Terror Train (2022): All Aboard!

To be honest, I didn’t even realize that Tubi had made a remake of one of my favorite Jamie Lee Curtis horror films originally released in 1980.  I figured this would be a good movie to watch over the New Years holiday since the original took place on New Years Eve, not realizing the remake takes place on Halloween, which I think is a mistake, Halloween already has a lot of horror films, in addition, the snowy setting of the original was wonderfully creepy with some great imagery.

The plot of the remake adheres really well to the original.  Three years prior, a group of young college students are hazing a classmate named Kenny (Noah Parker), and their joke goes horribly wrong, and causes him to have a mental breakdown. Alana (Robyn Alomar) blames Doc (Matias Garrido) for Kenny’s mental collapse but remains in his circle of friends.  In the present, the same group is hosting a costume party on a train which has no communication to the outside world and one by one their group begins to die. Who is taking revenge for Kenny, and can they stop them before it is too late?  Watch and find out!

For a remake, this wasn’t too bad, I have seen a lot worse. The writers were smart in realizing that the original story worked and didn’t change very much when telling the story.  They were also smart in realizing that a portion of the audience would have seen the original, so they did change who the murderer is, removing that character completely from the script.  It was still predictable, but a fun slasher / whodunit movie to watch.  What they failed to capture was the wonderful performances of Jamie Lee Curtis and Hart Bochner as Alana and Doc from the original movie. Robyn does an okay job as Alana and if I wasn’t comparing her to the original, I probably wouldn’t have felt the way I do.  There was a sincerity that was missing in this version that made it hard for me to connect.  Robyn plays her as caring and compassionate, but the stopping every so often to take “selfies” and a lot of the dialogue made her character seem fake or forced and not truly remorseful of what happened.

The same with Matias Garrido’s Doc, they kept the homoerotic aspect of Doc’s relationship with his best friend Mo (Corteon Moore) who is also Alana’s boyfriend but unlike the original where it was subtle, the remake  spelled out, in plain English, using dialogue to make sure the audience gets it instead of it being derived from Hart’s nuanced performance. There was just something missing from Matias’ performance when compared to Hart Bochner’s that just made that aspect seem superficial.  Tim Rozon does a good job as the creepy magician but just didn’t have that magic spark (pun intended) that David Copperfield brought to the same character in the original. David had a mysterious vibe, where Tim felt more like a predator stalking young women. Overall, this is a serviceable remake, but if you are given a choice between this and the original, I’d choose the original every time!