I first heard about this movie back in 2009 when they were still working on it and I was one of those people who were actually looking forward to seeing it but then it seemed like they canceled it for a while due to the delays and lack of updates but that all changed just recently when I found it on demand. Apparently it was only released a few years back with zero advertising. It was promised that this would be a good quality remake of Ed Wood's "worst film of all time" but somehow this remake is far worse than the original.
At least the original felt like an inventive idea and contained only a small cast. This remake contains like fifteen subplots and nearly fifty characters which made the whole narrative hard to follow and this was made even worse by the film's pacing. Some scenes are very dark and serious like something out of a J.J. Abrams sci-fi thriller but then the next scene would be so gross and childish, it would make you think you accidentally sat on the remote and switched it to some stupid Adam Sandler comedy. The pacing is so inconsistent, it makes the day/night graveyard scenes in the original look like Citizen Kane by comparison.
Additionally I don't really see what the point of this remake really is. Originally the whole hype was that they were going to make the movie that Ed Wood would've wanted to make if he had the budget but that's not the movie we got. It borrows a couple of story elements from Plan 9 but aside from that, it's just another cookie-cutter zombie flick you can find in a cheap dvd bin at the store. The one and only thing that sets this apart from all those movies is the fact that it's called Plan 9. If it had been called anything else, critics would be bashing it to pieces just like all the others. You may as well call it a remake of Night of the Living Dead and it wouldn't make any difference. The whole movie is just way too standard and I think that's the complete opposite of what Ed Wood wanted for his movie.
The production value might be better than the original but the direction is horrifically misguided. For some reason they felt the need to cram in as many jokes as possible within a single scene which results in some parts of the movie being dragged out way longer than necessary especially during that pointless truck monologue at the end.
It seems like whoever directed this was just some ironic hipster who traded the original film's sincerity for cheap meta humor and spent way too much time trying to make cute little nods to the original along with other notorious "worst movies ever", a clichéd label that gets thrown around way too often by film snobs who haven't even seen that many movies. "Oh ha ha! The town's called Nilbog!" This is almost the same level of entertainment I would expect from a crappy Channel Awesome movie and that's pretty bad. I guess if you're a fan of Rifftrax (which I'm not) then maybe it'll keep you entertained but I would rather just stick with the original.
At least the original felt like an inventive idea and contained only a small cast. This remake contains like fifteen subplots and nearly fifty characters which made the whole narrative hard to follow and this was made even worse by the film's pacing. Some scenes are very dark and serious like something out of a J.J. Abrams sci-fi thriller but then the next scene would be so gross and childish, it would make you think you accidentally sat on the remote and switched it to some stupid Adam Sandler comedy. The pacing is so inconsistent, it makes the day/night graveyard scenes in the original look like Citizen Kane by comparison.
Additionally I don't really see what the point of this remake really is. Originally the whole hype was that they were going to make the movie that Ed Wood would've wanted to make if he had the budget but that's not the movie we got. It borrows a couple of story elements from Plan 9 but aside from that, it's just another cookie-cutter zombie flick you can find in a cheap dvd bin at the store. The one and only thing that sets this apart from all those movies is the fact that it's called Plan 9. If it had been called anything else, critics would be bashing it to pieces just like all the others. You may as well call it a remake of Night of the Living Dead and it wouldn't make any difference. The whole movie is just way too standard and I think that's the complete opposite of what Ed Wood wanted for his movie.
The production value might be better than the original but the direction is horrifically misguided. For some reason they felt the need to cram in as many jokes as possible within a single scene which results in some parts of the movie being dragged out way longer than necessary especially during that pointless truck monologue at the end.
It seems like whoever directed this was just some ironic hipster who traded the original film's sincerity for cheap meta humor and spent way too much time trying to make cute little nods to the original along with other notorious "worst movies ever", a clichéd label that gets thrown around way too often by film snobs who haven't even seen that many movies. "Oh ha ha! The town's called Nilbog!" This is almost the same level of entertainment I would expect from a crappy Channel Awesome movie and that's pretty bad. I guess if you're a fan of Rifftrax (which I'm not) then maybe it'll keep you entertained but I would rather just stick with the original.