Review of Straw Dogs (2011) by Sol H — 06 Dec 2011

Personally I think the original film is close to being a masterpiece. It's a fantastic study of right, wrong and the grey area inbetween - at what points you start to question your values and so forth. It's a rare example of a film that I genuinely consider to be a difficult watch, but I love it for that. It really gets under your skin and makes you think.

And then there's this remake. Taken on its own merits, it's a bog-standard, conventional, modern thriller. And not a good one. It's not completely awful - I have seen worse - but it's bad. Not to mention how awkward its sincere, xenophobic depiction of Southern America is to watch.

But this is taking the film on its own terms and frankly, in my opinion, a remake has absolutely no right to stand on its own terms. If you're going to remake a film it has to stand alongside the original. It either has to explore new ground or it has to improve upon the original. It can't do what this film did which is to retread the same ground whilst completely ignoring all of the depth of the original and glossing over anything that might lead a person to, God-forbid, think. The rape scene, for instance, goes from a powerful and somewhat harrowing work of art to a scene that seemingly serves no purpose other than to make it crystal clear to the auidence who the bad guy is. And it's intercut with a scene of a someone hunting so that you know when the guy cums - cos like, the hunter shoots his gun, get it?

The worst thing of all, however, is the remake's message. By garbling the ideas and themes of the original so badly, they've managed to turn it into something that (and I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but it seemed to be so) has the message that if bad stuff happens, people just need to stop being little pussy bitches - they need to man up and fight. This isn't a good moral and it's one that completely misses the point of the original film.

It's not quite the worst film I've seen this year (The Theatre Bizarre), but it's without doubt my least favourite. It's quite possibly my least favourite film of all time. I hate this film and everybody involved should be ashamed of themselves. Especially you, James Woods. You're better than this.

2/10.