Over eighty years ago, six people disappeared from the Broussard Mansion. That same night the owner, Evangeline Broussard, hung herself. Now a group of party goers are off to a Halloween shin-dig hosted by their friend Angela. But the party is soon shut down by the police, and only Angela and a small group of her friends remain at the house.
They decide to stick around and make the most of the night. But as they explore the mansion further, they make a horrifying discovery; six dead bodies hidden in a closed off room in the house.They decide to leave the house, but find themselves locked inside the property and unable to find a way out.
Soon Angela begins to behave strangely and it turns out she has become possessed by a demon which jumped into her body from one of the corpses. Soon more and more of the group fall victim to possession and turn into hideous demons.
The survivors, including the obvious leader, Maddie, struggle to fend off their grotesque former friends until daylight in the hopes of survival and escape.
The premise of a remake of the Night of the Demons was pretty exciting initially. Unfortunately this so-called remake is not only a major flop, but is hardly a remake at all. What are the similarities between this film and Night of the Demons? A group of people are in a structure on Halloween and are being attacked by demons. Also the primary villains name is Angela. Other than that virtually every scene and several key aspects of the plot are completely different to the extent that calling this a remake is pretty much a farce. All of the classic scenes of the original film have been gutted except for the lip stick scene, but they butchered that too.
Ludicrous dialogue, a totally unnecessary sub-plot about drug gangs, and unimpressive acting performances didn't help much either. What is with all these remakes lately trying to slide in some kind of quasi-scientific sounding explanation for why these things happen? Also, rusted metal hurts demons because it is an ancient element, demons are made of ancient elements, and the metal is tainted by rust? Give me a break. It's a fictional story about fictional creatures and occurrences, there's no need to make lame-brained explanations about how it all works. The original didn't need it, neither should the "remake".
But that's the difference between these films when it all comes down to it. The original was campy, true. But it accepted its campyness. It thrived on it. It used it to its advantage and mixed it with a well measured concoction of horror and comedy to make a fantastic masterpiece of late 80's horror plus two sequels to follow it. Whatever this film tried to do, it didn't work.
On the up side, some of the demons did look pretty cool... cool for a different movie because they looked nothing like the ones from Night of the Demons. The soundtrack includes one or two pretty cool songs as well. Lesson of the day, however, is if you're going to remake a classic then do it straight-up, or not at all.
1 skeleton bite out of 5
Rated R for bloody horror violence/gore and language throughout, some sexuality, nudity and drug use.
Watch the Night of the Demons trailer.
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