Perfect cast and a good story

Crappy film

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I have just finished watching The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Why this film has not won more awards and is not better known, is beyond me! This film, when one considers its technical achievements alone, is a milestone in ingenuity. In its handling of the concepts of the original film, it is a heartfelt homage. In its re-imagining of the original film, it is chilling. As one who normally doesn't like re-makes, I have got to say, "I love this film and will watch it over and over again!" Kudos to the director for making a great film that any fan of the original German expressionist film should love. Thank you David Lee Fisher! Kudos to Daamen Krall for bringing a palpable villainy to Dr. Caligari. While watching the film, the voice of Caligari reminded me of Vincent Price. A voice of gentle yet refined menace. Kudos to Doug Jones with his masterful performance of Cesare! His performance rivaled that of Conrad Veidt. Everyone involved in this film is to be congratulated on a work masterfully crafted and acted! Thank you.

First and foremost i love the original to bits, it was the first silent film i ever watched so you can imagine a feature length movie without dialogue was pretty strange to watch for me then.So what does a version with talking bring? Not really much at all. I was pretty pumped for this, the trailer didn't look all too bad and at first I was excited to hear that they were using the background from the original 35mm print.The backgrounds are composited pretty badly in a lot of scenes, especially my favorite shot of Cesare creeping along the wall, which Is a disaster and he doesn't look like he's touching the wall at all! (They should have built this set!) Doug Jones is a pretty good actor, but he doesn't even touch Veidts performance. He's just simply not scary, the terrifying shot where Cesare opens his eyes for the first time in the original film was severed here.The dialogue is really bad in a lot of places, sure its interesting to see it with dialogue if only for a minute, but comon! Overall id say average, it has a lot of faults but it also is pretty OK in some spots, the new shots are pretty cool. David Lee Fischer obviously didn't love this film enough to leave it THE HELL ALONE!

First of all, I'd like to state unequivocally that I have nothing against remakes. Many people seem to feel that great films are "untouchable," and any attempt to remake them is tantamount to sacrilege. I don't feel this way at all. A remake can be nearly shot-by-shot (like Gus Van Sant's Psycho) or have a very different story (like Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead), and still--I think--stand on its own merits, be enjoyable if it is well-made, and do nothing to diminish the existence of the original. That said, David Lee Fisher's remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a very, very bad film. The dialogue is poorly written, the acting is amateurish, and the superimposing of actors over scenes from the original film is not well executed. I was really interested to see this film based on the premise--original scenes from the silent version were rendered by computer, allowing modern actors to move across the old silent film scenery, along with dialogue and music--but the final product is painful to watch. Even though a lot of effort clearly went into making this film, the actors simply do not meld with the background most of the time. The famous scene where Cesare slides along a long white wall now looks silly, because it's clear that he's not touching it, and the digital shadows that have been created simply do not look natural. Another problem is the dialogue. It adds nothing new to the film, except to make slightly more explicit things that were fairly obvious in the original. I saw this film in New York (at Two Boots Pioneer Theatre), and the screening was followed by a Q & A session with the director. He admitted that he's never been able to watch the original film at regular speed in his DVD player, and he always fast-forwards through it because he finds it "slow moving," and figured he could improve on it. I believed him when he said that he's never been able to sit through the original at regular speed, since he also seemed confused about some very basic plot points and themes of the original. I think to remake a film, you should actually have seen it a few times, and have something new or interesting to offer. Anyway, the only positive thing I can say about this film is that the actor who plays Dr. Caligari (Daamen Kraal) was pretty good in his role, and Doug Jones makes an effective Cesare. Unfortunately, everyone else involved in making the film (especially the director) left a lot to be desired.

The remake of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" has all the poles holding it up. We have plenty of shadows, plenty of new camera angles, and more tension than the original masterpiece. Of course you are going to see some scenes which mirror the original. This just proves the love which went into the making of this soon to be classic. The most remarkable parts of this film are the reprisals of the original flick's backgrounds, and a fantastic series of performances, especially the new Caligari who is even more bad tempered and crazier than ever. The new film focuses even more on the sanity of the tortured Francis, who seems to be losing his grip with his own world as the film progresses. The actor who portrays the killer Caesare is eerily similar to the first film's sleepwalking stabber. The black and white flavoring really gives you the impression that this film might have been made in the late 30's than the new millennium. All in all, a terrific remake and a film no horror purist can resist.