A gang of homeless misfits fight for survival in this dull reboot of the 1987 American horror film

This is less a remake than an echo of the 1987 American cult horror flick of the same title. As in the previous film, it contains lashings of melted flesh courtesy of practical effects, and a plot engine wherein evil powers are trying to kill off the homeless. This time though the action has been transposed from urban America to a dystopian Cape Town, South Africa, where there is seemingly no middle class: just propertied rich folk making jokes about crypto currency over their phones … and everyone else.

The grubby majority live on the streets, picking through trash to survive. Assorted gangs get into internecine squabbles with each other when it’s pretty obvious the real foes are the rich. That goes especially for Mayor Mostert (Warrick Grier, a cackle and a hoot) who has devised an airborne poison that liquifies people after an especially icky prelude in which they grow brightly coloured balloons of skin filled with multicoloured slush which burst and dissolve, leaving corpses that look like like they had a grisly night out with Body Worlds’ Gunther von Hagens.