A recent article by Elisabeth Rappe on Cinematical neatly summarizes a comparison and contrast between the two projects. I just don’t know what to make of it. Such an approach is novel and seemingly opens up a plethora of new horror films from literary classics. Oliver Twist would have been a hell of a lot more entertaining if the little goody-two-shoes was a shambling corpse instead of a boring twit of a kid. Imagine Moby Dick if the white whale was an enormous undead monstrosity, bloated with pestilence and rotting muck, and Captain Ahab was some sort of swashbuckling foul-mouthed whale zombie killer! Modern classics could even be touched; I’d love to see a version of Watership Down where the brave bunnies are instead fleeing the remnants of human civilization, now turned into hordes of roaming flesh eating monsters. Silflay hraka, embleer-rah!
Jane Austen was asked for comment but was unfortunately found to be quite dead. Let’s all assume she’d approve!