John Carpenter has made exactly three good films in his 40+ year career. And it’s not like the guy’s Stanley Kubrick, who was a perfectionist and only put out a film when he had made absolutely sure it was completely the vision he wanted it to be. Carpenter churns out movie after movie, most of which are cheezy and/or mediocre. So Carpenter’s success ratio is pretty wretched.
This is one of the three…probably the best, too, although that’s more indicative of Carpenter’s body of work than how good this is just taken by itself. The special effects and “horror” imagery are just as good if not better than when he regurgitates them 13 years later for a similarly flawed but entertaining movie (‘In The Mouth of Madness’), not to mention much more fresh. But there aren’t really any likeable characters here…there aren’t really any characters at all. Just a bunch of last names to differentiate man A from man B from man Z. Which makes it a lot easier to see them being killed one by one…you tend to feel more sympathy for a character when he’s more different from the next one than just “smokes weed” vs. “loves dogs”.
It gets a little hokey near the end…the guesswork is a lot of the fun, and the fewer contestants there are the fewer guesses there are to be made. But for those who care, here is J.C.’s “best”, preserved from 30 years ago for a whole new generation of horror fans who probably couldn’t care less about it since it’s thought-not-gore based. At least, somewhat.
Inspirational Ignorance: Sweden = Norway
Grade: B
7/19/12: It’s D@MN good for a movie without characters…D@MN good… Grade: B+