But Saw, What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks

Year: 2009

Director: Kevin Greutert

Cast: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Mark Rolston

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

We're past the point of no return. After this post, there's only one movie left in my marathon of the infamous Saw series. Luckily by this point, the films have established a baseline of "competent but dreary," largely accomplished by keeping crew duties in the family. Seeing as our director this time around is yet another longtime friend of the franchise, editor Kevin Greutert, it would be quite reasonable to assume that Saw VI might be in the same vein as its cohorts.

As it turns out, Saw VI is even better than the baseline. In fact, it's the best film in the franchise since Saw II. Don't take that to mean it isn't pretty darn bad, but it's like finding a Fresca in the middle of a cooler full of Club Soda. I'll take what I can get with the Saw movies.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't recall there being an actual saw in the franchise since day one.  It must be the work of those wicked hardware lobbyists.

We pick up almost exactly where the last film left off (after an entirely unrelated and gratuitously grisly trap, as per tradition) - Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) is crushed to death by a shrinking room as Jigsaw's new protégé Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) laboriously lowers himself into the ground in a box filled with broken glass, smug as a bug. Saw V, everyone.

The next scene is the biggest twist in the entire franchise. You might want to listen to this song while you read the next sentence in order to be adequately prepared for the supreme level of twisting that is about to happen to your mind. Alright, are you ready? The scene that follows is entirely based on character development. For perhaps the first time in six films, a moment plays that isn't coated in grime as we visit Will Easton (Peter Outerbridge) in his fancy high rise office.

Will is the owner of a corrupt health insurance company and employer of the Dog Pit, a team of six highly trained individuals who look for discrepancies in insurance forms and find reasons to terminate contracts with sick patients. While we learn about Will, his work, and his life, the film acquires a slick, bright aesthetic that - for a single shining moment - allows us to forget that we're watching a Saw movie. 

What a gift. We should write thank you letters to Mr. Greutert.

So anyway, traps. The more the merrier, and because there's already been five consecutive movies to one-up, the more there are. Will is abducted and put through a gauntlet of four traps that viscerally depict how the choices he has made with his company have great impact on human lives. A mother (Shauna MacDonald) and her douchey son (Devon Bostick) - who has only two types of lines in the film, either "Acid Facts" or "The F Word." - are trapped in a cage with a vat of hydrofluoric acid above them. And Pamela (Samantha Lemole), a journalist, is trapped in a cage with a video monitor overseeing the other traps. So... That's something. It kinda reminds me of my Saturday nights, actually, what with all the Saw films I've been zipping through lately.

While all this mess is going on, Hoffman works with Agent Erickson (Mark Rolston) and the secretly not dead Agent Perez (Athena Karkanis), attempting to prevent them from discovering his true identity and feeding them clues that Strahm may have been perpetrating the killings. And he has flashbacks to when Amanda (Shawnee Smith) was still alive because why not. Also Jigsaw's ex-wife Jill (Betsy Russell) pops in from time to time to be ambiguously evil and remind us that - for all the bad acting and stilted line deliveries Mandylor and Co. bring to the table, things could be much, much worse.

Seen here in a brief moment of repose before attending the Unskilled Performers Association Convention & Yuletide Ball.

For once, the film has enough good elements in its production to counteract the blistering inanity of the script. Alas, that script thing will never change - although it's commendable that Saw writing duties have only been shared by about four people and change throughout the entire process. With such uniform work behind the camera, the stories may have wooden dialogue and incomprehensible twists, but at least they have consistent internal logic and characters. 

So even if Saw VI contents itself with unmotivated villains, a shrilly preposterous ending and over-explanation of its metaphors using Jigsaw as a mouthpiece ("The blood on your hands will literally represent the blood that's on your hands," he says), even getting him to gaze wistfully into a piranha tank ("Piranha," he says) while remonstrating Will in a flashback, at least it's coming from a place of organic nonsense.

