Foreign Vs American

Being a massive fan of the foreign horror movie industry, which creates so many great movies every year. It pains me to have to sit through re makes that having been made for a lazy western audience, desecrate the original . Dark, sinister and frightful films such as Takashi Shimizu master piece Ju-On(The grudge) often gets overlooked as American cinema decides that instead of creating a smart enticing storyline, they can just stick a load of b list celebs in it and it will have the same success as the original. But the truth is The grudge wasn’t half the film that the original was, but the fact that modern cinema goers would rather see the film in English and settle for a lousy excuse of a storyline, than take the time to sit back and enjoy a film in its original glory. It’s my opinion that watching a film such as Ringu (The Ring) in Japanese only adds to the appeal of the movie, I found that half way through the film I wasn’t even reading the subtitles anymore (being that I could hardly see the screen through my hands).

Having watched the Spanish movie [REC] for the first time I was adamant that not even the Americans could ruin this film. One of my favourite horror movies of all time, [REC] offered everything an audience could want out of a film, Superbly acted, brilliantly directed and absolutely bloody terrifying. Jumping on the bandwagon of Handheld camera shot films, [REC] perfectly captured the short, stripped-down, first-person horror movie that fans have been waiting for.

Then while surfing new film trailers I came upon a new film in the description it said “Television reporter Angela Vidal  and her cameraman are assigned to spend the night shift with a Los Angeles Fire Station. After a routine 911 call takes them to a small apartment building, they find police officers already on the scene in response to blood curdling screams coming from one of the apartment”.  Initiate face palm. It would seem that the shot by shot remake of [REC] had arrived. This movie managed to suck balls more than a cheap Asian hooker that doesn’t return my calls anymore, and earn its place in the hall of fame of bad Foreign to American films. Quarantine seemed to lack the gritty raw attitude of its original, trying too hard to throw screams at the audience they lacked in creating tension and building up a scene, basic film 101.

I’m not saying that the foreign film industry is full of amazing films and instant classics, as every so often films slip out of Europe that can be seen as more controversial cult films than cinematic masterpieces. I think you know where I’m going with this, so I’m just going to say it...The human Centipede. It’s not that it’s a bad film, it was hardly anywhere near as terrible as people made it out to be, it’s just that it could have been so much better. But the winner by far, one of the worst films to spawn from abroad has to be A Serbian film. I haven’t watched this personally but have heard from people that it’s a film that pushes the boundary way too far.

So while audiences still remain lazy.  Expect these brilliant films to continue to be transformed and morphed into nothing more than a shell of their former self.

Peace out!