Straw Dogs

I saw this remake long before the original of the same name from 1971, and I have to say, it's not even close to as good the original. What is desperately lacking here is suspense and atmosphere. The bland lead actor James Marsden probably needs no mentioning, he will never be Dustin Hoffman. (45%) (03/04/2021)

If you don’t know the 1971 original, you’d see this as a decent thriller. The director works well with the characters (although not all of the casting decisions are commendable), the landscape shots are pleasing to the eye and the building of tension is alright. Even setting the story in the present day turned out well. For the young Twilight audience, this movie might be a decent experience (unlike Van Sant’s Psycho, which was a disaster). But fans of the original will wonder at every minute why they should watch this remake, as the story remains the same, but without Dustin Hoffman and Sam Peckinpah’s tricks. (01/22/2012)

The new Straw Dogs is a fairly decent but awfully pointless film. It’s even more pointless than other remakes, because there are already two versions of the same film, and one of them is only two years old. Yeah, I’m speaking about Deliver Us from Evil, an excellent Scandinavian film that I recommend to everyone. The new Straw Dogs I can only recommend to those who want to be on top of everything new that’s happening in the genre. It’s just a better average. (12/04/2011)

Quite suggestive filmmaking with an ingeniously deceiving direction. What initially appears as another dumb teenage killing road movie eventually turns into a rough survival slasher, where everything fits together as it should, the characters play for their lives, and the plot has unprecedented twists. I haven't seen the remake, but it doesn't bother me that much. This movie works excellently on its own. (03/03/2012)

Rod Lurie failed to properly create an atmosphere. It's nice that the film tries to approach us with a more modern concept, but it doesn't really matter because the old one hasn't lost any relevance. The beast can manifest in us at any time. Peckinpah used to use nudity and violence to underscore the importance of the film, but nowadays, filmmakers are afraid to do that. The new Straw Dogs is just a poor example of the direction these "mainstream" horror films and especially remakes are taking. Empty confessions that don't hold a candle to the original films. (02/12/2014)