But hey! Good elements! We've watched the "all the cool kids tint the frame" Saw aesthetic go from blue to green to yellow and back to blue, each shade more ugly than the last. But here in Saw VI, we get rooms that are only shadowy and grimy to increase tension when necessary and a much gentler teal color to guide us through. This color offsets the gore, which appears in full, steaming force in the opening scene, though it tones down until the grand finale once the traps get more plot-centric.

And all the plots service a political point, providing some of the only truly analyzable "subtext" in the franchise thus far. Having Jigsaw expound the virtues of healthcare reform while staring at a piranha tank and watching Hilary Clinton on the news may be overdoing it, at least it's doing something.

I swear, this scene feels important, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Unfortunately, Jigsaw's pedantic MO is pushed extra hard to contrast with the more topical political appeal. Haven't we figured out by now that, despite his claims, Jigsaw is a far from "moral" killer? A good 70% of his traps this round involve at least one person being forced to die for the benefit of another. Sure, that person may be learning one of his soporific "lessons," but the human bait in their traps is afforded no true means of survival.

This flies directly in the face of Jigsaw's philosophy, as repeatedly stated throughout the six films in the franchise, vigorously so in this very film. I shan't mention that his philosophy is inherently flawed (punishing people who don't value their life by murdering them isn't exactly a motivational speech), because without it the Saw films have nothing. But in Saw VI their established logic is spit on again and again, yet nobody seems to notice or care.

Please excuse my fervor, it has been a rough couple weeks. But don't dismiss this as a nerd rant (hashtag) either. The biggest issue with the Saw films as a mainstream tentpole is that the lessons they teach are highly dubious. I'm not saying a torture film will inspire novice serial killers to pick up some iron shackles at the next Home Depot sale, but Saw's incessant moral-peddling encourages easily-plied douchebags to truly believe that this villainous character is righteous. You can toss me all the gore gags and extreme material you want, but that pandering moralism just doesn't sit right with me.

Unfortunately for these six, they'll never sit right ever again.

If the inherent hypocrisy of Jigsaw's ideology isn't apparent in the reprimanding scene where he yells "He's a HUMAN BEING!" at Hoffman after he dumps an unconscious man onto the floor, immediately before attaching him to a machine that will twist his limbs off one by one, then it can't be helped. I'm ready for this to be over.

Anyway, the film really isn't the worst. That's just been building up for a while and I had to blow off some steam before our closing number. Really, if you're picking one Saw film past Part III to watch, you're best off with this one. It's got its share of grotesqueries and idiocies, but at least it has a more intelligent aesthetic and a political core to prevent them from shallowness.

See you all soon!

TL;DR: Saw VI is the best of the back half of the franchise, though you should necessarily take that with a grain of salt.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1411

Reviews In This Series

Saw (Wan, 2004)

Saw II (Bousman, 2005)

Saw III (Bousman, 2006)

Saw IV (Bousman, 2007)

Saw V (Hackl, 2008)

Saw VI (Greutert, 2009)

Saw: The Final Chapter (Greutert, 2010)

I Saw The Sign

Year: 2006

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman

Cast: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Angus Macfadyen

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Well, Halloween is over, but the sheer amount of movies I watched at the end of October will give us an extra week of celebration as I get through those reviews during this first week of November. Not that it's not Halloween all year over here anyway, but it's still nice and festive. And what better movie to kick off our post-holiday candy buzz than Saw III, the second sequel spawned from James Wan's unexpectedly massive indie hit. 

The franchise was a staple of the October season for nearly an entire decade, a decade in which I avoided the Saw films like chocolate-covered broccoli. I'm currently seeking reparation for that period of my life by marathoning all seven of the godforsaken things. I had a brief hiatus after summer ended because, hey, homework has precedence over torture films. It's a strange world we live in. But I'm back now and better than ever! Unfortunately the Saw films are only getting worse, so it will take all the strength I can muster to sally forth and reach the finish line.

