Cheesy ending is forgiven for an overall great horror movie

Rating: 10/10 (11 March 2006)

I absolutely loved this movie and thats actually saying a lot since I haven't seen a good horror movie since High Tension (I don't think its a coincidence that both movies have the same director). The opening completely caught me off guard with how fast and brutal the death scenes were and I was wondering if the movie would drop off after a great opening. I was wrong. It was a little slow for people who may get bored by a lot of character development, I know a lot of people in the movie theatre did. I liked it... but I like a lot of interesting and entertaining character development (especially since you rarely find it in a horror movie).
I had seen the original movie and remember being really shocked by it. The scene in the camper where a couple of the family members die also caught me off guard which is why it caught my interest. It got so brutal and disturbing and the first few minutes could have passed for a family drama. The scene when the father is hearing his named called in the darkness was one of the scariest scenes I had ever seen (still is). Thats why I was so shocked that the whole scene in the remake was still just as shocking and intense as the original. I still got scared s******* when the father was getting his name called in the darkness and still just as disturbed when all the chaos started happening in the camper.
I knew the movie would be brutal and bloody because Wes Craven was still producing it and he chose the director because he loved the bloody High Tension. The audience that was getting bored in the beginning while I was watching it was cheering, oohhing, and screaming by the end of it and I was doing the same.
The music was just right and the acting was top notch (I couldn't believe that the father was Buffalo Bill from "The Silence of the Lambs"). It was a great horror movie especially after the crap thats been coming out. The last movie I watched was "When A Stranger Call" and lets just say that Simon West could have kept that to himself. I highly recommend this movie for anyone that loves a lot of gore and relatable characters (not something you find that often in the same movie).
I did find the ending to be a little to over the top. I think it would have been fine if it weren't for the cheesy music (that was the only time I didn't like the music). It kind of sounded like that triumphant music that you heard at the end of "Cabin Fever" when the blonde dude thought he was gonna live and then got shot all to hell. I hated "Cabin Fever" so anything that brings me back to that movie cannot be good. But the whole movie really made me forgive those bad last two minutes. I'm beginning to think that Aja just doesn't know how to end a film well, but the rest of the movie makes up for the bad endings.
Overall good film but great horror movie that I would recommend to anyone. It's not one that you'll be able to forget as you walk out of the theatre. It sticks with you