Le Carnaval des âmes

Carnival of Souls (1996)

* (out of 4)

Worthless remake of the 1962 film has a young girl seeing a man brutally murder her mother. This man just happened to play a clown at the local circus and years later the girl, now an adult (Bobbie Phillips), begins to be haunted by visions of him. I'm not one who is against remakes as I usually like seeing how a different artist puts their spin on a familiar story. This remake only borrows a few elements from the original film with writer-director Adam Grossman making up the rest on his own. What he added is pretty silly stuff and it's really a shame because I think a straight remake could have been much better. The entire subplot dealing with the pedophile clown just adds up to nothing in the end and if you are familiar with the original then the biggest twists are already going to be known. While watching the film I couldn't help but think that perhaps the director's original story might have been a good one but at the same time you can just tell that it wasn't getting on film. The entire movie is meant to make one wonder about what's really going on but you never really have this happen because it's just so poorly made and executed that you really don't care. Another major problem is that the film lacks any real atmosphere and there's certainly no scares to be had. Even what murders are in the film are all forgettable and in the end you really start to wonder what the point of the film was. Phillips offers up a fine performance but sadly she isn't given much to work with. Larry Miller plays the clown and to say his role is weak would be an understatement. The beautiful Shawnee Smith appears briefly but she too is wasted. Wes Craven served as Executive Producer but it seems he was just cashing a paycheck and not really paying attention to anything that was going on the screen.