But right now we have Saw III. Still early enough in the franchise that original screenwriter Leigh Whannell is sticking to his duties like a particularly tough strain of mildew. Saw II director Darren Lynn Bousman also reprises his duties here (as he would with the next year's Saw IV - this man put food on the table for three years by finding new ways to tear flesh apart), so if anything, at least the film has a consistent direction with the first and second films. 

That direction is directly into the toilet, but at least it still has its integrity.

This is the only franchise where this image and that word can be paired together without irony.

The film opens with a perfunctory coda following up on the status of Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) and his partner Kerry (Dina Meyer) - spoiler alert: it involves a lot of blood - but the bulk of the action revolves around two storylines that have heck-all to do with the events of Saw II. So that's fun. Or it would be, if distancing itself from Saw II didn't mean detaching the tether to the last good entry in the franchise.

The plot - and with each subsequent entry the strain on that word goes stronger - revolves around the ailing Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) final test. His accomplice Amanda (Shawnee Smith) has rigged it so that if his heart rate drops to zero, the kidnapped Dr. Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) will be destroyed by an explosive device around her neck. Her task is to keep him alive until after the test is complete, the subject in question being Jeff (Angus Macfadyen), a man whose life is fueled by grief and vengeance after his son is killed in a drunk driving accident. Through a series of gory tests he must learn to forgive the people responsible and move on with his life.

Or he could stand around dilly-dallying and being a useless waffle while the few people he actively decides to save die off anyway because he's too much of a stubborn asshole to respect other people's humanity, even though saving them would do little harm to himself. Perhaps you could extrapolate from that marvelously veiled and subtle sentence, but none of the characters in Saw III are particularly likable, especially this dillhole who leaves a trail of unnecessary carnage in his wake like a chainsaw made of sharks.

If only I could find a key to unlock this poor woman who is freezing to death. Like this one in my hand. Oh well, she's probably dead already anyway, it's not like I should bother about hurrying or anything. I'm just a loser who whines about his son while multiple human beings are flayed before my eyes. I hope someday people write blog posts about me to commemorate my heroism.

With such a toxic protagonist, it would be helpful if the film had a moral sticking point anywhere to be seen, but alas this is the third film in a franchise, so it's already crossed the line where the villains have become the main characters. Everybody else in the film is just a poorly acted, amoral sack of meat whose opinions, feelings, and aspirations couldn't matter less. They're just there as soulless fodder for the incredibly pornographic gore sequences (of which this film has so many slots to fill, it even included a surgery scene in amid the trappy festivities) - making this the first in the series to truly tip the scales into that most dour of genres: torture porn.

The traps are clever enough as devices with which to marvel at humanity's ingenuity and capacity for cruelty, but gone are even the tenuous links to character development present in the first two films. In lieu of actual human beings, the Saw aesthetic is honed and weaponized and becomes a character far more nuanced and present than anybody else in the entire film. The grimness sets in like a rot - every light that can possibly be tinged green is poured onto the set in a pile (turning everything the color of mucus that has been urinated on), the dubstep-video editing turns itself all the way up to the Skrillex level, and the production design combines all the best elements from all the highest quality dingy warehouses from the Dingy Warehouse Warehouse. The fact that this is the longest film in the franchise means that this cheery atmosphere is jammed into your skull again and again like a rusty jackhammer.

The filthy, low res video charms the eye with its grain the size of actual grain on the side of a Nebraska highway while the ear is delicately tickled with the splintery wood of Whannell's dialogue. I'd prefer not to think about Jigsaw mentioning that he will "sentence" a judge's soul to hell, so I'll divert attention by mentioning that a second act confrontation (and another in the third) devolves into a repetitive shriek circle not entirely unlike that scene in Rocky Horror where they all shout "Janet! Brad! Rocky! Dr. Scott!" on loop. There's a flashback that unnecessarily re-explains the context of the original Saw in a way that actually makes that film less interesting, a mystery in the first act that is easily solvable by anybody who was awake while watching Saw II, and the villains vacillate between Rube Goldbergian pre-planning and Barney Fifish vacuity. I mean, they actually challenge a doctor to keep a late stage terminal cancer patient alive with not much more than a set of Operation prongs and a handful of aspirin.

