Two in honor of Halloween that I had never gotten to see:
Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): So everyone trashed this remake hard. I had very mixed feelings about it. On one had, a movie about a serial pedophile shouldn't be as campy as the original in my IMO, so I liked the darker, more Heath Ledger Joker-esque treatment of the character. That said, the guy wasn't able to pull it off (not a surprise, it's a very difficult role to get right) like Ledger did, and the rest of the acting was questionable, despite the cast. I have to say though, Rooney Mara is really good, and there's just something about her...anyway, I give it 3/5, worth a watch, but nothing that stands out. The ending was just...bad as well.
The Descent: Normally, this little British Indie is the type of move I jump all over, but this one slipped through the cracks for me until now. I give them all a hell of a lot of credit, they went all in, balls to the wall, on this and...nearly pulled it off. Nearly. Great things include the all female cast (a rarity) and the foreign tradition of not mixing horror with needless sex, in order to focus on the story. Don't get me wrong, I like seeing attractive women take their clothes off, but not at the expense of the film...I don't watch horror movies for that. They really tried to add some depth to the characters, though the almost exclusive focus on two of them made it a bit uneven, and I don't think the ladies had quite enough experience to pull it off quite as well as it could have been. Still, major props for being able to create the darkness and claustrophobia, in a studio no less, and for the general weirdness and tension. I give it high praise and 4/5, way, way in the category of worth a watch, and maybe not quite as high as Ebert (4/4) or the lists that put it in the top 5 horror movies of the 2000s, but it was really good for what it was.
