Unspeakable Horror!

I'm a big believer in remakes.  In fact, I love them.  I always think it's funny when people complain about the number of remakes coming out of Hollywood, as if this means that Hollywood is running out of ideas.  If you look at any storytelling tradition, whether it's fairy tales, comic books, or horror movies, there is always a healthy amount of remakes.  This includes new spins, new visions, and lots of new ideas.  We fall in love with characters, and we don't want to see them go.  Hooray for remakes. 

However, remakes definitely bellyflop sometimes.  Over the past two days, I have tried to watch the Amityville Horror remake, and I just can't finish it.  Here is my number one question: Where is Jodie the Demon Pig?  Jodie is by far the scariest part of that story, and they swapped Jodie for a fictional young Defeo daughter.  Big mistake.  

I remember the first time I watched the Amityville Horror -- the thing that freaked me out the most was the red eyes outside the window, and those eyes belonged to Jodie.  

Basically, there is a parallel situation here with the remake of The Haunting.  Both remakes have a misguided attempt to go over-the-top as if this will increase the scariness.  

There are more than enough scares in the original Amityville Horror story, and these scares could be magnified and enhanced by new technologies in filmmaking, so it doesn't make any sense to change everything and add new elements that are no improvement on the original.  Was a remake of the Amytyville Horror a good idea?  Yes, absolutely, but they didn't do a very good job of telling the story. 

So how can I be such a fan of remakes, but at the same time complain that they changed the story in the remake of Amityville Horror? I think the key component of successful variation and adaptation in storytelling is good and purposeful motivations for changes while maintaining the integrity of the original source material.  In other words, change in remakes is good, but it should be for a good reason, and it shouldn't ruin what made the original great. 

I recently read an excellent book about Haunted Houses in American fiction.  I posted a link to it in the left-hand column.  It is called "American Nightmares," by Dale Bailey, and it includes excellent analysis of The Shining, The Haunting, Fall of the House of Usher, and, oddly enough, The Amityville Horror.  Even though this is purportedly a true story, Bailey analyzes how it participates in the literary tradition of the haunted house.  I'm not sure if this makes a person believe the veracity of the story more or less, but the original book is a book after all, and that makes it fair game for literary analysis even if it is said to be "real."  

So I look forward to more remakes coming out all the time, but let's hope the storytellers learn lessons from Amityville Horror.  

Bring back Jodie the Demon Pig!