And yet their isolated warehouse/medieval torture device budget is alarmingly high.

But hey, it's not all bad. There's always at least one thing to redeem a movie (unless it's The Outing but the less we talk about that film that happier I'll be with my life) and the Saw films were big studio pictures so you can assume at least one professional was hanging out on set, maybe by the crafty table somewhere.

There is exactly one good scare involving a TV screen displaying a camera readout from a jarring angle. Unfortunately it follows a truly execrable mirror scare, but this is 2000's horror. You take the good with the bad. The most consistently valuable element of the film is the performance of both of the villains. Tobin Bell is always reliable as the ragged and angry Jigsaw, but Shawnee Smith really gets a chance to show off her chops with a much meatier role for Amanda. The character is still an obnoxious psycho, but Smith justifies her actions with a solid core of emotion that I'm grateful was there. 

Smith is the film's anchor, preventing it from straying too far from the Saw universe even while it wildly careens in terms of quality. Saw III is never at any point a good movie, but thanks to the increased screen time of the only two talented actors in the entire wretched enterprise, there is a kernel of merit to watching that keeps me at least halfheartedly on the hook for Saw IV. And that's the most I can wring from my motivation, but it will have to be enough.

Saw III, guys.

TL;DR: Saw III is not very good, nosiree-bob.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1415

Reviews In This Series

Saw (Wan, 2004)
Saw II (Bousman, 2005)
Saw III (Bousman, 2006)
Saw IV (Bousman, 2007)
Saw V (Hackl, 2008)
Saw VI (Greutert, 2009)
Saw: The Final Chapter (Greutert, 2010)

Fright Flashback: Do You Saw What I Saw?

Welcome to Fright Flashback, where every week until the end of summer we will revisit an older horror film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to an upcoming new release. This week we are anticipating The Purge: Anarchy, a sequel which promises to expand the universe of the small scope / low budget original in the hopes of transforming it into a franchise. In celebration, today's review is Saw II, a 2005 sequel which accomplished exactly that.

Year: 2005

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman

Cast: Donnie Wahlberg, Beverley Mitchell, Franky G

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I've gotta say, binge-watching a long gone film franchise without any real foreknowledge of its contents is a magical experience. I'm a big fan of watching a prominent franchise derail itself (as such, I am the only human in recorded history who enjoyed Paranormal Activity 4 on any level), so I'm excited to get through all the Saw films, but so far I've been enjoying myself immensely in a mostly positive manner.

When Lionsgate released James Wan's Saw upon America in 2004, nobody was expecting the one million dollar film to gross a staggering 55 times its budget in domestic sales alone. As any self-respecting production company would do, they upped the budget to four million (still keeping it relatively low - that kind of profit margin doesn't just roll around every day) and rolled out a bigger and badder sequel in the hopes that the fans would just keep pouring money down the chute.

Evidently it worked, because Saw II made 40 million more than Saw's already astronomical box office, kicking off a yearly tradition that would continue on until Saw 3D, the seventh and, as of the time of this writing, final film in the series. I'll be able to have more insight once I reach the end of this marathon, but something tells me that this is one franchise that can't be called extinct yet, merely dormant. 

We in the horror community know that the word "Final" is about as reliable as an airport ETA, and this franchise was still a wishing well of cash by the time it was canned, the last entry having made roughly the cost of Donald Trump's bathroom. But it's been nothing but radio silence for four years. I'm sure Lionsgate is waiting in the shadows, cooking up something dastardly.

