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So, 85-years ago, down in NOLA, Evangeline Broussard held a Halloween seance in the hopes of landing her a man. As these things do, it went horribly wrong and ended with her six guests gone missing, the maid insane, and Evangeline herself dead by her own hand. Since that time no one has been able to live in her house. Flash-forward to present times, and a bunch of snot-nosed twentysomethings think this is the perfect place for a Halloween party. Guess what happens?
Yeah, you got it. Demony mayhem and death.
| I won’t lie, I was totally biased against this remake. No one will ever accuse the original Night of the Demons of being art, but it is a charming movie from arguably the best decade the horror genre has ever seen, the 80’s, and it honestly does have a few flashes of brilliance. But maybe I have a low tolerance for brilliance. Either way, it is a gem from my childhood, and I wasn’t keen to see it trounced on. Luckily, it has not been. This version is not without its own flaws, but for the most part it is a fun romp that never takes itself seriously, a rampant disease in 21st-century horror. |
That's a bad day.
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In this version, Angela is some sort of goth party-planner or event promoter, and she’s having a hard time. She needs her Halloween extravaganza to be a big money-maker, which leads her to cut some corners. Like getting a permit to hold it in the abandoned Broussard house, for instance. At the same time, Maddie and her best friend/roommate Lily are brought to the party by Suzanne. Suzanne used to work with Angela at Taco Bell, Lily is hoping to hook-up with Dex, who is there with Jason, and Maddie is secretly hoping to run into her ex Colin, who does show up at the party...to sell drugs.
Okay, so, I was pretty good with the set-up. It actually got the party happening in a more believable way than in the original, and when the police come to break it up, we get to cleave the proceedings down to just the seven major players. All good there. The cast is also decent. Just recognizable enough without costing the project an arm and a leg. Monica Keena was in F v. J, Diora Baird was in the TCM remake (and the hopefully soon to be released totally brilliant South of Heaven), we all know Shannon Elizabeth and Tiffany Shepis of course, and Michael Copon was a Power Ranger for Christ’s sake.
But Edward Furlong. *Sigh*. I just can’t do it, man. He’s 33 going on 50, and looks like he smells like bong resin and onions. His acting is decent, but playing the one that got away for Maddie...I just can’t buy it. I’m sorry. He was a sticking point for me for the whole film. Sorry, Eddie. T2 was a long time ago.
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Yeah, that's not so awesome, either.
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Anyway, other than that I was with it. The seven stragglers are now stuck on the property thanks to some demonic shenanigans with physics, and Angela is possessed and spreading it around. By the by we have Angela as a horned, hot but deadly demon, Suzanne as a faceless abomination, Lily as a Lovecraftian sea-monster demon, and Dex as a very Fulci-esque monster. This leaves Maddie, Jason, and Colin to wend their way through the rest of the film, trying to make it til morning without shuffling loose this mortal coil. |
By this point we’ve gotten boobs, lots of blood, some good, gleeful gore, and a couple of delightful nods to the original. Linnea Quigley has a cameo in pretty much the same costume as from the original, and Lily takes the lipstick in the boob scene to impressive new heights. I was quite literally awed by how far they took that. Much kudos to writer/director Adam Giersach.
From there it started to get away from me, though. The three survivors find themselves in the insane maid’s room, the walls of which are scrawled top to bottom with symbols and text. The symbols keep the demons out, and Maddie unrealistically is able to decipher the near century old babblings of a lunatic mind and discover that their are seven demons in total in the house, and if they can each infest a living person before sun-up on Halloween they can get free of the house and create Hell on Earth. She also spews some serious knowledge about ancient demon folklore.
| Colin says earlier in the film, when Jason is trying to figure out what’s going on, “Stop being so fucking logical! None of this shit makes any sense!” I get that this is a nod to the audience that we should expect some shit like we get in the maid’s room, and some further deus ex machina behavior, like magically-appearing items popping up when needed (rope and firearms, for instance) and the fact that you can stick conveniently plentiful rusty nails into shotgun shell casings and still have them fire no problem out of the gun. The pace starts to drag and the scenes become prefunctory attempts to have the demons jump out and go BOO!, and the ending would have been better served with the last few seconds trimmed off. |
Okay, that just plain sucks.
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But for the most part the remake is a fast-paced, entertaining throwback to 80’s horror. Demons stalk around; boobs are exposed; blood is spilled; and flesh is torn asunder, all to a rocking punk/goth soundtrack. Invite some friends over, drink some beers, and you’ll get some cheap thrills from this film. And that’s better than a stick in the eye.
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