Founded in 2001 by Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, Platinum Dunes remit was simple: low budget horror remakes from no-name directors with backgrounds similar to Bay. The more uniform the product, the greater the chance of predicting its success. Horror had provided a dependable revenue stream for New Line (A Nightmare On Elm Street), Miramax (Scream) and Dark Castle (House On Haunted Hill), and with a commercials director at the helm, the resulting pictures, beginning with Marcus Nispels The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), looked like Mini-Me versions of Bays movies. It was the perfect formula and it paid off in spades, with Chainsaw raking in over $100m on a $9m budget. It also proved what Bays harshest critics had been saying all along: he had the instincts of a marketer, not a filmmaker, and was more interested in profits than quality pictures. More recently, Bay has moved away from remakes and focused on developing original material such as Ouija (2014), which one critic called bland, safe horror for those who like their scares nonexistent. The film has a 7% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest score of any Platinum Dunes release. For horror fans, Michael Bay is less the bogeyman than the filmmaker with the anti-Midas touch. Everything he touches, original or otherwise, becomes a coiled and steaming mess.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
