people were buying tickets to other movies and sneaking in (which proves that they are marketing the movie to young adolescents and that actual adults (the ones who could pay to see it) have rejected it (positive!) I never expected The Hills Have Eyes 2 to make more than Hostel Part II though. Whod've thunk that?

Now, the next big test comes with Saw IV. Will it suffer a similar fate as Hostel 2, will it follow the trends of the Friday the 13th movies (gradually less and less) or will this franchise continue grow and grow? I hope it's the first possibility, but I have a feeling it won't be.

Linkabout

I'm not feeling inspired right now, so here's some links.

The New Yorker has a fabulous article by Jeffrey Eugenides about a longlasting summer movie-going experience. It's not Jaws or Star Wars. It's actually the Australian/British film by Nicolas Roeg, Walkabout that starred a young David Gulpilil. It's a fascinating read. I wish I was that articulate.

Friez.com discusses David Lynch's experimental opus INLAND EMPIRE as well as his future plans (he really likes Poland, apparently). The film has had it's June 21 release date vanquished and is, as far as I can tell, in limbo with Australian distribution. I hate the world. I think it's out on DVD in August in America so I may just have to import it. How incredibly depressing.

[It was here where I did a quick link to Dave Poland's Hostel Part II review, but then it spun out of control in my brain and turned into a blog entry all of it's own. Nice how that stuff happens from time to time.]

The other day The Film Experience linked to the trailer for Neil Jordan's new Jodie Foster-starring film The Brave One. I'm glad Jodie is out of the claustrophic-thriller sub-genre (although I still reckon Panic Room is pretty darn amazing). After a bit of searching I found that the (amazing) song used in in the second half of the the trailer is the (amazing) "Auto Rock" by the (sometimes amazing) Mogwai. I didn't mention him for some reason, but he worked on Clint Mansell's score to The Fountain. And we all know how that one turned out. I just have a feeling about this movie that I'm gonna really like it, even if it's not incredibly well-liked by others. I don't know why I have that hunch, but whatever. Jodie's looking feisty in the image below.


Who knew a Franz Ferdinand remix of an LCD Soundsystem track ("All My Friends") could be so good?!

So, I was having a discussion with The Brother last week about Saw and Hostel (a popular topic these days) and when I mentioned that they were making a Saw 4 he said that it'd be even more pointless than the other movies in the franchise **SPOILERbecause the two villains diedEND SPOILER** I joked that there'd be an evil twin or something. Well, that may or may not be the case. Blah yada etc. The vicious cycle of doom continues.

Does this picture (below) of Will Ferrell and Sasha Baron Cohen freakin' anyone else out? It was from the MTV Movie Awards held last week. It's so... :/ I dunno. Is it good or bad that a gay kiss (as in between two men) has won the Best Kiss category two years in a row? Although, I do have the urge to watch Brokeback Mountain again now. Hmmm....



And lastly, as the deathtoll continues to rise the Victorian train disaster, I send my thoughts out. What a terrible accident. Sad.