As we enter spooky season, here are eight horror movie remakes tried to improve on movies that were quite good to begin with.
Sometimes even a very well-made remake just can’t compete with the grimy DIY spirit of a low-budget horror movie that goes on to become a classic. And some big studio films, like Psycho, deserve to be left alone.
We live… hopefully… and learn. Here are eight horror movie remakes nobody really needed.
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Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Columbia Pictures
We love Candyman veteran Tony Todd as the lead. We love makeup maestro Tom Savini as the director. But this movie just wasn’t necessary, because the 1968 original is — in its DIY, low-budget, black and white simplicity — perfect.
This remake of George A. Romero’s hugely influential genre classic isn’t awful so much as it is kind of pointless — especially with Romero staying on as screenwriter and executive producer.
While the story remains basically the same — a group of survivors hole up inside an abandoned farmhouse during a zombie attack — the original’s unnerving, documentary-style realism is replaced with a generic horror flick atmosphere.
This time, Barbara (Patricia Tallman) isn’t a fragile woman scared for her life, but an accomplished killer of the living dead. While the zombie makeup effects are noticeably improved (thanks to Savini, no surprise), this version loses the impact of the shocking, powerful finale of the original. (Which is, by the way, on our list of 12 Movies That Made More than 100 Times Their Budget.)
When it comes to horror remakes, we’re always going to prefer a movie that improves on the best aspects of an imperfect original — like 2004’s Dawn of the Dead — over a film that tries fix what ain’t broke.
The Haunting (1999)
DreamWorks Pictures
With this horror remake, Robert Wise’s chilling 1963 haunted house movie (based on Shirley Jackson’s acclaimed novel, The Haunting of Hill House) is transformed into a big-budget Hollywood disaster. The movie centers around the conflict between a team of paranormal investigators (Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones among them) and the foreboding mansion in which they are determined to spend several nights.
The original Haunting is a masterpiece of implied horror, as very little in the film is actually seen. Instead, the unnerving sound effects and disorienting camera work merely suggest the scares, to terrifying effect. By contrast, this, one of the more misbegotten horror remakes, replaces the understated scares of the original with CGI effects that aren’t effective.
Directors of horror remakes — and all remakes — should look at this film as an example of how CGI can take audiences out of a movie. This one arrived in that awkward dawn of a new millennium era when CGI was possible, but not exactly convincing.
The Wicker Man (2006)
Warner Bros. Pictures
Some might say there’s no need to re-imagine the 1973 Christopher Lee cult classic, which is the epitome of creepy, slow-build horror.
Yet, due in part to Nicolas Cage’s ability to keep a straight face while saying the most absurd lines, the movie provides a kind of perverse fascination. Cage stars as a policeman who discovers a secretive community while investigating the disappearance of a young girl on a mysterious island.
We also like Twin Peaks veteran Angelo Badalamenti’s score, as we like all Badalamenti’s scores.
Last House on the Left (2009)
Universal Pictures – Credit: C/O
This update of the 1972 Wes Craven film is very well-crafted, consistently suspenseful and frightening, as well as very well-acted. So why is it on this list? Because it still can’t match the lightning-in-a-dirty-bottle terror of the original. The 1970s hippie-cult sadism of the 1972 Last House on the Left is endlessly upsetting, and the original has a mean streak that still creeps us out today.
The worst thing we can say about this version is that it ends up being kind of hopeful, which undercuts the perfect bleakness of the original. There are some movies so effective that you shouldn’t even try to remake them, and Last House on the Left is among them. Though we will say that the director of this remake, Dennis Iliadis, did as well as anyone could have done.
He also had the blessing and help of original Last House on the Left director Wes Craven.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
New Line Cinema – Credit: C/O
On the other hand, when Wes Craven objects to a remake of one of his movies, maybe you should listen. The 1984 Nightmare on Elm Street is a pretty flawless horror movie — and its imperfections only add to its peculiar charm.
“It does hurt,” Craven told IGN of the remake. “It does because it’s such an important film for me that, unfortunately, when I signed the original contract, I gave up all rights to it and so there’s nothing I can do about it”.
The new version had the excellent Jackie Earle Haley taking over Freddie Krueger’s striped shirt, fedora and claws, but come on. There’s only one Freddie, and his name is Robert Englund. Also, the decision to CGI Freddie and make get rid of his terrible jokes made the character much less memorable.
Also, Rooney Mara, who plays Nancy in the film, said recently on the LaunchLeft podcast that it “was not a good experience,” and almost led her to quit acting.
“I have to be careful with what I say and how I talk about it. It wasn’t the best experience making it and I got to this place, that I still live in, that I don’t want to act unless I’m doing stuff that I feel like I have to do. So after making that film, I decided, ‘OK, I’m just not going to act anymore unless it’s something that I feel that way about.'”
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
Erica Leerhsen, left, and Jessica Biel in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. New Line Cinema – Credit: C/O
We liked Jessica Biel in the lead, and the entire cast, really, but this 30-years-later remake of the 1972 original wasn’t necessary, and modern filmmaking techniques take away from the grimy effectiveness of the original.
Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel, co-creators of the original, returned for this one, and we’re glad they made some money, but the original is the one we’ll always remember.
The ’70s skeezyness of the original really can’t be matched.
Psycho (1998)
Universal Pictures
Van Sant’s shot-for-shot update of the Hitchcock classic is widely regarded as one of the least necessary remakes of all time. Using Joseph Stefano’s original script, the new and unimproved Psycho makes a crucial miscasting: Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates. Anthony Perkins, the original Norman, had a natural boy-next-door quality, which made the film’s twist ending that much more surprising and rewarding.
By contrast, in the remake, the looming, neurotic Vaughn seems off his rocker as soon as he speaks, which makes the film significantly less creepy. The story also loses much of its power by being shot in color, as opposed to the black-and-white original.
Ironically, that shower scene — with the late Anne Heche as Marion Crane — isn’t nearly as scary when it’s in color. Still, the whole concept is interesting enough.
Carrie (2013)
MGM
This original 1976 Carrie is almost impossible to match in terms of creepiness and sheer horror — the adaptation of Stephen King’s first novel includes, famously, a literal bucket of blood. And the grainy ’70s film adds to the near-nauseating menace of Brian De Palma’s classic.
Then there’s the additional thrill of seeing John Travolta — looking his most young and wholesome — doing unspeakably cruel things just for a laugh.
The 2013 Carrie remake was fine, and we definitely understand the concept of pairing acclaimed Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce with fantastic actresses Chloë Grace Moretz as Carrie and Julianne Moore as her repressive mom.
But the original Carrie didn’t work because it had A-listers. Like Last House on the Left, it worked because it seemed to come out of nowhere, with a shockingly new cynicism that was genuinely scary, and seemed to herald a new, crueler way of life.
If you liked this list of horror movie remakes nobody really needed, you may also like our list of Old Horror Movies That Are Still Terrifying Today.
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Main image: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. New Line Cinema
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