User reviews

Alex Grant (Bobbie Phillips) is haunted by carnival clown Louis Seagram (Larry Miller) who murdered her mother in front of her as a child. Seagram gets out and ambushes her in her car. It turns out to be a dream. She runs her mother's dockside bar with her sister Sandra (Shawnee Smith). Sandra is always pushing Alex to sell the place. She falls for a mysterious stranger (Paul Johansson).

This horror has nothing scary at all. It's a series of dream after dream after dream. Larry Miller could have been a creepy scary clown if the movie actually tried to be good. This movie doesn't try. The bar set looks cheap. It's suppose to be on a dock and yet it has a brick-lined basement. The whole thing looks bad. I also hate that it's sold as "Wes Craven Presents". I don't know how much he got paid but it's not enough no matter what. I've seen worst but this is pretty bad.

It's hard to find a remake that actually does justice to the original,but this one is almost downright insulting.

Thre story has very little,if anything,to do with the one of the original.And whos idea was it to cast Larry Miller as the bad guy ?He is so terribly miscast.

One thing I noticed about all the positive reviews is that they say the movie should be considered a 'drama' instead of horror.Please tell me,why name it after a horror movie if it's supposed to be a drama ? I would never believe a 40 year old original could still outdo a modern remake but apparently it can.

Oh well, It was bound to happen. I finally saw the remake of Carnival of Souls. Was it worth it? In a word, NO! Forget the original set up about the lone survivor (Candace Hilligross) of an automobile accident, moving to a small town, and seeing visions of ghoulish people from the other side coming for her. This time around, A young woman (Bobbie Phillips), a victim of sexual abuse by a pedophile clown (comic Larry Miller) when she was younger, encounters the clown years later. He forces her to drive to the river and she deliberately crashes her car into the river.......you know the rest.

This movie is so terrible. It plays like a dirty USA made for TV movies of the week. The acting is similar to anything you would encounter while watching Melrose Place, etc. Wait til you get a load of what the people from the other side look like this time around. Whooo-boy. No expense was spared for the make up effects for these creatures.

I can just imagine the congratulatory slap on the backs the film makers received from each other. These bums probably think the remake of Psycho was better than the original. I think the audience for this movie is for those who think Urban legend, I Know What You Did This and Last Summer, etc. are great classics. I hope those "12 year old of all ages" enjoy the film. I sure as Hell didn't

I read a few months back, that Candace Hilligross was supposed to have a hand with the remake, but those around the making of the film back stabbed her off the production. I hope she has the last laugh when she sees the critical raspberries this film will rightfully receive.

The eleven year-old girl Alex Grant witnesses her mother being raped and killed at home by the carnival clown Louis Seagram (Larry Miller). Many years later, Alex (Bobbie Phillips) works with her younger sister Sandra Grant (Shawnee Smith) in the Mermaid Inn that was owned by their mother. Out of the blue, Alex is attacked by Louis that was hidden in the backseat of her car on the day of the anniversary of the death of her mother. She struggles with Louis and drives her car into the sea to protect her sister. Then she swims back to the shore on the area of a carnival. From this moment on, Alex has nightmares and daydreams with Louis. What is happening with Alex?

"Carnival of Souls" (1962) is a low-budget cult movie with a story that seems to be an episode of "Twilight Zone". "Carnival of Souls" (1998) is not a remake and only borrows the title and a small part of the original storyline. The plot is boring and totally predictable, sort of a combination of "Jacob's Ladder" with "Carnival of Souls". The result is an average and forgettable horror film. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Parque Macabro" ("Macabre Park")

What a waste of perfectly good film stock. This movie tried far too hard to be artsy instead of concentrating on finding a good script, director and actors. The performances were abysmal and wooden. This was a remake in name only incredibly misleading. I found my concentration drifting constantly because this mess wasn't worth my attention span. I admit I'm a huge fan of bad movies but this was worse than bad-it was completely uninteresting.

