A remake of a film that acknowledges the original's existence (and even implies it what an insensitive film to make) - now there's an interesting idea. Or at least a bold idea. It's not the first film to have done it, I know 'The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)' in 2011 played around with the same concept and I'm certain it would have been done before that. For some reason though it just leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It's like a different form of breaking the fourth wall. If you acknowledge the existence of film inside a film that's fine, it obviously happens all the time. But to directly acknowledge the series of films you are currently making just cheapens the whole experience and makes me wonder why I should care. To be fair though the film itself didn't really make me care anyway.
The whole thing is a bit of a mess. The victims are stupid, the cops are possibly even dumber and the kills feel rushed and never go on long enough to build any real suspense. Numerous times we are introduced to characters only moments before their imminent death. There are two flaws with this, one being that we can be certain that they are going to be victims because suddenly out of nowhere they have been awkwardly brought into the film like lambs to the slaughter, and secondly because we couldn't care less for the characters. We have no connection with them. Similar films like 'Scream' at least put some time and effort into the one scene their victim may have in an attempt to make us feel compassion for the character. That one scene can be enough if done right, but it certainly wasn't here.
The 'whodunnit' side of things is done well enough, I certainly didn't pick it. That's really about all this has going for it though. They really kept the runtime short at 86 minutes. I feel even another five minutes could have done the world of good just to extend some of the kill scenes and build characters a fraction more. It's certainly not unwatchable, but in a genre that has been quite stale for a while now is this adding anything new? I wouldn't have thought so.
The whole thing is a bit of a mess. The victims are stupid, the cops are possibly even dumber and the kills feel rushed and never go on long enough to build any real suspense. Numerous times we are introduced to characters only moments before their imminent death. There are two flaws with this, one being that we can be certain that they are going to be victims because suddenly out of nowhere they have been awkwardly brought into the film like lambs to the slaughter, and secondly because we couldn't care less for the characters. We have no connection with them. Similar films like 'Scream' at least put some time and effort into the one scene their victim may have in an attempt to make us feel compassion for the character. That one scene can be enough if done right, but it certainly wasn't here.
The 'whodunnit' side of things is done well enough, I certainly didn't pick it. That's really about all this has going for it though. They really kept the runtime short at 86 minutes. I feel even another five minutes could have done the world of good just to extend some of the kill scenes and build characters a fraction more. It's certainly not unwatchable, but in a genre that has been quite stale for a while now is this adding anything new? I wouldn't have thought so.