“That castle is filled with evil.”
So, you want to remake a Stuart Gordon film? Well, that’s not a bad idea in and of itself. Let’s see, you’ll want to stick to the Big Three: Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Castle Freak. I mean, no one’s gonna care if you remake Dolls or Space Truckers, right? Okay, Re-Animator is probably too iconic for anyone to want a remake. There’s a loose remake of From Beyond called Banshee Chapter, so that’s off the books. So that leaves us Castle Freak. Great! We can shoot most of it in one location in Eastern Europe for pennies, plus it’s gotten a little more cultural cachet thanks to Stuart Wellington of The Flop House podcast banging the drum for it. Okay, kid, Castle Freak it is. Oh wait, before you go, I have to remind you: don’t make it a total piece of shi – oh, they’re gone already? Well, hopefully they know what to do.
They did not know what to do.
Stuart Gordon’s 1995 Castle Freak is by no means high art, but it does rule, which in the gory, schlocky corner of the horror world that Gordon occupied are two concepts than can (and often do) co-exist. A remake was probably inevitable, as remakes often are, but god how I wish this weren’t that remake. Castle Freak (from now on, unless I specify otherwise, the title will refer to the 2020 version) is so amateurish, insipid, and boring that it makes one wonder if there was a Producers-style grift going on behind the scenes. It makes Gordon’s look like a classic, and keep in mind that Gordon’s film went straight to VHS. Watching Castle Freak is such a frustrating experience because it’s not even bad enough to laugh at, it’s just bad enough to piss you off.
The problems start at the very beginning. After an admittedly cool credits sequence, we’re introduced to the worst people in the world, which for some reason are the main characters of the film. There’s our nominal heroine Becca, her awful boyfriend John, the token other girl Shelly, plus some others that don’t really need a reason to be in the film. The worst offender is, sigh, The Professor, played by Chris Gulast in a remarkably dreadful performance. He’s wearing glasses that are clearly non-prescription, delivers every line with the same wooden inflection and at the same volume, and waxes profound about the multiverse as if he’s the first person to ever think about it. (Unfortunately, the Professor lives to the end of the film.) The cast doesn’t deliver a DTV performance; no, it’s something more along the lines of what you’d see in a high school play.
The essential plot of Castle Freak – which is a very, very, VERY loose adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Outsider” – never made any sense, so I won’t ding the film for that. Shortly after Becca is blinded in an incredibly safe-looking accident (the airbags don’t even go off), she finds that she’s inherited a castle in Albania from her estranged mother. Sure, fine, it’s a horror movie, I don’t care. The castle actually looks pretty cool, but it would look even better if this weren’t filmed with cameras checked out from the school’s AV department. It’s nice that they didn’t shoot this on a green screen, because the few shots that were done on a green screen look awful.
Becca’s whole demeanor has changed after being blinded – she dresses like a schoolmarm now – but John’s hasn’t. He only shows the slightest bit of contrition for behind drunk behind the wheel, and he’s trying to stay away from booze, but he’s still an asshole. Jake Horowitz couldn’t add dimension to this character with a gun to his head (it’s not entirely his fault, though; the script is just awful). At least in this regard Castle Freak is trying to stay true to the loose plot of Gordon’s film. Clair Catherine, as Becca, can only convincingly play blind about 30% of the time, but in that 30% she’s actually not bad. She’s definitely the most sympathetic character in the film, but Castle Freak stacks the deck in her favor. I call this the Midnight in Paris approach: if you want to make your main character sympathetic, just surround them with cartoonish monsters with no redeeming qualities.
Castle Freak has more ambition than Gordon’s version, I’ll give it that. To be fair, Gordon’s budget was probably comparable, and he wisely scaled back. This version has more of a direct connection to Lovecraft’s greater mythos, but it also just seems like fan service. No one expected a direct adaptation of “The Outsider,” but that doesn’t mean we want to be bombarded with the Necronomicon, Miskatonic University, Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, and the Great Old Ones. (There’s also a post-credits reference to Herbert West, the titular Re-Animator.) Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see cosmic horror done right, and if 2019’s Color Out of Space can teach us anything, it’s that it’s possible to riff on a Lovecraft story and still produce something not only worthwhile, but also kick-ass and scary. I don’t doubt that the creative team behind Castle Freak are Lovecraft fans, but they’re really punching above their weight class here. The cast simply doesn’t have the chops to sell a story with implications that huge. Beyond that, the ending more or less rips off the ending from Cabin In the Woods.
To the film’s credit, the titular freak looks pretty good. (She’s not given a name.) I like that the freak is gender-swapped this time around, which leads to a truly bizarre sex scene. This film has the same twist as the original: Becca and the freak are twin sisters. That’s one of the only things I liked about Castle Freak; that, and watching the freak step on John’s head until it bursts like a grape. That’s really not enough to move the needle on my feelings toward the film as a whole.
Castle Freak is clearly a passion project: it was produced by Fangoria, and premiered on Shudder. This is by and for horror fans. Barbara Crampton, star of Gordon’s version, is an executive producer and has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo (you can wear a cloak, Barb, but there’s no hiding those iconic golden tresses). So what went wrong? The screenwriter, Kathy Charles, is talented, having also written the far superior Jakob’s Wife. I guess what it comes down to is that the writing, directing, cinematography, and acting are all terrible and there’s no convincing reason for this movie to exist. But hey, if it gets people to seek out Stuart Gordon’s Castle Freak, that’s probably the best outcome.
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