orangehenryviii

..and they want it all back. Even Brad Pitt. Seriously, not that bad a movie for directorial debut, could have been edited down to a great Am Ex commercial, but jeez it was just two hours of being bludgeoned by every Guy Ritchie trope, like being in a Blockbuster and having that section collapse on you, while you're pinned there with the VHS tapes still slowly teetering off the top shelf and pelting you in the face: Snatch "ow!'" Revolver "ow!" RocknRolla "ow!" , Lock Stock and Two Smoking "ows!".

And boy, Sandra Bullock really phoned it in on this one. I have to admit I had a pretty good time though for the first 30 odd minutes while my popcorn lasted but I had to duck out early after they halfway mark.

Well this movie was not exciting enough to be a train wreck, just more of a migraine, the kind where you feel vaguely like throwing up and just pray for the noise to stop.

Shot in Bulgaria with a cast that is basically what you get when you try to get Hollywood actors in Bulgaria on a Netflix budget, and bogged down by off-the-shelf suspense music, an apparently nonexistent script and every ham-handed horror trope in the book, it's the kind of movie where everything is noticeably off, right down to hair and wardrobe.

It is no small wonder the original directors bailed a week into filming. The replacement director is a pony tail guy who makes energy drink commercials for a living. An energy drink is actually a good idea if you want to stay awake through this flick as it's a full 49 minutes into the 81 running time before a single chainsaw gets fired up.

There is not much entertainment to be had here unless you might get a kick out of watching a busload of Austin hipsters getting sawed on, but that's hardly worth sitting through an hour of snores for. Go watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) instead, it's the only really good one out of the franchise.

And by the way, no... Bulgaria does not look like Texas, at all. Of course it doesn't.

This is not even close to as good as the David Lynch version which, as a fan of the books, I felt really brought Frank Herbert's world to life and at least made a noble effort to cover as much of the huge story arc as it could.

Plus Lynch's film was just beautifully alive, darkly vibrant and weird.

This version had its cinematic moments but as a whole felt flat and uninspired., and ultimately fell apart in the last half hour, which felt like a lackluster TV episode made while the head writer was on holiday.

Almost no effort was made to cover the story from the books- it barely covers an eighth of the ground of the first film. As a Frank Herbert fan I was confused at the disinterest the filmmakers apparently had in the story and what their objective was in remaking this film. I mean really, why would you remake a David Lynch movie if you have no interest in the story?

On the plus side, Oscar Isaac and Rebecca Ferguson delivered strong performances with the rest of the cast at least better than middling.

All in all, this would have made a great TV miniseries but really lacked the vision for the big screen, and in particular for a remake of such an iconic cult classic.