MovieChat Forums > Spoorloos (1988) Discussion > The Remake was Awful. The Original, Me...

The Remake was Awful. The Original, Merely Bad.

posted 14 years ago by The_Great_Pantubo
2 replies | jump to latest

This film is little more than an ending in search of a beginning and a middle.

OK, OK, we get it -- being buried alive is about the worst thing ever, and it is shocking to see it happen. But you really need a movie to precede it.

No, it is not OK to invent a character who willingly takes a knockout drug from a psychotic killer "just to see what would happen." No, this is not justified by the fact that he can't get over his girl's disappearance. This makes no sense. None. None whatsoever. If you find this anything less than completely insane, there is something very wrong with you.

And no, it is also not OK to have someone decide to kill just because his daughter was impressed with him. He's nuts, I get that. But you might as well have the script say that his dog told him to do it. The whole pseudo-philosophy about predetermination, etc., was really quite embarrassing. Was that supposed to be insightful somehow? If you thought it was, well... you know the rest.

I had the misfortune of seeing the remake awhile ago, and heard that the original is better. Turns out, that's like saying hospital food is better than airline food. The original is less painful to watch, because it takes itself less seriously, and you can easily dismiss it as some kind of low-budget Euroweenie experimental film. And somehow the subtitles do manage to slightly conceal the absurdity of everything that is going on. But it's been a long time since there was a worse script, in any language.

[–] DobertReNiro 14 years ago

Good god, i pity you.

You say you saw a crappy movie a while back which was the remake. THEN you say you decided to watch this film because you heard it was better, which you agree with (even if slightly). Now, instead of going to the remake page, the movie you found to be worse, you decided to come here and whine and cry about how bad they both are. That's fine, it's your opinion, but LOL at you for the way you go about things.

Also, guess what... crazy doesn't need justification, it's just "crazy". People that are crazy do silly unexplainable things for NO reason at all. Stop trying to understand why a crazy killer isn't doing things rationally, that's absolutely silly. "That doesn't make any sense!! How could that crazy MURDERER do something so nonsensical!?!?" - duh.

A man who is bored to death with his life, family, job etc is capable of going crazy and/or doing crazy things.

A man who has lost everything he holds dear and has nothing to live for is ALSO capable of making crazy decisions.

Get it?

You seem like a smart human, so it's ironic that your post comes across as very... well, ignorant.

[–] baseballfanjm 14 years ago

I'm not sure why you're so quick to judge to movie for depicting a sociopath acting like a sociopath. Serial killers routinely act much like the one in Spoorloos. Trying to go down that path is quite silly, as the movie is actually perfectly accurate in that regard.

As for the man more or less committing suicide... think about it, that's more or less what it was. It was clear at that point that knowing what happened to Saskia was more important to him than living.

Look, no film is immune to criticism, but the ones you offer are no evidence whatsoever that the movie is bad. If you're going to claim that in the thread title, bring some better evidence to back up your proclamations.