I hope to Jigsaw it's not a remake.

Now, it is typical for sequels to popular films to attempt to do the exact same thing... only bigger. This film is no different. In fact it's a dictionary example of the form. Saw II features four times the amount of victims, eight times the locations, and an insurmountably high number times the embarrassingly wooden lines of dialogue. This was in large part thanks to Leigh Whannell's continuation of the script without the guiding presence of frequent collaborator James Wan, but more on that later.

For now, the traps. I would say "plot", but this is a Saw movie. Let's not put on airs. I don't need to be distracted while attempting to reduce this enormously convoluted plot to a bare bones summary. Alright. It's go time. Detective Eric Mathews (Donnie Wahlberg) is a corrupt cop who's estranged from his wife and son because he slept with Allison (Dina Meyer, one of three returning cast members), one of his coworkers and an expert on the Jigsaw case.

He's finally cornered Jigsaw (the indispensible Tobin Bell) in an abandoned steel factory with the help of a SWAT team. Just as everything is going well, they discover a set of monitors watching over the serial killer's newest morality trap. While the police hurry to trace the source of the video, the eight victims must work together to find a way out lest the poison gas being pumped into the house they're in rip them apart from the inside.

These victims are numerous, but only a few are important. There's Amanda (Shawnee Smith), the only woman to have previously survived a Jigsaw game; Daniel (Erik Knudsen), Detective Wahlberg's son; and Xavier (Franky G) a macho and violent drug dealer who puts himself above all others. Jigsaw gives these eight people a tape recorder and several clues toward assuring their survival, some hideously obvious yet ignored by the victims at large, and some staggeringly perplexing that the characters seem to have no problem with.

Saw's internal logic is as free-flowing as the blood.

The rapidly diminishing victims explore the house and find a series of new traps and games that push the limits of their humanity, either to find an exit or to obtain antidotes to the poison coursing through their veins. It was immediately obvious that Saw II would be bloodier than its predecessor, and while the gore is still more subdued than the implications (no studio would want to scare off audiences by being too brutal - gorehounds are abundant, but absolutely a minority), there are plenty of cringe moments, especially those revolving around the ever-present hypodermic needles that contain the medicine.

The traps are still pretty compelling this time around, not yet devolving into the more indecent realms of "torture porn." Oh, it could certainly be considered a member of the genre but at least the gore is servicing a sort of intensity and sense of purpose, raising the stakes of the situation and providing character momentum. Something tells me that those elements will vanish with Whannell, daft screenwriter though he may be (at least at this point in his career).

Sorry man, I liked Insidious.

The greatest flaws of Saw II can be traced back to the script, although the acting is just as terrible as always (except Tobin Bell, the film's saving grace as a defeated and angry cancer patient, a role much expanded from his original purpose as a crackerjack twist ending). Eric has a flashback to something that happened mere minutes before, Jigsaw's plot this time around involves a Joker-esque level of pre-planning and psychic abilities, and there are too many characters this time around to provide an adequate backstory for any of them.

This film is full of potential energy. You can feel a rich story pulsing beneath the surface (one that is hopefully expanded upon in the increasingly intricate network of sequels), but barely any of it comes out on screen. This is likely because the script itself is adapted from an entirely different story written by Darren Lynn Bousman years before and spruced up with Sawisms by Whannell. The resulting film is a Frankenstein monster of sawed-off backstory and dialogue that could build an ark.

I'm saying it's wooden, is what I'm saying.

But despite all its flaws (many of which it shares with the film that came before - so maybe this can just be considered a hallmark of the franchise) and some of the later twists and turns that kept me up at night poking at plotholes and worrying about the inconsistent MO of a fictional serial killer, it's all part of the ride. Saw II is a roller coaster, a gory, tense and cool film that drags you along with it for the entirety of the run time, only exposing its flaws after you've had a chance to sit down afterward and reflect.

