Animals Run Amok Week 2: breaking news!

FROM THE FINAL GIRL ACTION NEWS HEADQUARTERS!

Thanks to Steven of The Horror Blog for cluing me into a post over at Cinematical about the upcoming let's hope it falls through all the way to the deepest bowels of Hell, Naomi Watts or no Naomi Watts remake of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Why on Earth would anyone want to remake The Birds? Ignore the fact that this is Michael Bay we're talking about, who already took a giant dump on the legacy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Why, they're remaking it because they've got a brand new angle to explore! Says Cathy Schulman of Mandalay Pictures:

We think we have a very contemporary take. In the original, the birds just showed up, and it was kind of like, why are the birds here? This time, there's a reason why they're here and (people) have had something to do with it. There's an environmental slant to what could create nature fighting back.

Now, most people seem to be up in arms over the basic...sort of...ridiculousness of that idea, not to mention the fact that yeah, no shit- the birds in the original movie attacked without reason and there was no explanation...and that's partially why film is so damn frightening.

My point of contention, however, is that an "environmental slant" isn't a "contemporary take" at all- it's a theme that's been explored in animals run amok movies from Day of the Animals to Kingdom of the Spiders to virtually everything in between. Please, someone send a copy of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" to Mandalay Pictures stat!

Unless, of course, by "contemporary take" she meant a "30-year-old take".