All the Pieces, but Not Enough Feeling: The Remaking

I really wanted to like The Remaking, a horror tale about a bit of dark history turned urban legend, turned slasher turned slasher remake. Honestly- what is not to like about that? It's like all my favorite things, all in one spot. And the story was good - solid, even. But I can't say that I loved this book. And I think I know why.

It was the writing itself. The actual prose, the language chosen to convey this tale. It didn't carry enough emotional weight. It didn't have the same mood as a Stoker or a Lovecraft, didn't have the same strong word choices and imagery of someone like King or James. It was a great story, it just wasn't told very well. The language was sterile, in a way, very perfunctory and tell-y rather than show-y, which is just about the last thing you want when trying to terrify someone.

Also- and I'm not quite sure this was on purpose - I got a very strong sense of disdain for the subject matter permeating through the book. When you're following around Amber, the child star literally haunted by her iconic role as The Little Witch Girl Jessica in a cult classic, there's an unmistakeable disgust for slasher films, or horror in general, and their fans, as told through Amber. I got the sense that this was the author's own opinions through the mouthpiece of his character. Which would seem odd, considering how much detail the author includes on that front, suggesting that he knows more than your average horror buff. (As an initiate of the upper echelons of horror and the slasher genre in particular, I should know). It was a very strange disconnect and, I would add, not at all in line with the place of privilege that slasher films hold both as cinematic works that straddle high/low art and as cultural artefacts of profound significance.It strikes me very much like people who hate gothic fiction but then write ghost stories into their books to sell copies.

I hope this gets made into a film - maybe the stuff that should have been great will translate better on a screen. Carpenter or Craven could do it. Argento or Fulci might do it better. Add a bit of Perfect Blue in there, and you'll have one hell of a film.

K. Rating: 3/5

When you do a story like this, you have to go all the way - Cannibal Holocaust -
a great and terrible film.