boots all over the place
i've been thinking, just lately, about reboots. this is not, in truth, because i so very passionately want to think about reboots as it is because the current landscape of horror cinema makes it almost impossible not to. i suppose when i say reboots, in this specific context, i am talking about both legacy sequels and unnecessary remakes, which combined are the bedrock upon which much of horror has been built (what are the first forty years of horror cinema, after all, but endless permutations of frankenstein, dracula and phantom of the opera properties, all threatening to sue one another). it is certainly not a new thing, although i do believe there is a certain relentless quality to the current state of endless reimaginings which was not always the case. nostalgia is all well and good, but when it is a nostalgia that seems to supersede all else, and indicates a financial nerviness in the face of all but the most reliable IP, i begin to get very gloomy. it's not a new point, and nor is it particularly interesting, but the sop-like sensation of having, say, a buffy reboot thrown at us when fascism and genocide are rampant and no one can afford anything and nothing is going away feels infantislising to the point of ridiculous.
the implication, as always, that everything is broken and nothing can be fixed but here's the long-awaited sequel to the craft, written by four half-awake people and the robot from lost in space, designed to be played at triple speed while you do something else, is not one i find very stimulating. you have no power over anything and it's all getting worse but here's jamie lee curtis, again, and we've given her a gun, again. cunty slay diva and while you're at it why don't you reanimate the corpse of harry dean stanton for an alien sequel where someone says "game over man" and looks at the camera and we all cheer.
to misquote george orwell (i have done this before - it is my only joke): if you want a picture of the future, imagine a reboot stamping on my personal face, forever.
anyway, i don't have much of worth to say today, but here are some thoughts that i have:
- i have not seen the new instalment of i know what you did last summer (rendered as it is all the less fun by the refusal to fall in line with the intensifier-led sequencing of the series so far - i know, i still know, i'll always know - and call it i still definitely know what you did last summer and what's more i’ll always know and what's more i also know what you got your brother for christmas. this isn't to say that i'm not pleased to hear freddie prinze jr got a gig that wasn't the punky brewster revival or that i don't harbour a fondness for the i know what you did series at large, but honestly who has the time.*
- i was wholly unable to engage with the 2025 wolfman reboot, not for any real reasons of conscientious objection but because the tube poster's tagline of "protect your own", followed by the title, reminded me so irresistibly of the pauline quirke academy of performing arts meme that i could not think about the whole thing without getting a headache. PROTECT YOUR OWN WOLFMAN i shout as i storm out of another challenging meeting of the dark universe crisis management committee. and so on. (my wife informs me that this may in fact be less of a load-bearing meme for many than it is for me but if that is the case then what are any of you people doing here)
- i have mentioned this before, but the fact that they are remaking summarily unbeloved 90s wanking parable idle hands, with canadian scallywag finn wolfhard, for reasons, is such a deeply rogue move that i actually feel half-minded to support it.
- i keep forgetting they're doing frankenstein again. nice to know oscar isaac's still around, idk.
- the fact of whatever is going on with the scream franchise is no longer any of my business after the exceptionally cowardly decision to remove melissa barrera and that's all i have to say about that.
- i very much want to see bring her back, and also weapons, and i guess also the conjuring: last rites, which is not a reboot because it is a straight sequel and also because no one of sound mind could feel nostalgia for that particular piece of cinematic teflon, so there's that.
- i feel likewise exhausted at the prospect of practical magic and the devil wears prada reboots, which are not horror movies, and so beyond my remit, but my god.
*ok to be entirely fair my wife has just spoiled the ending of the new i know what you did last summer movie for me and i have to confess that what she has revealed to me is actually fairly cunty slay diva, so credit where it’s due.
