Remake of the 80s horror classic will be a “bore”?
‘Kent’ is back, and this time he’s taken a look at “Terror Train”, another of these darn horror Xerox’s that seems to be the trend right now. So will be it worth the price of admission? or should you just keep an eye on the TV Guide to see when the original is airing so you can watch that instead? From the sounds of this reader review, it’s a case of the latter
Terror Train
By Kent Church
I must admit, I haven’t seen the original “Terror Train”. I feel ashamed. Anything with Jamie Lee is always worth a watch, but the movie is harder to find than Jimmy Hoffa these days.
When this remake was announced, I thought it mighta been kinda neat. A serial killer stalking partying teens on an old, spooky train. This thing could have been a tight 90 minute kill-fest.
It’s my unfortunate duty to report that Hollywood, once again, has let me down. Not only is this screenplay nothing like what I wanted. It’s simply another torture-porn effort, made to capitalize on the head scratching success of the “Saw” and “Hostel” films. “Terror Train”, now titled “Train” is everything that’s wrong with modern horror – and its nothing like the original.
Alana and her dopey friends are in Bulgaria (where Nu Image Films, the folks behind this flick has a studio – coincidence?) competing in a high school wrestling match. Afterwards, despite what their Coach says about missing their morning train, they go out on the town and get drunk.
At a party they crash, the group is ambushed by a fellow competitor with an axe to grind and end up late back to their hotel. They’ve now missed their train to the next match, but luckily, the Coach is waiting for them with Willy, his assistant. After taking advice from a spooky Russian woman, they catch the next train – an old, decrepit steam engine with more creaks and whistles than Castle Greyskull.
On board, the group settles in. Alana fights with her boyfriend, Todd (yawn) while their friends Sheldon and Claire try and score and get drunk. At the same time their Coach tries to get it on with the spooky Russian woman and Willy decides to drown his sorrows.
Alana, being the brains of the group (and I use that term lightly) notices something off about the passengers. All of them have injuries in some way, shape or form. The young Chinese boy in the room next to them is blind, there’s another guy who is a walking, talking real life Freddy Krueger and there’s an old geezer with a catheter bag. Why are all these people on the one train????
Anyone with a half a brain will know that there’s something bad going on here…and what it is. When Todd is kidnapped and hacked to pieces by a giant behemoth, we discover that (SPOILER!!!!!! SPOILER!!!!!) the train is a moving organ bank and that the spooky Russian chick and her juggernaut of a husband are slicing and dicing unsuspecting Westerners and selling their body parts on the black market.
Suspicious, Alana and her friends, along with Willy, begin a search for Todd. One by one they’re all picked off. Sheldon gets his dick chopped off so the old catheter guy can have it, Claire gets her legs removed, is tied a post and burnt alive – only after some nasty Bulgarian border guards urinate on her, and one of the group, AFTER being killed, is raped by a horny train worker.
In between this, we’re “treated” to gory, unapologetic scenes of torture where the heroes who we don’t care about get filleted. It’s obvious that Alana will come through in the end. There’s a ham-fisted subplot about her wanting to give up wrestling because she doesn’t want to fight anymore. Surprise, surprise, at the end she wants to fight…and she does. Not that we care.
The dialogue, while not “Saw” atrocious, is hardly inspiring. The leads aren’t much better. Their actions range from stupid (wandering Bulgaria at night) to obvious (trying to score b.j.’s at a party) to downright moronic (an 80 kilo weakling picks a fight with a 130 kilo machete wielding brute).
There’s also the baffling third act. It seems these organ replacement surgeries take place in a secluded, snow covered monastery. The monks are actually helping them. Why????? If you want the answer, you’ll be left disappointed, because you never get one.
Alana defeats her enemies in a gory fashion, and despite the fact others failed, she defeats the giant butcher. How? I’m not sure, since I stopped caring about page 60 of this 105 page death trap.
I suspect undiscriminating gore hounds will enjoy this, if the effects are top notch. Others will probably find this a bore. I know I did.
