An examination of the cinematic plague that is Michael Bay.
 
Whenever I hear about a filmmaker ruining a beloved geek treasure, two names are generally at the center of the discussion.  The first is Uwe Boll who specializes in taking compelling videogames like Alone in the Dark and Dungeon Siege and creating film treatments that discard all the intelligence and character from the source material and replace them with generic, clichéd plots that only an ADD-addled-adolescent could watch with any kind of enjoyment or satisfaction. 
 
The second is Paul W.S. Anderson who turned the venerated Resident Evil franchise into a cheesy made-for-TV special and is single-handedly attempting to destroy both the Alien and Predator film legacies by taking the scary, extraterrestrial creatures and transforming them into WWF Wrestlemania contestants. 
 
Both Boll and Anderson have been the subject of much ridicule, and deservedly so, but one name that seems to have largely escaped attention is Michael Bay.  Looking at his previous films there's plenty to be annoyed with given that this is the man who subjected audiences to both Armageddon and Pearl Harbor.  More recently however he has started to try his hand at remaking iconic films, specifically horror movies.
 
Being the horror movie geek that I am, I was intrigued when he decided to do a "reimagining" of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  It had been almost thirty years since the original Tobe Hooper masterpiece first graced screens and I thought a different take that incorporated some modern day social and political changes might make an interesting version of the film.
 
Then I saw it.
 
I don't know how you can make a grimy, rundown farmhouse look slick and glossy, but Bay managed it.  All the gritty charm of the original had been scrubbed clean and what remained was a trite, gutless shell that could've easily been substituted as one of the myriad sequels to soulless clunkers like Urban Legend or I Know What You Did Last Summer.
 
After Massacre Bay remade Amityville Horror with similarly disastrous results and then went on to make a Texas Chainsaw prequel, which ratcheted up the viscera to try and appease gore hounds but ended up being nothing more than a pointless splatterfest ala Eli Roth's hilariously, stupid Hostel.  The latest and perhaps most egregious entry in the Bay remake saga came in 2007 when he released The Hitcher, a redo of the ’86 road film that starred Rutger Hauer as a deranged hiker who preys on the good samaritans who stop to offer him a ride.
 
Bay’s version of the film wasn't merely mediocre, but downright abominable.  The acting, plotting, and dialogue were so brain-dead that it made you want to reach through the screen and throttle the characters.  There was absolutely nothing from the brilliantly tense original that wasn't turned into a ridiculous farce making the new film play more like a parody than a tribute.     
 
Honestly I don't know why Bay hasn't been called out more by horror fans.  Maybe it's because he's usually the producer rather than the writer or director of these projects, but make no mistake Bay is the one getting these films made.
 
For me the straw that broke the camel's back came when I read this article in Variety.  Now I know that Nightmare on Elm Street is pretty tame by today's standards, but it was the first horror movie to really scare the crap out of me as a kid.  The whole fear of falling asleep gave me wicked insomnia and I tended to see Freddy in the shadows at night.  Though the series fell off considerably in the latter films, the initial sequels, barring the second, were equally effective and gave me nightmares for quite some time. 
 
Getting over the terror I felt at the Elm Street films and learning to enjoy being scared by movies really fostered my affection for horror flicks.  I grew to love the bad puns and gallows humor that Freddy employed and looked for similarly clever elements in other fright films.  It was the beginning of a passion that is with me to this day and in many ways I have Nightmare to thank for it.
 
Thus the discovery that Bay had gotten his inept little paws on the franchise left me with a sickly feeling that I equate to eating a jar of rancid mayo that was left to bake in the hot, hot sun.  This sensation was further exacerbated when in the same article I learned that he had also been busy rebooting the Friday the 13th series.
 
There's no point in wondering why these movies are entrusted to someone like Bay, who has no tenure in the horror genre.  Ineptitude is clearly not a barometer that Hollywood is at all concerned with as evidenced by the continued careers of Boll and Anderson.  Bay knows the industry and can pump out films at a rapid pace, which seems to be good enough for the majority of studios these days.
 
My only hope is that auteurs like Tim Burton and Guillermo del Toro and actors like Nathan Fillion and Johnny Depp can help elevate the industry since those in charge of green-lighting these pictures clearly don't seem to care one way or the other.
 
And while it may seem strange to hold up the often-disregarded horror genre as a measure of quality, I think that the so-called “lowbrow" corners of cinema have the opportunity to provide a greater insight into sensitive and controversial topics that most higher-profile pictures are unable to touch on. In the 50’s and 60’s horror films were the subversive flicks that mirrored the times and I think they have the ability to be that again.
 
If we ignore the crap the studios try and feed us then it may force them to reevaluate what people want from a horror film and more importantly what they expect.
 
-Quoth the Raven

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