Any dead space in the film would have allowed that moment of realization to come much earlier, so it's a great compliment to say that it has no such moment. And even in the wake of the closing credits, realizing its flaws doesn't ruin the film, it merely knocks it down a couple of notches. Saw II is still a great, fun sequel maintaining the themes established by the first Saw and opening up a universe of possibilities for the next.

TL;DR: Saw II is a good and entertaining sequel, but it falls apart at the script level.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1317

Reviews In This Series

Saw (Wan, 2004)
Saw II (Bousman, 2005)

Saw III (Bousman, 2006)

Saw IV (Bousman, 2007)

Saw V (Hackl, 2008)

Saw VI (Greutert, 2009)

Saw: The Final Chapter (Greutert, 2010)

Blob Me Blind

Year: 1988

Director: Chuck Russell

Cast: Kevin Dillon, Shawnee Smith, Donovan Leitch

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

You can never have enough Blob.

This is an opinion held by many, as evidenced by the popularity of Blobfest, a yearly convention in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania that has been going strong since 1958, the year the original film came out. The festivities include four double features (one half of which is always The Blob), 1950s Makeover and Costume contests, special guests, a Fire Extinguisher Parade, and the Friday Night Run Out, where the entire audience runs out of the Colonial Theatre, the location the Blob attacked at the end of the film.

That was all one sentence.

Anyway, it's nice to be reaffirmed in my love for the Blob, the topic I have chosen for my essay in my Horror Genre class. To complete this five page essay (which will shortly become available to you on this blog, should you wish to read an actual academic analysis of a dumb movie about a Blob that eats people), part of the assignment is to watch the sequel (Beware! The Blob) and the 1988 remake.

Since I was already planning on doing that anyway, it was an obvious choice of essay topics.

And since B!tB is stuck in the mail somewhere, I decided to begin with the remake, released exactly 30 years after the original Steve McQueen film.

Things have changed since then (although making a pile of silicone look like it's rolling around is still just as hard as before, evidently). Visual effects have improved tenfold. Horror has risen to prominence as the genre to beat. The beginning of the decade saw the invention of the slasher film.

That last development more than anything else is what informs The Blob of the 80's. This film is about one topless scene away from being a Census Bloodbath entry.

There's a Final Girl, a couple making out in a car and getting Blobbed, a man bursting from the shadows brandishing an axe, not to mention that half of it takes place in the woods. This is no accident. The movie showing in the cinema in the climactic scene is one of the most spot on parodies of the genre I've ever seen. Also, let's not forget about Chuck Russell, whose previous directing gig was none other than A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (The Blob also shares screenwriter Frank Darabont with that lovely late era slasher film).

Coming so late in the 80's, there was no way the new Blob could be anything other than a slasher riff. That's what was selling and had been selling for a decade at that point. If that makes it sound stale, trust me it absolutely isn't. Yes, it's a slasher framework but how many "teens in the woods" movies choose a ravenous gelatinous monster as their villain?

As a preeminent slasher scholar, I can tell you: Not a lot. 

Meg (Shawnee Smith of the first three Saw movies) is a sweet young cheerleader from the struggling off-season ski town of Arborville, California. Although the town's economy is troubled, she still has something to cheer about - cute jock Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch of the Brad Pitt slasher abortion Cutting Class) has just asked her out on a date! Gee whiz! A great deal of time in the first act is spent on teen hijinks (including a bizarre reworking of this ancient joke) in a barely disguised Meet the Meat sequence.

There's Scott (Ricky Paull Goldin), Paul's douchey best friend (his best analogue is Ted from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, and I'll bet my life's savings that the Blobmakers have seen that film); Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon, who has made something of a name for himself with Entourage), the leather clad motorcycle rebel; the town weirdo Reverend Meeker (Del Close); Diner owner Fran (Candy Clark); and her suitor, Sherriff Geller (Jeffrey DeMunn, perhaps best known as Dale from The Walking Dead. This won't be the last time he'll pop up somewhere you least expect it - he'll appear in Christmas Evil, one of our upcoming Census Bloodbath features).

