WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
This article has actually been a long time coming, possibly middle of last year, but I hadn’t been able to get hold of the original film until now. I’ll be honest, I had big questions over Elijah Wood taking on a horror role but I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed.
Opening Scene
Straight away, the two films differ and it’s very rare that I would be saying something like that as a lot of the time remakes specifically like to regurgitate the same opening scene. However, this isn’t the case here and I’m kind of glad about it. In both films, we don’t see Frank’s face straight away, however in the 2012 version he spends more time driving around, like he’s looking for his victim. However, in the original the first victim is dead within the first 2 minutes.
Type of Victim
I actually found it quite interesting that the original film has a higher body count than the remake as it’s a common theme for remakes to go almost overboard with the violence – like they’re trying to outdo their predecessor. OK, the difference is only one but it’s strangely significant in my opinion. More so because the only reason Elijah Wood’s Frank kills a man is because he’s collateral damage more than anything, wrong place wrong time sort of thing whereas in the original its like he chooses to kill both halves of the couples he encounters.
Also, and this could be a sign of the times, all of Frank’s victims actually have character names in the remake whereas in the original film none of his victims are credited with names apart from one, Rita.
Remorse and Regret
I’m trying to work out if, in the original film, they’re trying to make out that Frank is schizophrenic. The reason I mention this is because it seems in this version, compared to the remake, he actually seems to show remorse for his killings. For example, he wakes up at the beginning as if the murders on the beach were a nightmare and he also vomits after killing the prostitute. I feel like in the remake, instead of him having schizophrenia, Frank thinks he’s talking to his mother all the time.
Oedipal Complex
Here’s something I think we look more into in the remake than the original film. All we hear about Frank’s mother in the 1980 version is that she died in a car crash but we might get a little hint towards the end that he may have killed her based upon his reaction at her grave side and his hallucination of her rising up as a zombie. Now, in the remake, the way he speaks to Rita (while he has her bound on the bed) is like he’s apologising for killing her in the past “I never wanted to hurt you, but you made me – didn’t you? Yes, you did.”
Frank and Anna
I wonder if it is the change in times that made them decide to change the opening interaction between Frank and Anna. What I mean by this is that in the original, even though the scene seems a little odd and out of the blue, it is Frank that instigates the first interaction between them – maybe because he knows she took a picture of him in the park. However, in the remake, they meet when Anna takes pictures of Frank’s mannequins – I guess what I’m trying to say is maybe it was seen as ‘proper’ in the 80s for the man to ‘make the first move’ so to speak.
What’s interesting in the 2012 version is that Anna already has a boyfriend whereas in the original it seems that her and Frank actually start a relationship. I wonder if this is why he kills her in the remake, feeling like she’s led him on somehow to get what she wants. Well, that and the fact that he practically gives himself away!
A Sense of Fear
Here I mainly want to focus on Frank’s death scene. First of all, I want to give the remake credit for even attempting a similar scene because the way it was done in the original made me genuinely uncomfortable. In both versions Frank’s demise, according to him, takes place at the hands of all the women he has killed throughout the film. In the original, the women go as far as ripping his head cleaning off his neck! You can hear the cracking and snapping of his bones. In the remake however, they remove Frank’s limbs – which unfortunately just makes me think of Elijah Wood’s demise in Sin City 2 which slightly took away the effect of the scene for me
A Difference in Perspective
This is possibly the main thing I prefer about the remake to the original. The whole film is shot almost as if you are Frank Zito. The only times we ever actually see his face is in reflections or when he’s dying right at the end of the film. I’ll be honest in the fight with Anna towards the end is a little bit disorientating because of it, almost like you’re playing a first-person shooter game but it just gives a completely different atmosphere to the whole film.
In Conclusion
It’s very, very rare that I say what I am about to but I think it’s obvious from everything I’ve said that I actually think these are both pretty good films in their own specific ways. Obviously as the years move on, styles change and sometimes that can be negative but in this case I think it’s a positive as it meant the director could take a different spin on the film.
