Nasty, cynical sorority sisters (mostly played by TV actresses like Lacey Chabert and Michelle Trachtenberg, and their house mother is played by comedienne Andrea Martin) are targeted by an escaped loon who killed his family long ago in the very house the sisters currently call home. Look out girls, Billy’s come home…but don’t worry, he’ll call in advance!
The original, lean and mean 1974 film is held near and dear to my heart, a genuinely unnerving low-budget chiller that paved the way for films like “Halloween” (that’s right, “Halloween” came a few years after it!), and containing one of the most effective and frightening endings in cinematic history. So this film didn’t need to be remade, it already worked the first time. After this 2006 film from the usually reliable Glen Morgan, I really wish it hadn’t been, either.
Lacey Chabert, certainly knows how to deliver a sarcastic one-liner. But that’s it for (faint) praise I’m afraid. The girls, whilst smokin’ hot, are unlikeable and essentially interchangeable. The film also messes up the dead body in the rocking chair scene and the crucial creepy phone calls from the original. Blasphemous!
The biggest mistake, however, is showing us the villain…early. And in detail. If you’ve seen the original film, you’ll know why this is such a dumb-dumb move, and if you haven’t, suffice to say the original was far less obvious about such things and this remake is severely crippled as a result. A back-story wasn’t needed, and here it’s awful (a yellow-skinned, incestuous, cannibal killer? Oh, God). Replacing the original ending with one of the worst endings I’ve seen in many years, is the final nail in the festively decorated coffin.
OVERALL SUMMARY
I can praise the film for trying for a different story structure to the original but the result is a crashing failure . Bah humbug!