The pits! God knows why Wes Craven insists on slapping his name on the front of drivel like this, it's only going to ruin his reputation.

I've not seen the first film that this was based on so I can't compare them.(please someone do the honors & tear this film to pieces)

Far too many prolonged dream sequences got me reaching for the fast forward button, characters you don't really care about, gorehounds will hate it & a naff ending just about sums this film up. one out of ten.

This is perhaps the worst movie I have seen in my entire life, and I have seen some really bad films. This movie was extremely boring, had zero plot, and no decent acting to speak of. The limited special effects are nothing noteworthy, either. I had a hard time staying awake, and when it was over, I wished I had fallen asleep instead of subjecting myself to such torture. I can't believe that Wes Craven would put his name on such a dismal failure. If you were thinking of watching this film, don't waste your time or money. Rent something better, such as the original Carnival of Souls (1962).

there aren't many movies that are so bad you can not even have fun watching them and laughing at obvious mistakes or bad taste. This movie is way beyond the Ed Wood kind of bad movie. I mean I would rather spend two hours watching the summer family vacation video of someone I don't know that having to endure this again.

A movie couldn't have gotten worse than this. It was boring and very very dumb. It had a lot of potential but it all went down the drain. The ending was also very stupid. The movie was hard to understand. Skip it. I saw it on TV and I wish I could have been surfing the net for those two hours.

Rating: 0/10

Note: After viewing this movie it will make you want to vomit.

I completely understand why so many people did not get what they expected from this film. It WAS NOT what you would expect seeing WES CRAVEN's name and with the "horror" marketing.

I actually liked this film and agree with those that call it a "psychological thriller". That's EXACTLY what it is. Very understated. It deals with the mind set of Alex (Bobbie Phillips) and her coming to terms with a traumatic childhood. It is not a teen horror movie...NOT EVEN CLOSE. But I would highly recommend it as a psychological thriller for more mature and intelligent viewers.

Also, I must add, I thought it was a terrific remake because why would they copy the original exactly? The main character is dealing with the same kind of internal demons as in the original but it's a New story...If you want the original...Watch the original!

I saw the original Carnival of Souls many years ago, when the film was re-released with some additional 'lost' footage reinstated. I remember being severely underwhelmed by the movie, finding it tedious in the extreme. I know I am in the minority for disliking this 'classic', but I truly think it is highly over-rated. I haven't seen it since.

When this 'reimagining' was lent to me on DVD, my initial reaction was 'no thank you', but I changed my mind on seeing Shawnee Smith's name in the credits (I've been a fan of hers since The Blob in '88). On seeing the words 'Wes Craven Presents' I almost changed my mind again, but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. And, whilst it may never be revered as a classic, this version has enough going for it to make it worth a viewing. The story may be confusing, the ending lacklustre, and the main 'baddie' not scary enough, but I still found this to be more enjoyable than the original.

Eleven-year-old Alex witnesses her mother's murder at the hands of a kiddie-fiddling carnival clown named Louis. Her testimony puts him in jail for twenty years, but you can't keep a bad clown down and two decades later he shows up wanting revenge. Held hostage in her car by Louis, knowing that after he has dealt with her, he'll go after her younger sister, Alex floors the gas and drives herself and her captor at top speed into the sea. Then things get weird.

From this point on, director Adam Grossman mixes reality and fantasy, blurring the boundary between the two and confusing the audience in the process. Sequences snap from reality (or what we perceive to be reality) to fantasy in the blink of an eye, and vice versa. Alex has strange hallucinations; hideous demons pop up in the strangest of places, as does her old pal Louis.

These strange goings-on don't make a lot of sense, but they are quite entertaining, and at no point did I find myself regretting my decision to watch the film. Both Bobbie Phillips (who plays the grown-up Alex) and Shawnee Smith (who plays her sister) are easy on the eye and give reasonable performances. The demonic creatures that appear out of nowhere are very unsettling and the film is worth watching for these alone (they reminded me of Chris Cunningham's disturbing videos for Aphex Twin). If only Louis the carnival clown had been half as frightening as the demons; his blonde wig and crappy make-up are lame and as creepy movie clowns go, he is a disappointment.

