The question that ran through my mind as the credits rolled on this film was a simple one. ‘Did the world NEED a modernized remake of ‘Criminally Insane’ done in the style of Rob Zombies ‘Halloween’ with a budget that, bizarrely was likely higher than the original film, but somehow looks cheaper?…and i’ll be honest, I dont think the world did…

This 2016 remake of the original 1975 campy ‘classic’ is pretty much hobbled right out of the gate because they cant commit to a tone. The original film was clearly a campy horror comedy, aimed at being a bit gritty and grimey up front, but running a clearly self aware black comedy streak as an undercurrent…This film by contrast is leading with the grimey gritty vibes throughout…but rather than having the comedy layered into it offering a nice low key contrast to what we’re watching, instead it opts for short bursts of lowest common denominator ‘mandatory comedy’…what do I mean by that? I mean that randomly characters will pop up wearing thrifted bad taste clothes and purposfully bad wigs. occasional scenes will speed the footage up and add goofy music into the back ground. and the actual attempt at jokes or site gags are awful.

I would normally be able to overlook such abject attempts at ‘yuk-yuks’ if it wasnt for the fact that the film makers here have decided to be a bit edgy and have altered the original films plot with a couple of new additions that end up making the whole endeavour feel like a poor taste exercise more than anything else…

So the broad strokes of this film are essentially the key beats of ‘Criminally Insane’ we open in a mental hospital around lunchtime as Ethel is preparing to get her breakfast. However, just as shes about to tuck in, two mean girls steal her breakfast and smash it up, and then an orderly accuses Ethel of making a scene and sends her back to her room to wait for dinner.

While on the way back, one of the mean girls jumps her again and beats her up calling her a ‘fat bitch.’ bruised, Ethel returns to the day room, where a friend of hers gives her a chocolate bar she managed to sneak into the facility via a relative.

Next thing we know…BOOM, a simultaineous rape scene and octaganarian sex scene as Ethel is bound, molested and raped by two orderlies, and a random 60 year old woman has sex with a chef at the hospital. The doctor in Ethels care walks in and catches the orderlies and makes it clear he’s going to disciplin them the next day. But Ethel isnt taking that lying down, and after taking swabs and evidence of the event, she demands the doctor releases her, or she’ll sue the entire hospital into the ground.

The doctor takes some ‘secret bookshelf scotch’ necks a shot and arranges for Ethel to be released into the care of her…I want to say Aunt…because the actress playing ‘Granny’ in this verison is WAY too young to be a granny…in either case Ethel gets back to essentially a trailer park, where shes almost immediately berated for being fat, aaand then…basically the plot of ‘Criminally Insane’ plays out. only with one or two more rape scenes, somehow less gore than the original, less campy comedy, and a 3rd act plot twist that just felt uneccessarily cruel.

I didnt really vibe with this one. In fact, theres only two things I can say I liked, and thats Dixie Gers performance as ‘Ethel’ which I thought was absolutely superb and very much in line with Prescilla Aldens style of performance (honestly, shes a really great Ethel in this) and I can say that the direction and cine is probably some of the best to come out of a ‘Crazy Fat Ethel’ movie…but again, I dont think thats saying much as the bar for most of these movies was on the floor.

The script seems unusually mean spirited for the most part, with all characters involved either undergoing trauma, processing trauma or delivering trauma, I alluded to the fact this felt like a Rob Zombie adaptation of ‘Criminally Insane’ and it really kind of is, the amount of nudity and swearing in this films significantly elevated over the original, the gore is less than the original, but more intense, they’ve decided to give this film a mixture of modernised ‘reimaginings’ of the original ‘Criminally Insane’ score and hard alt rock. everything has a slightly subdued washed out look to it, some of the additional scenes feel unecessarily ‘Art housey’ which again, tracks with ‘Zombies’ random moments where his films suddenly veer into modernised grimey german expressionism by way of David Lynch.

The pacing is significantly worse than ‘Criminally Insane’ because the slight comedy undercurrent is missing…it means we’re basically spending 81 minutes with unlikeable or strange characters being depressed or murderous with no restbite or break. Im not saying they should have gone more farse. But I think theres absolutely a better way to handle this kind of film that would have given it the benefit of a technical boost, while maintaining or successfully translating Nick Millards original tones and directional notes into something actually engaging…as it stands, I dont quite know how they’ve managed it…But they’ve made a film about a woman who murders when she gets hungry…kind of boring.

The excessive rape, nudity and abuse across the runtime sucks what little fun could be left out of this film. Leaving an end product that just…isnt a fun watch. with mixed to poor dialogue, characters with poorly defined motivations, and aspirations that feel above its budget and station.

The direction is pretty basic, again, this thing has had a pretty nice technical boost. Millard had a vision but struggled to realise it. Brian Dorton seems to have the opposite porblem, he can keep on top of his cast and crew fine enough. But his vision just isnt engaging or original to me. It feels cribbed for lack of a better descriptive. and while I feel like he just about gets the cast on track with getting the script out. I just dont feel like this really stands out against any of the other low/no budget films ‘Wild Eye’ have made of this ilk.

The cine and edit are the same, shots hold out for the most part, but they arnt exactly inspiring, and in some cases, attempts to ‘art’ up the place just end up falling flat. The edit does the best it can with what its working with…but even with decent B-roll and coverage, its just kind of hard to make this thing come alive…

Add in that most of the performances are, not particularly enjoyable. The elderly people at the start of the film and Dixie are seemingly the only people who know what type of film this SHOULD be…and try to lead with that, with the film itself working against that style every step of the way…

Ultimatley; if im gonna watch a ‘Crazy Fat Ethel’ movie, im here for the weird cult/campy fun primarily. and the horror secondarily. This, to me, puts the cart before the horse. I can see what they were trying to do here. And I think a ‘straight horror’ take on this, if handled right, could possibly be weirdly compelling…But removing the self awareness from this series, really just leaves us with a pretty generic slasher thats bloated with bar scenes and arguments and very little else…I was not impressed.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/crazy-fat-ethel/