Year: 2019
Country: Canada
Subgenre: Body Horror/Vampire
Runtime: 107 minutes
Directors: The Soska Sisters
It's Splatterday, so I am going to recommend a body horror today. It's also one of the few remakes that I will be putting out there as a Spooktober worthy title. And....this is no small thing for me. The original is basically my favorite Cronenberg (and that is saying something, considering that he is one of top five favorite directors). His Rabid is in my top ten horror movies list. So, having said that, this is, in my humble opinion, a worthy remake. Now, I know that a lot of people (most of them men) seriously trash talk about this one! In fact, I just got through reading a review on IMDb written by some British dude, who sets himself up as an "underground movie expert," that just completely dismisses the film and it's female filmmakers. Again, I say balderdash! That said, like horrors with native languages in them, I wouldn't just recommend this because it was directed by women (pet cause tho that is with me!). It is as solid a remake as Tom Savini's Night of the Living Dead remake, IMO. Body horror movies are certainly not to everyone's taste, but I would say that the Soska Sisters have given us a really good "splattery" one, and one that is worthy of Cronenberg. Granted the film either is, or comes off, tongue-in-cheek, but that doesn't diminish the story or the horror. There is a nice twist on the original Cronenberg vampiric story, with loads of Kensington gore to go with it. The story preserves Cronenberg's mad scientist/medical experiment angle, but dispenses with his weird futuristic dread (or at least tamps it down quite a bit); which again in no way detracts from the film or it's storyline. Instead, we get a nice little mystery thrown in, which I quite appreciated. There is also a wonderful little homage to another of Cronenberg's classics: Dead Ringers. Oh, and they kept the hospital Santa too. So if you can stomach films with gore on steroids, I think this one might do the trick!
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