A wet fart of a movie that limps to a wet fart of an ending, this remake of the 1986 classic is produced In Association With Michael Bay, which means that if it doesnt move at speed, explode or get naked, out it goes. Gone is Jennifer Jason Leighs character, while lead Jim Halsey becomes a college student driving to Spring Break with his lingerie model girlfriend, who wears short shorts and is first seen removing her top. To make sure the target demographic doesnt get bored, every let up in the action has been removed from Eric Reds original story, which works amazingly well if their intention was to suck all the life out of the movie. In the same year that Michael Myers returned with an overlong backstory, John Ryder (Sean Bean who was better as the bad guy in Bays The Island) was back as the hitchhiker your mother warned you about. There are no flashbacks to Ryders messed-up childhood here, just a ton of cheap shocks, ripped-out throats and it-was-all-a-dream moments, none of which appear in Robert Harmons film. With no proper build-up, no suspense and nobody worth rooting for, were all of a sudden adrift in a movie with plenty of running around and stuff blowing up, and very uninteresting it is too.
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.'