This is a remake after all, so although most of these characters are original, it's obvious that Meg and Paul are the stand-ins for teenybopper heroes Aneta Coursaut and Steve McQueen. Oh, also a meteor crashes to Earth containing a ravenous Blob. That too.

(SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH) The movie follows the original for a while with the couple driving a Blob-afflicted old man to the doctor. Then the movie tips its hand when it freaking kills Paul dead in just about the most violent manner possible. We just got Psycho'd hard, guys. Our young hero has joined Marion Crane and Casey Becker in the special Heaven for top billed characters who die before the 45 minute mark. Now that the movie has thrown a wrench in the works, Brian Flagg steps up to the plate, teaming up with Meg to help save the town, but the movie has already proved how far it's willing to go - anything can happen.

He never lived to see the advent of the selfie. It's hard to tell if this is a bad thing.

It also proves how far gore effects have come in the last 30 years. This is still massively tawdry and cheap stuff, mind you. It's no The Thing, but The Blob is exactly everything a 50's style sci-fi horror flick transplanted into the late 80's should be - tremendous fun with a gonzo flair for increasingly outrageous gore setpieces.

A man gets his arm ripped off as the rest of him dissolves in the Blob, a diner worker is pulled into a sink drain, a woman in a telephone booth is completely engulfed. Faces melt, bones are crushed, and the Blob gushes around with gusto, squealing and thrashing and crushing townspeople with its enormous tentacles (a new and appreciated addition - this feels so much like all the best parts of a cheesy black and white monster movie).

The final third of the film has some commentary on the US government (the monster being a failed biochemical warfare experiment) and it's all well and good but the most important part is the middle, in which nothing much happens but various people around town getting Blobbed. This is fantastic and worth the price of admission even without the witty repartee and cute meta humor.

Blobbed.

Blobbed.

I regret to inform you that you've just been Blobbed.

Blobbed Nightmare on Elm Street style.

The Blob avoids the modern remake habit of grittifying everything (Imagine if you will: a grey and world-weary Blob wearing sunglasses and dissolving townspeople as revenge for his dead bride. He keeps going out of a sense of duty but can't shake the nihilistic idea that maybe it just isn't worth it anymore. He's the Blob this city wants but doesn't need anymore.) and embraces its camp pedigree. 

There was hardly a better time for sci-fi/action/horror camp than the 80's, and this Blob turns it up to 11. Sillier. 80's-er. Gorier. Blobbier.

There's a motorcycle chase.

Somebody actually says the words "Chew on that, slimeball!"

A manhole cover is exploded with a bazooka because everything explodes in the 80's.

When nothing is taken seriously it's really quite hard to be even a little scared, but it's even harder to not have a good time. 

Who doesn't have a good time at the movies?

Also, the film isn't shoddily made at all. (What?) In fact, the editing is even rather brilliant at times, keeping in mind the campy tone. The opening shot of a cemetery pans over to a rowdy crowd cheering on a high school football game; a particularly Blobby scene cuts right to a kid slurping up Jello; and Brian's attempt at an Evel Knievel style stunt is intercut with the cheerleading squad chanting "GO! GO! GO!"

Not quite Academy Award level work, maybe, but it shows that a lot of thought and love went into this film. And if you don't agree, you can go Blob yourself.

Body Count (and the very fact that it needs a body count is telling): 21; also half of the audience of the movie theater and a multitude of random townspeople.

TL;DR: The Blob is a perfect remake, capturing the tone and humor of the original but ramping up the visual effects with modern flair.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 1418
Reviews In This Series
The Blob (Yeaworth Jr./Doughton Jr., 1958)
Beware! The Blob (Hagman, 1972)
The Blob (Russell, 1988)