"Diabolique" has the makings of a bad remake. They kept the French name for the title, it (slightly) changes the ending, and it's written by Don Roos, a writer/director better known for comedies like "The Opposite of Sex" and "Happy Endings." While "Diabolique" isn't better than the original, but it is good and a nice cast and some suspenseful moments fill it out. French actress Isabelle Adjani plays Mia Baran, a woman with a heart condition who is the owner of a boy's school. Her husband Guy (Chazz Palminteri) is the headmaster, who is abusive to Mia and openly has an affair with the principal Nicole (Sharon Stone, who looks hot). Sick of what they have to put up with, Nicole and Mia plot to kill Guy. The plan is simple (sort of idiotic, but simple);

They go to Nicole's house, bring Guy over, drown him in the bathtub, smuggle his body back to the school, and than dump his body in the swimming pool. Everything goes well, but the tension of the body being found is driving everyone crazy. Soon, the pool is drained and no body is found...And the women believe they're being blackmailed by an unseen presence, since the suit they killed him in turns up, as well as pictures of them hauling the body out of Nicole's house. One of the movie's creepiest moments (it was in the original too) comes when the cameraman that are at the school are filming the children and see, what appears to be, Guy standing in a window overlooking the school. In the original, it was the school picture where he was seen in the window but here it is just as effective. Kathy Bates brings a charming performance as the detective hired by Mia to find Guy, who suspects something wrong immediately. "Diabolique" does attempt to improve upon the original in making Stone's character more sexy, cold, intelligent, and witty. Roos has mostly dealt in writing comedies, so Stone has several funny lines ("You're dead, this is heaven, and I'm the Virgin Mary."). Palminteri is good casting for the husband and in this film he's a lot more sadistic than the original. "Diabolique" will, if nothing else cause people to gain interest in seeing the original (if they haven't already). But it is a worthy remake that's definitely better than remakes like "Psycho" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning." Stone is sexy,

Adjani is superb, Bates is great, and Palminteri is perfectly cast. The script is pretty solid, it's a good companion piece to the original, and it's worth seeing.



GRADE: B+