A woman is plagued by haunting memories revolving around her mother's death in 'Carnival of Souls', a 1998 re-imagining of a classic film with the same name.
A child sees her mother murdered by a man at a very young age. Fast forward about 20 years and that same girl is held at gunpoint by the mad man (Louis) who killed her mother. She drives her car into the water in an attempt to kill the both of them. Once she does that, all of sudden she wakes up as if the whole thing was a nightmare. As the movie goes along, our main character Alex goes through a lot of these types of traumatic events which seem real but end up being dreams. The more she dreams, the more we learn of her mothers killer - a clown that they all met one night while at the carnival. Throughout the film, Alex has visions and nightmares of Louis coming for her and her sister trying to kill them both.
This remake or re-imaginging of the 1962 classic fails to deliver on the creep factor that the original was able to give the audience. It changes the story completely - there is no plunge into the water due to a drag race. Instead, we get the story of a single mother with two girls who is wooed by a madman with a day job as a clown. The story of this film was pretty intriguing and should have been way more fun to watch. Unfortunately, the story never took off in this one and we were left with a dull take that included zero scares and no suspense.
The acting was very average, it felt like the acting you'd see in a made for TV movie on Lifetime. Nothing horrendous but not spectacular either. Bobbie Phillips was fine as the lead character, but failed to give us a true stellar performance of a "final girl" in a horror film. Larry Miller, who is a terrific character actor, wasn't effective at all in this villainous killer clown role. He is way better suited for a comedy than a horror film for sure.
Overall, this 1998 version Carnival of Souls is a very ho hum version of a 1962 film that I quite enjoyed. It came across like a made-for-tv film that had zero scares throughout. I gave marks for the story was interesting to me - unfortunately it went nowhere and left me feeling very bored. The ending was also a disaster that made no sense at all.
3/10.
A child sees her mother murdered by a man at a very young age. Fast forward about 20 years and that same girl is held at gunpoint by the mad man (Louis) who killed her mother. She drives her car into the water in an attempt to kill the both of them. Once she does that, all of sudden she wakes up as if the whole thing was a nightmare. As the movie goes along, our main character Alex goes through a lot of these types of traumatic events which seem real but end up being dreams. The more she dreams, the more we learn of her mothers killer - a clown that they all met one night while at the carnival. Throughout the film, Alex has visions and nightmares of Louis coming for her and her sister trying to kill them both.
This remake or re-imaginging of the 1962 classic fails to deliver on the creep factor that the original was able to give the audience. It changes the story completely - there is no plunge into the water due to a drag race. Instead, we get the story of a single mother with two girls who is wooed by a madman with a day job as a clown. The story of this film was pretty intriguing and should have been way more fun to watch. Unfortunately, the story never took off in this one and we were left with a dull take that included zero scares and no suspense.
The acting was very average, it felt like the acting you'd see in a made for TV movie on Lifetime. Nothing horrendous but not spectacular either. Bobbie Phillips was fine as the lead character, but failed to give us a true stellar performance of a "final girl" in a horror film. Larry Miller, who is a terrific character actor, wasn't effective at all in this villainous killer clown role. He is way better suited for a comedy than a horror film for sure.
Overall, this 1998 version Carnival of Souls is a very ho hum version of a 1962 film that I quite enjoyed. It came across like a made-for-tv film that had zero scares throughout. I gave marks for the story was interesting to me - unfortunately it went nowhere and left me feeling very bored. The ending was also a disaster that made no sense at all.
3/10.