Fans of the original have slated this film, describing it as a travesty. Although I wouldn't exactly recommend this version myself, those who haven't seen the original may find enough to like to warrant giving it a go.

Spare yourself and see Herk Harvey's original film. The director's cut is particularly good. This movie loses the ideas of the original, and I'm sorry, but Larry Miller is not menacing. I'm not sure whose idea it was to try to 'reimagine' this movie, but it certainly doesn't work on any level. If I hadn't seen the original, I would have been very confused by what they were trying to say with this one.

Worthless time waster that has a central character whose predicament is so obvious from the get go that what follows can only be described as interminable! Add to the mix a horrible script,ham fisted direction and some of the most inane and ludicrous dialogue ever put to film and you have one of the worst remakes ever made--make that one of the worst movies ever made,as this has little to do with the original!! See the brilliant original instead of this abomination. Executive producer Wes Craven has done much to destroy the horror movie genre and this is his piece de resistance. Again, this is totally worthless and completely absurd!

Seeing that this remake of the cult classic was coming from Wes Craven, the director of such classics as "The Last House on the Left", "The Hills Have Eyes", and "Scream", I thought it might be okay. But I was so very wrong. If I learned anything from this, it is that titles with "Wes Craven presents" at the beginning of them usually aren't very good movies.

The film centers around a woman who is in a car accident whose life is turned upside down and everything around her seems to be dreamlike - her life completely spins out of control. What's real and what isn't? "Carnival of Souls" is one of those movies that has the protagonist caught up between flashbacks, dreams, and reality, which irritatingly confuses the viewer time and time again. These flashback sequences to the main characters childhood (and the murder of her mother) happen so frequently, that the audience has no idea what's going on. One minute, the main character is in her house, the next she's running from a rottweiler in an abandoned carnival, then she's on a boat having sex with some guy she barely knows. What is that? Don't get me wrong, flashback and dream sequences are okay in movies, but they have to fit in with the rest of the movie. They can be effective if used properly, but in Carnival of Souls the only effect it has on you is to make you want to stop watching, because by the middle of the film you are completely confused and have no idea what's happening.

I will say that this movie had some potential, but just completely lost it. I've heard the original is brilliant, I hope it's much better than this garbage. An extremely confusing mess. 3/10.

Make no mistake; I'm talking about the remake of one of my all-time favourite films, not the original, which I cannot recommend viewing strongly enough. There's a kid involved, the kiss of death if there ever was one. And I guess Larry Miller is supposed to be the evil lead ghoul. He looks more like the banker who won't give you that second mortgage you need, which is certainly not nice, but it hardly qualifies as a job description for one of hell's minions. And while the titles say "Wes Craven Presents...", it shouldn't stop there. How about, "Wes Craven Presents "Wes Craven's Carnival of Crap""? Featuring some banker or someone equally scary. Thanks a lot Wes. Great carnival.

This film was a horrid waste of a dollar. The whole film can be "understood", if that's the word, by watching the first and last fifteen minutes. Apparently a remake of an earlier film, but it's so much like _Jacob's Ladder_ it's uncomfortable - some of the visuals could have been dubbed directly from it.

When I saw this on the shelf at my local video store, I thought, "Oh, it's Wes Craven, the director of Scream, one of the best films of the 1990s, and it's a horror as well. It's got to be good!" How wrong could a young lad be? This was a horror but for all the wrong reasons. I do not think I have ever been more bored in my entire life. You can really overdose on the hammy acting, the extremely unscary clown and the annoying music in the background. It has a plot that was so thin and lame that you could hardly be aware of its existence at all. For most horror films that I watch, you can guarantee that they won't scare me, but at least they are funny!! "Carnival of Souls was not even that. It was pitiful and had no redeeming qualities at all, apart from the end credits when the pain was all over. I have watched some garbage in my time so it is unbelievable to hear myself say that this is the worst film I have ever seen.If someone paid me to watch this film again, I think I would prefer to keep my sanity.

