‘I feel like the one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest...’
In 1987, screenwriter Frank Darabont and director Chuck Russell combined to create A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, for my money the greatest horror sequel of all time. A year later, the two combined again for the 1988 remake of the ’50s cult classic The Blob. I’ve been wanting to watch this remake for ages and just never got around to it, but following Russell’s death as I write this in July of 2026, this seemed like the perfect time to dive in. Unsurprisingly, I loved it…
When a terrifying alien lifeform arrives in the small town of Arborville, California, a group of teenagers led by Kevin Dillon’s rebellious Brian Flagg and typical small-town girl Meg (Shawnee Smith) desperately try to stay alive. Meanwhile, a group of scientists led by Dr. Christopher Meddows (Joe Seneca) have their own agenda.
This is how you remake a horror film. The original incarnation of The Blob is campy, B-movie fun anchored by a very early performance from Steve McQueen. It’s fine. As I’ve said before, it makes much more sense to remake a bad film with a good idea at its core than it is to remake a film that was already a classic in the first place. That’s exactly what Russell and Darabont do here, and their talent, combined with some incredible special effects work from Tony Gardner (who would go on to design the helmets for Daft Punk), make for a film that is exhilarating, dark and mostly thrilling. There is a show-stopping scene inside a movie theatre predating both Gremlins and Inglourious Basterds by several years, and the special effects throughout are genuinely incredible. Just a few years later, much of the effects would no doubt have been handled using CGI, and this film would be completely forgotten.
The cast do good work; Dillon, best known for playing Johnny Drama in Entourage many years after this film, is convincing as a small-town hoodlum, and Smith, always an engaging onscreen presence, provides the film with some much-needed warmth. It helps that Darabont and Russell create an authentic world for the characters to inhabit. A small town being overrun by some kind of insidious evil is a very Stephen King conceit, and so it is unsurprising that Darabont, who went on to adapt King three times with The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist, gives this thing the feel of a King story – it’s not a million miles away from The Tommyknockers, or indeed The Mist for that matter.
The Blob is well thought of in horror circles but it deserves a wider audience. Russell never really delivered on the promise of Dream Warriors and this film, but they are so beloved in the horror community that nobody can deny that he has left his mark on the genre. Rest easy, Chuck.
