Coventry This rather dumb, I even daresay downright imbecilic, flick is a prototypic example of why people righteously hate horror movie remakes. And yet, I started watching it with a very open mindset and actually hoped for a pleasant surprise. Why? Because, for once, it's not just another redundant remake of a bona fide genre classic that totally doesn't need an update version. Like "Nightmare on Elm Street" or "Friday the 13th", for example. Why should they be remade? The original "It's Alive", on the other hand, was an extremely low-budgeted and often clumsily put together obscure cult gem from the early 1970's! That's an ideal film to bring to the attention of wider horror audiences through a remake. Unfortunately, it turned out a total failure of a film, with an insubstantial script, a total lack of tension and atmosphere and embarrassing gore/splatter effects. Bijou Philips gives birth to a baby 'only a mother could love'. The offspring immediately slaughters all the hospital staff in the delivery room and, since it's so exceptionally large and overdeveloped, it also regularly needs extra snacks like psychiatrists, bimbo blond friends and stoner boyfriends. Mommy carefully cleans up the mess junior makes (and doesn't even seem to worry that much) and daddy doesn't seem to have clue of what's going on. The monster baby is mainly kept off-screen, maybe for the best, and all the CGI butchering effects are pathetic. "It's Alive" couldn't even scare an infant. The cute Bijou Philips tries hard to make her character plausible, but the script is simply too idiotic. Larry Cohen, writer/director of the original as well as numerous other cult classics, co-wrote the script of this inferior remake, strangely enough. Perhaps he deliberately sabotaged the whole thing, hoping people would take the effort to check out the original again instead. Good job, Larry, it worked!

David Fowler Abysmal remake of Larry Cohen's '74 genre classic. The original started like a bat out of hell and kept going from there. It had genuine excitement, scares, tension, a logical script, and characters that behaved like rational, real people. In this abortion of a remake we have a film that is painfully slow and unpleasant (for the wrong reasons), like a snail with diarrhea. It even manages to make the delivery room massacre a lifeless non-event....btw, blood is OPAQUE not TRANSPARENT. It looks like the walls have been hosed down with cherry jelly. Every single change from the original is for the worse. Why add Frank's little brother? He serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever in the screenplay. He has no effect on any of the events in the film and just mopes aimlessly....and what purpose does the character being in a wheelchair serve??? Stupid. In the original the baby escapes from the delivery room and both parents are scared shitless of it....like real people would be. Here, the baby.....who now only looks monstrous at the moment of attack....curls up on it's mother's incised belly and goes to sleep. Stupid. The new Lenore knows that the baby is a monster, but wuvs him so vewy, vewy much that she just covers up the killings. Even mother love only goes so far. Stupid. The baby never attacks when his father and young uncle are around to notice anything. Bad writing AND Stupid. Tiny Bijou Phillips is obviously supposed to have been able to lug multiple bodies down the cellar steps and hide them....all by herself. Stupid. Out of nowhere....and for no discernible reason other that that it's the climax of the movie and they wanted the house dark....the baby suddenly knows how to shut off the electricity in the house. How would it possibly know how to do this and why would it logically want to??? Stupid!!! The movie is only 80 mins., but I could continue pointing out tangible stupidities for days. The baby from the original had a great design and you actually got to SEE it. This is not the case here because the 2 second "good look" you get at the little bastard's face at the climax is rendered in such astonishingly horrid CG that if it had been shown earlier the audience would have hyperventilated from hysterical laughter and mercifully missed any more of the movie. Phillips' decent performance and a nice, but derivative score by Nicholas Pike are the only faint bright spots on this celluloid tumor. I am appalled that Larry Cohen so much as dotted an "i" in this screenplay. He should be mortally ashamed. This "It's Alive" was born dead and rotting.

Michael_Elliott It's Alive (2008) ** (out of 4) Remake of Larry Cohen's cult classic has parents Lenore and Frank (Bijou Phillips, James Murray) happy to welcome in a baby boy but there seems to be something wrong. During the C-Section everyone in the delivery room was murdered with the exception of mommy and baby. Soon others start to go missing and you just know it has something to do with the baby. This film, co-written by the original film's director and screenwriter, ended up going straight-to-DVD here in the U.S. and that's pretty understandable because this film is pretty so-so from start to finish. I'd imagine this one here would have been a tough sell as not too many people want to watch a movie about a killer baby and even if they did this film doesn't offer up too much. I think the biggest problem here is the screenplay. For starters, we're suppose to connect with the mother yet the screenplay doesn't do her any favors by making her rather stupid and someone we really can't care for. She begins helping the baby by covering up the murders, which some might say a lot of parents would but at the same time she never stops and thinks about the thing being a killer. Another problem is that all of the violence is kept off screen and we never get to see the baby doing any of the killings. I'm sure this was done so that the film might have a chance of getting released but this makes the film rather bland especially when compared to the original. The screenplay does add a few good touches including keeping the baby normal looking instead of the mutant from the original film. We also get a rather interesting reason as to what's wrong with the kid and why he's doing all the killings. I think it would have helped the film had this been brought up at the start so that we could have known this going through the film and they could have done more with it. I thought both Phillips and Murray were fine in their roles with the supporting players doing fine work as well. No one is going to win an Oscar for their work but it's good enough for this type of film. In the end this movie really doesn't work but it's not a complete failure either. The movie is just here and there's really nothing special or bad about it. I'm not sure who it will appeal to other than those who need to see every horror movie out there or those who just want to compare it to the original.

homecoming8 "It's Alive" is a remake of the 70's classic by Larry Cohen (which was executive producer on this one). It even spawned 2 more sequels, "It Lives Again" and "Island Of The Alive". I saw those movies once and curious what the remake would be like. Well it is bad, really bad. It starts of great with a massacre during the birth (although it is not actually shown) but the story goes rapidly downhill from than on. It also makes no sense at all, especially the actions of the mother after she discovers that there is something seriously evil about her baby. (the baby kills a pigeon and she acts like the whole thing didn't happen and is supposed to be normal ??) The killings are rather stupid, there is even a laughably CGI effect of the baby's little arm crushing to a victim's head. Very cheaply done. The baby is not really shown (very little budget on special effects). Maybe they tried it but it was so bad that they actually cut it out before theatrical release. I saw the so-called UNRATED version, no idea what had to be cut out for the theatrical version. Could not have been much...