First, learn why a good chilling film is interesting. Watch the original COS after midnight with the lights out and on an old cold tube driven b&w TV. Goose pimples rise up, chills navigate your back, and the popcorn was really good.

Now watch the remake. Begin sticking your fingers down your throat at any time. The feeling is identical to watching this mess. You will realize instantly that the taste in your mouth is not a dream, but nausea, now do your comparison.

Lesson learned, leave well enough alone or don't mess with classic material and stick with making remakes of The real housewives of NJ.

I remember my brother having this 1998 movie on VHS back in the day, but oddly enough I never got around to watching the movie before now in 2022. Why? Well, I never did really find the movie's cover all that interesting, so I never took it upon myself to sit down and watch it.

Then in 2022, I had the chance to do so, and I figured well since it said "Wes Craven presents" on the movie's cover, then I might actually have missed out on something, so I opted to give "Carnival of Souls" a chance.

Turns out that I hadn't been missing out on anything grand here. The storyline told in "Carnival of Souls", as written by Adam Grossman, was just so-so. I mean, sure it was archetypical late 1990s, or at least had that particular vibe to it. But the storyline just never really sunk its claws into me, and thus I never really got fully into the movie.

There just wasn't much proper contents to the storyline. In fact, the storyline turned out somewhat befuddled and semi-confusing, as if there wasn't a proper red thread throughout the entire movie.

The movie had Bobbie Phillips, Shawnee Smith, Larry Miller and Paul Johansson on the cast list, among others, so there are some familiar faces at least. A shame, however, that the script and storyline didn't really offer the performers all that much material to work with.

I found "Carnival of Souls" to be a mediocre movie, watchable for sure, but it is by no means a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time. And it certainly was not a movie that had anything grand to offer, so I hadn't really been missing out on anything here. Not is "Carnival of Souls" a movie that I would recommend fans of the horror genre to dash out and get their hands on.

My rating of "Carnival of Souls" lands on a three out of ten stars.

I have been a fan of Bobbie Phillips' since I first saw her on "Murder One". Therefore, I had to see "Carnival of Souls". Having never seen the original, I rented it and watched both. I didn't particularly like the first, but it had an eerie quality that kept me watching. I watched the new version and after the first 15 min. or so saw the similarities. It was also quite reminiscent of Jacob's Ladder. I didn't love it, but I found it interesting. I wouldn't have classified it under horror and whoever does the box cover should be shot for listing "Showgirls" by Bobbie's name. She has a lot of other, better work to be credited from before and after "Showgirls". I love the way Bobbie changes her look and voice in her roles. Her voice is higher and softer than in her most recent heroine roles such as "The Crow".

The film is a journey through the psyche of a woman (Alex) with a traumatic past and emotional scars. There are numerous switches between realities which result in Alex thinking she is losing her mind. Viewers can be forgiven for not understanding what is going on, but that is kind of the point! What you are supposed to understand is the emotional roller-coaster ride... It kind of reminded me of The Butterfly Effect, but without any control and more random (continuous) jumping through memories/realities.

Also worth noting is that I watched the movie a second time and realised that there are several cryptic messages in the dialogue throughout this movie, which help make the ending easier to accept.

Bobbie Phillips was great in this movie and she had to be as the entire plot is driven towards the viewer having sympathy towards her character. The rest of the cast was adequate (excpet the guy who played Michael, he was pretty bad). The effects weren't great and should have been better for a movie made in 1998. I wouldn't say it was a bad ending, but it definitely could have been better. However, it was generally well scripted and well directed.

This film isn't really scary at all, so I wouldn't recommend it to traditional horror fans. It's not by any means "easy viewing" either, so I would recommend it to people who like to think about what they are watching and have patience to let a story unfold. Also fans of psychological thillers.

Not a classic by any means, but I enjoyed it a lot and will most likely watch it again in the future. 7/10