Carnival of Souls (1998)
(In French, On Cable TV, February 2021) Being a movie critic is all about keeping a flimsy veneer of civility over intensely fascistic opinions about how movies should be made or marketed. Crown a movie reviewer absolute despot and they’ll probably enact a humane progressive science-based policy agenda — but first, Hollywood is going to Get it in the teeth. One of my first acts as King of It All would be to discourage remakes and forbid them if they’re going to make a mockery of their original inspiration. I will even provide this 1998 remake of Carnival of Souls as evidence. I won’t try to convince anyone that the original film was a slick and polished production — In fact, it’s the opposite: a slapdash low-budget effort that, by sheer happenstance and dreamlike luck, happened to produce a compelling mixture of oneiric horror and enigmatic visuals. But the 1998 Carnival of Souls is not worthy of sharing the same title as the original — in an effort to make sense of a senseless inspiration, this remake adds a completely new (and dull) narrative about a woman chased by the spirit of a murderous clown. It ends as a dreamlike fun fair, which is roughly the extent of the films’ similarities. The strengths of this remake are a few and superficial: Having a coherent plot is nice, but not when it’s a tiresome accumulation of “Anything can happen! Boo!” moments that betray a lack of confidence in the material (a justified lack of confidence, but a lack of confidence nonetheless). Acting-wise, it’s a mixed bag: Lead actress Bobbie Phillips is very cute here, but comedian Larry Miller is misused as a murderous clown. The showy style of the film is dull, and Adam Grossman’s slapdash direction doesn’t do much to raise already struggling material. No wonder if the no-budget original continues to be respected and seen today, while this remake struggles in cultural oblivion, now only caught late at night on specialized French-Canadian cable horror channels. On second thoughts, I may not enact my anti-remake policy once I’m King of It All — but I may let the producers be exposed to public ridicule.