Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

As a horror-freak spectator, I must say I did not enjoy this film as much as I'd hoped I would.Angela Bettis was the best part for me. I loved her in all her previous parts in Girl Interrupted, May and Carrie, and find her an excellent actress, way underrated. In this film, we got to see her playing a different role, rather than the disturbed neurotic she usually plays. She did so beautifully, and I hope directors learn to appreciate her as she deserves!The characters were also great. Realistic, original, varied and convincing. I found myself curious and compelled by each of their stories, and wanting to know more about them.Unfortunately - that was it. The main story wasn't all that interesting, too many questions left unasked rather than unanswered. Not enough explanations about the supernatural aspect, and not at all enough information about the killer. Speaking of the killer - he wasn't all that scary, not at all. As for surprising twists? If there were any, I missed them. The ending was unclear, and anticlimactic. For me - the second I have to use that term (anticlimactic) to describe the ending of a horror film, it means it wasn't that good.I didn't actually see the original film, and at first didn't even know this was a remake. However, I've seen my share of slasher-horror films, and this one certainly isn't one of the best. I've seen some very positive reviews for this film, and I admit to failing to understand why. A matter of taste I guess.Can't really recommend this film with a clean conscience, unless you're a fan of the original one, or of Angela Bettis.

Although I write in this commentary solely about the building in which the horrible crimes are happening, notice that this is already a spoiler - if not THE spoiler of the whole movie. This is why I "flagged" this text.It is not by change that the candidates for "haunted houses" are exclusively old buildings. "This house is history, and you are a part of it", the maintenance supervisor says in Tobe Hooper's "Toolbox Murders" (2003). Practically only old houses possess these creaky beams, that stale odor that comes out of the walls, the characteristic noise when the wind presses against the windows, the howling of an old elevator, etc. But that is not all. Before the unfortunate functionalism started to make Tabula Rasa with each trace of architectural generosity, houses often had strange hollow parts in the walls, little closets that lead wide into nowhere, "crawling spaces" between ceiling and next higher floor, mysterious huge and sometimes more-level attics and cellars, etc. And so it is in "Toolbox Murders": "There is a whole townhouse in this building", the historian in the movie says. It turns out that from each apartment there is a little space lacking, but so that these parts are connected by a steep stairwell in the wall of the house. (Note: The building is not the Ambassador Hotel, as indicated in IMDb. The Ambassador Hotel was torn down two years before the movie was shot.)

In all fairness, the 1978 version of this movie already wasn't exactly a great or classic one by any means but at least it had as a redeeming quality that it got made in the '70's and therefor had a great typical distinctive '70's movies atmosphere. This movie its only redeeming quality is its gore even though there isn't an awful lot of it in it.This movie chooses a different approach and story than the 1978 movie and therefor this movie is more of a re-imagining than an actual remake. The only thing that has remained the same is the setting of an apartment complex and a killer who uses the content of his toolbox for his killings. This movie uses a more supernatural approach of things, while the original was a pure slasher.Since it's a re-imaging, it obviously also does some things better, compared to the original. The movie picks a main character right on from the start, so the movie is more coherent with its story and characters.But yet it's not a better movie. The movie had some real good potential with its concept but it just forgot to ever get tense. For an horror movie it's also lacking some serious scares and while the build up is good with its suggestive camera work among other things, it just never pays off in the end, since a climax is never really reached in any of its sequences. It's not that this movie is a complete bore to watch but its concept just screamed for a better execution. It's funny how Tobe Hooper has never made a decent horror movie again ever since after "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", unless you still believe that he also directed "Poltergeist". It's true that the movie gets better toward the end, when things finally start to take off but it's too little too late by then already to still fully save this movie.The movie is definitely dark but I wouldn't exactly describe it as atmospheric. You can say that the atmosphere is too dark, which ruins some of the movie its tension. It's one of the simples things you can do as an horror director; make ever sequence look really dark but this just doesn't necessarily make a movie automatically tense or scary as well.The acting is slightly below par, though definitely still better than the average typical B-horror movie entry. Angela Bettis, Rance Howard and Juliet Landau are all some semi-good and known actors.Not an horrible movie, just not really worth seeing either.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Toolbox Murders (2004) * 1/2 (out of 4) Remake of the 1970's cult classic has director Tobe Hooper trying to recapture his golden days but failing due to a horrible script that borrows loosely from the original but doesn't improve anything. There's plenty of gore to go around but the main character is way too annoying. I was really hoping Hooper would get his act together but sadly we'll have to wait for his next film, which we've been saying for the past two decades. The 1978 version isn't much better but it at least has a certain charm to it.