Save your energy on this one, because it’s something that we now are just going to have to accept: all classic horror films will inevitably be remade. In the words of many a chip fat-scented girlfriend to her punchy boyfriend at pub kicking-out time, leave it, it’s not blaady woorf it.
Platinum Dunes, serial remakers, have decided to give a 21st century brush up to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, reports shocktillyoudrop. Based on Ira Levine’s 1967 book, the original film told of a recently married woman (Mia Farrow) who becomes spooked by the odd behaviour of her husband and creepy neighbours and then finds herself pregnant with something that might have cloven hooves in place of chubby toes. It was, of course, quite, quite brilliant and doesn’t particularly need replacing.
However, Platinum Dunes is now seeking writers for the remake. The company is also currently working on updates of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Geez, you’d think they’d leave well enough alone. I mean, who can top what Roman Polanski did with this movie? Impossible. It is an absolute classic and should not be touched. Ever.
William Friedkin had said of the movie: ”I think it’s the nightmare of many women that they’re gonna give birth to a child that is evil. Not only evil, but the progeny of the devil. The young husband, played by John Cassavetes, makes a pact with a group of demon worshippers to allow the devil to have sex with his wife for the purpose of bringing onto Earth the child of Satan. And what is perhaps the most terrifying sequence of all, the mother, played by Mia Farrow, sees this baby, which is clearly a demon, and like all mothers, she embraces it. Really, it’s about blind ambition, and how far this young couple will go to achieve success. It deals with the demon inside all of us.”
I believe there are no more original stories to be told, just new ways of telling them but this is sad, defeatist film-making and I don’t know if it says more about the audiences of the day or the filmmakers or the movie companies but clearly something is wrong when a classic gets regurgitated and George Romero’s latest opens on like 50 screens in the U.S.
Yeah, they could do a number of different takes on Rosemary’s Baby, but if all the horror remakes over the last few years are anything to go by, the stuff Friedkin is talking about will probably be just touched on and then set aside to make way for the 21st century horror. Which has not really shown us very much so far.