Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I just recently reviewed the original THE TOOLBOX MURDERS in my DVD SHELF column, and I highly recommend that any horror fan who doesn’t already have the film pick up the Blue Underground release. It’s surprisingly good stuff, and still packs a real punch. So how’s the remake by Tobe Hooper? American audiences still haven’t had a chance to judge for themselves outside of festival screenings, so we’ll settle for one of our English readers writing in to tell us:
Hi guys,
Tobe Hooper's new horror film, Toolbox Murders, opened recently in the UK, as I see it hasn't in the US, and I caught it last night. I know you have a couple of reviews for it on your site, so I don't know if you're interested in any more, but I thought I'd write in anyway as my opinion is strictly the opposite to those I've read here. This film is bad. Beware as spoilers follow.
I'm a big horror fan, including Tobe Hooper's classics Texas chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist, and I was really excited to see this get release here in the UK as I'm also a fan of lead actress Angela Bettis. Another horror film with May from original TCM man! How could it go wrong?
Well before I go into why I thought the film was poor, I'll say what I liked about the film, and there was a fair bit. The concept is great, a couple moves into a dingy LA apartment building (the woman Bettis, the man some bad actor) where a series of murders is taking place, unknown to everyone, committed by a shadowy figure with a series of tools. The building itself, a total dump, is undergoing refurbishment and so there's all kinds of hammering and drilling going on throughout the night and no-one bats an eyelid. It's a good idea, and there are lots of atmospheric touches like weird noises going on all the time, and dusty plastic construction sheets, blowing about the corridors like ghosts. The film is obviously incredibly low budget and some niftily moody cinematography manages to cover this up by simply making it seem atmospheric. The gore is good, if never very memorable and not as grisly as it would have you believe (The most horrible parts are often conveniently covered by the killer with his back to the camera). This is evident from the opening scene's murder where the guy bludgeons this woman to death with a hammer quite brutally, but then when she's clearly dead he just keeps on going! for ages! and we get a nice close up of more and more blood just spattering on the window. There's some fun to be had with it too, such as the nail gun scene, and characters have a sense of humour, so it's not all downbeat nastiness. the score, which is largely clichéd horror rumbles and eeeEEEE!'s of violins, is occasionally darkly atmospheric and pushes some sequences along excellently, as does the editing. There is one scene where Bettis is running around the apartment building purposefully, checking out some weird mythical symbols on the walls, intercut with shots of a man stuck in the building's creepy elevator, which looks and sounds great and is the only time where I felt at all caught up in the story.
The only thing in between the good and the bad in this film is Angela Bettis, who is as interesting to look at as usual (Still looking worryingly skinny though, when she remarks to another character in the film that they should go and eat some cake you could see other audience members mumbling 'Yeah, right') is pretty much wasted otherwise. All of the characters in the film are so terribly written that it seems that no actor could really rise above being totally unconvincing and dumb, and while she doesn't exactly transcend this problem she manages to be at least slightly likeable and charismatic, and is the only cast member who makes it out reputation unscathed.
Now unfortunately there’s a tonne of awful stuff in here, and it certainly ends up being the dominant element. The script, for one, is really bad, as if it took the concept of a guy killing people with tools and just ran in several directions with it, leaving several disregarded and distractingly irrelevant story threads. Major spoilers about the origins of the killer will follow:
Okay so the thing that is decided upon by the writers is that the killer was a 'coffin baby', born to a dead mother, and was therefore a mutant? Or dead itself? Or something like this, it isn't really explained, but the weak explanation for him being alive for 200 years in this building is that there are a series of spells, written on the walls, which keep him going. And he kills people with tools... well for no reason. Probably just so we keep thinking the killer is the toolbox-wielding handyman, whose creepy look and manner is so overdone, and whose involvement is so constantly coincidental that his name might as well be Red Herring. when Bettis finds a box of teeth in the wall of her apartment we expect this to lead somewhere... it doesn't! There's no suggestion that the killer takes certain body parts (Though he does hoard the bodies), so this whole sub-plot is meaningless. also there is a lot of hoo-ha about the building originally being built as a retreat for the stars, but no stars staying there, and there are constant mentionings of actors and the kind of people they are, and the film starts with a portentous statement about ambitious actors coming to Hollywood... and this goes nowhere! There are so many plot holes and baffling loose ends here that it's a wonder no-one called for a rewrite or at least trimmed the useless crap away in editing. The ending brings so many of these that it literally seems like a joke. the film is also just badly written in general, dialogue is unnatural, uninteresting and stuffed with too much cliché and situations that should play out in the blink of an eye stick out noticeably and are just awkward.
The other, perhaps more noticeable problem, is the amateurish direction, which I would not expect from Hooper. The film is constantly awkwardly executed, and an atmosphere never really builds. It is certainly not consistently scary, and the only effective scares are the usual jump ones, which any film can provide nowadays. Scenes seem like they haven't been rehearsed or staged at all, when the killer chases people they will kind of skid around the set randomly, as if they themselves as an actor don't really know what should be happening, even standing in one place and running around in a circle at one point, it just looks atrocious! it doesn't ever feel like characters are ever really being chased because everyone just shambles about randomly. Many parts of the film are laughable as well, when one man gets stabbed in the back by some sort of drill, he shakes and screams around like some sort of comedy skit, and during the finale where ridiculous, non-sensical plot twists and dialogue is pouring in from every direction, the film becomes a laughing stock. Also, as if the makers just wanted to play a cruel joke on us, the old 'We thought we had the killer and he was dead, but LOOK, we turned our backs and he's vanished!' endings is wheeled out, and this is after several false climaxes that involve exactly the same thing.
Although there are intriguing and positive elements to the film, it seemed like overall all there was to talk about afterwards were the plot holes and the hilariously awful parts. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be shoddy, as that could describe most of the acting (Which I haven't gone into here, but is often approaching parody it is so loud and bad) writing and direction. which is a shame because I was ready for a nice little horror about tools and killing.
MaxH
Okay, then. Sounds like you felt it was a real missed opportunity, and that’s always a shame. I’m dying to see what Tobe Hooper’s going to cook up for his episode of MASTERS OF HORROR next year. I still think Tobe’s got it in him to give us the goods, and if this isn’t it, then I’ll hold out hope it’s coming soon.
"Moriarty" out.
