Stage Fright (2014)

Read my review of the original here.

And Jim’s review because we accidentally picked the same movie here.

Trailer: 

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: A dangerous-looking stage frightens local punk rock band Velvet Buttlips. 

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• Wow, Minnie Driver? Really? What happened? Or was she never really that good, just likeable? I guess we’ll never know.
• Anyway, she plays an operatic singer who finally catches her big break at like age 52.
• I assume the stage she’s on is the stage of these frights.
• There’s a killer in a mask in the opera, and you know what? I bet he is also a real killer in a mask. Just my women’s intuition.
• Yeah he stabs Minnie in the throat and mouth. I guess he wasn’t a fan of her singing.
• Now it’s 10 years later and kids are singing on a bus. Is this a musical? A spoof? All of the below?
• So far they’re singing about this kids singing camp where the sing songs. There’s a few humorous lyrics about being perceived as gay, but it’s hard to write about singing.
• They’re putting on the same play, “Hunting of the Opera,” that Minnie Driver was doing when she got kilt. Oh and Meat Loaf is like the stepdad of Minnie’s two kids, Camilla and Buddy, who are cooks at the camp. I bet the killer shows up again!
• This Camilla looks a lot like Dakota Johnson without the merkin. So far.
• Well you got your red herring gardener, that’s not fun.
• It’s weird that the play’s kabuki mask for the phantom looks a lot like Meat Loaf. I bet that doesn’t come into “play” later.
• I’m getting bored, so I hope someone gets brutally murdered soon. But I say that at every play. Which is why I was so pleased during the bloodbath when I saw School of Rock recently.
• So this is trying to be humorous, but the humor mostly sucks, which is always dull.
• A costume girl puts a punch of pins in a styrofoam head, I guess that’s a Pinhead reference? The demon monster, not the Marty McFly band.

• This rehearsal montage has gone on longer than the entire run of Cats. The musical, not the movie musical.
• So Kabukiman goes after the horny director, who gets a big hook in his foot, then horny director gets pushed over and his foot breaks in half. Why wouldn’t his knees buckle first? In all my experiments that’s exactly what happened.
• So Camilla’s brother and this other stagehand creepy teenage white boy look exactly the same and it’s very confusing for my old eyes. 
• I don’t know if I missed a no cell phones allowed rule at this camp but all the campers run to a pay phone for some reason. Maybe if that was explained the one pay phone thing wouldn’t bother me so much, but I don’t want to look back. Never look back.
• The kids are concerned about the horny director’s murder and such, but Meat Loaf needs a hit production and a positive review from a critic to keep the doors open, I guess, even though there are like 500 campers there? Perhaps the camp is only 66% full, but two out of three ain’t bad.

“Hot patootie, I’m an asshole!”

• So he leads them all in a motivational song and it works, just like when he convinced everyone that climate change wasn’t real and mask mandates were the work of Nazis.
• I guess the last half hour of this is all the musical, and only one person has been killed so far. For crying out loud…
• Not that I’m personally complaining for the movie’s purposes, but if my daughter attended this camp and during the play her boobs were exploding out of her costume I’d be very uncomfortable with it.

Kabubi

• The screeching Kabukiman is really irritating. He’s finally started killing more people at least, but where did he get this second kabuki mask from?
• These backstage kills aren’t particularly creative, and Kabukiman is kind of ruining the movie with is unfunny screeched one-liners. It’s kind of like Phantom of the Paradise if that movie made you want to impale yourself on a rusty flagpole.
• Oh, it’s Buddy, very shocking, as it could’ve only been him or the boy who looks exactly like him.
• Turns out Meat Loaf killed Minnie Driver, but didn’t we all know that already?
• So why did Buddy kill these other campers instead of just Meat Loaf?
• Meat Loaf gets hit in the head with an iron skillet a few times, but that doesn’t affect him because his brain is made of his namesake, so he stabs Buddy and we don’t have to hear him screech anymore.
• Oh here’s the scene where a bloodied Meat Loaf grabs Camilla, which was heavily featured in promotional images for this movie, which ruined everything.

“And we’re glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife!”

• Meat Loaf gets sliced. Back into hell for you.
• Then the play is over, and the audience gives a standing ovation, not because the play was good, but because the play is over.
• Holy shit Dan Levy?! Why wasn’t he in the whole movie? He would’ve been amazing as Camilla!
• And finally, Camilla is now on Broadway, doing what her mom refused to do because she was killed and all.

Final Thoughts: This was fun in a few places, a slog in others, but overall I appreciated that it did something a little different with the musical theatre aspect, even though they could have leaned even harder into that and made it entirely a musical. Basically, it’s Sleepaway Camp plus singing and minus a dong reveal. 

Score: 5.5 Loaves of Meat (out of 10)

Which was better?: I think in hindsight I may have scored the original a tad high, but its style and gore were a little more to my liking, so I would give it the edge over the remake, but not by a whole lot.