My Bloody Valentine (2009): C+

Though it stands as one of the better horror remakes to come along in recent memory, 2009’s My Bloody Valentine still only just passes for competent watchability. Though personally unfamiliar with the 1981 original, this conceptually faithful version boasts its own level of sporadically witty self-consciousness via a string of 3-D “gotcha!” moments (my recommendation for DVD viewing: screw the glasses and just watch the movie), renderings its angle as being just silly enough to tread self-parody. Would it have gone all the way and thrown in more distinctive commentary, this resourceful – however occasionally, perhaps deliberately stupid (specifically in the character department; everyone here falls down while running, too) – genre exercise might have been some kind of subversive classic. Instead, in primordially entertaining fashion, it hits all the marks at a healthy stride. An opening slasher spree gruesomely recalls Romero’s Day of the Dead (remember the severed upside down head?), while the central villain – a miner, gone berserk after a cave-in forced him to kill his fellows to conserve air, now possibly back from the dead – suggests Darth Vader’s kinky cousin. The first “kill” is delightfully abusive of the film’s 3-D making, and represents one of the few imaginative examples thereof. If anything, the film deserves to be longer and more exploratory than is ultimately allowed by the climax’s disingenuous contribution to the Donald Kaufman school of thought.

Friday the 13th (2009): D-

Of all the remakes one might have thought capable of improving on the original, the newly revamped Friday the 13th stands as an ultimate case of upended expectations. The 1981 film, taken entirely, is downright lousy, although a standout climax in which overwrought camp reaches an almost profound - if poorly justified - level of absurdity does make it something of a modern horror classic (my favorite of the series: the parade of retarded sci-fi cliches that is Jason X). Onscreen gore usually makes my cringe (in a good way, when it's with bravura and purpose), but that of Friday the 13th '09 reaches a nadir of emptiness in its cynical provocations; only the ostentatious psychical/psychological orchestrations of the Saw films surpass it for poseur nihilism. Forget the plot - a dead-end dump bin of dusty conventions employed without humor, style or imagination - and focus on the ultra-regressive demeanor in which the film's cattle-for-the-slaughter are punished for their hedonistic ways. If nothing else, the film can be noted as self-aware, deliberately upending the expectations countless films of similar ilk have employed since the original misadventures at Camp Crystal Lake seemingly lowered the genre's standards for all time. Barely watchable, this thing is never so much scary as it is outright abusive. The remade Jason comes to us feeling like a ripoff of Rob Zombie's buffed-up re-imagination of Michael Myers (a film I somewhat panned initially, but one I've since come around on as one of the finer horror remakes), just another indication that Mr. Vorhees has always been a third-rate cousin of Halloween's chilling embodiment of evil. The year is young and we already have a contender for worst film.

Night of the Living Dead (1990): C-

Further evincing the fact that direction is pivotal to the success of even a proven screenplay, Tom Savini’s remake of the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead (the sequel to which - 1978’s Dawn of the Dead - he provided the iconic makeup special effects) is a worn-out-from-the-beginning affair that only furthers the argument against remakes. Its script is virtually identical to that of its predecessor, the only notable change being the character of Barbara, who in the original become introverted and catatonic, here a fierce warrior woman who strives to survive the oncoming hell on earth. This makes for some interesting elements inviting feminist readings, but ultimately the film fails to translate its source material to its new form of storytelling. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was a zombie movie that knew nothing of the genre, its mysteriously unfolding events inviting speculation and fear purely out of the unknown. This remake cranks up the quota to eleven, removing any doubt as to what's happening from the initial stages, further destroying the subtleties of its human interactions as well as the allegory inherent in its walking dead, via a dunderhead explanatory monologue. Romero knew how to communicate his themes with wit and subversion (“this was an important place in their lives”), but for all of its loving nods to indebted source material, this Night barely musters the energy to pass for a rank special effects showcasing.

Twilight Time Blu-ray review.