Continuing the Halloween horrorfest here at the Buzz Media I decided to take a look at that long and not so honored tradition of horror movie remakes. For a time it was just a cavalcade of sequels with rapidly diminishing returns and now things are getting rebooted and remade instead. Then those get sequels and then rebooted again. I know that the prevailing thoughts on the topic of remakes are that Hollywood is creatively bankrupt and there are no new good ideas anymore but I don’t really think that is true. Remakes are something that have been happening for the whole length of cinema and many movies we consider classics now were themselves remakes. I like to look at it like the theater. There are new plays, sure, but theater troupe after theater troupe put on classic plays and musicals over and over again and some are awesome and some not so much. Film does pretty much the same thing but it is higher profile and lasts forever. The list below represent my favorite horror movie remakes and the reasons why I like them are all different but as usual it is not meant to be an objective best list. I expect some picks here to be controversial but it is to my taste. If you agree or disagree, let me know in the comments and include your list as well. And with that said, here we go.

 

 

10. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Right out of the gates this is one that is hotly contested. A lot of horror fans found this remake to be sacrilege of the highest order by just existing and doing so without Robert Englund adds insult to injury. But here is the thing, it really isn’t bad. Sure, it is fair to say that instead of finding its own new ground by using modern effects to jack up the nightmare dreamscapes to something we’ve never seen before it was content to quote the classic storyline and dreams but that doesn’t mean that what we have isn’t good on its own. Jackie Earl Haley does a great job with the Freddy Kruger role and takes the character back to the overt menace of the original film. He taunts and makes some jokes here and there but they are all designed to unnerve and torture as opposed to feeling like he is trying out material to do on open mic night. The movie commits to the child molestation angle as well which was an element of the original film that had to be walked back. Making the kids he is going after the ones responsible for his death in the first place also makes the murders feel more personal and immediate than just taking revenge on the children of the people who burned him to death. Was there wasted potential here? Yes. Was it bad? No. I doubt a lot of diehard Nightmare will ever really see it this way but I liked it for what it is.

 

9. The Crazies (2010)

I was not super familiar with the George Romero original but I like this one quite a bit. It is a nice take on a zombie like story without actually having any zombies and the growing paranoia and fear is much more profound because frankly zombies are pretty obvious, even if they are fast. These people you can’t necessarily tell is someone is crazy until you are pretty deep in the shit. Timothy Oliphant is one of my favorite actors and he is great here as a small town sheriff trying to keep his family and town safe. The inclusion of the military ramps things up quite a bit and there is a pervasive sense of doom throughout most of the film. It is pretty great.

 

8. Let Me In (2010)

This one is a little sticky insofar as I really don’t know why it exists in the first place since Let the Right One in incredible and perfectly accessible even with the subtitles but it exists and it is very well done. Chloe Moretz and Cody Smit-McPhee do well in the lead roles and the additions of Paul Jenkins and Elias Koteas are value added. As I said,  it is very well done and I can’t really find fault with it beyond just being curious as to why. I suppose the same could be said for the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I unabashedly love. So the bottom line is that Matt Reeves gave us a great film that would be fantastic if it did more to justify itself by hewing closer to the book or doing some things differently. As it is we have a good example of a good remake, whether or not it needs to be in the first place.

 

7. Halloween (2007)

This was another remake that divided the fan base. There is an argument to be made about the purity of the  Shape and that not knowing why he likes to kill his family is part of the appeal but honestly I think that Rob Zombie’s almost biopic look at Michael Myers and why he does what he does is awesome and adds extra depth. Tyler Mane does a great job as the killer through his physical presence and he looks like someone who could be a walking tank of death in a way that Michael Myers has not looked in the past. Again, a purist might argue that being a smaller unstoppable killer makes him scarier because he just looks unnerving but I think there is room for both takes. I really like what Rob Zombie did here and the addition of Malcolm McDowell is pretty perfect. Bringing Dawn of the Dead’s Ken Foree in as Big Joe Grizzly was completely badass and while the scene was sort of weird in terms of the rest of the film, it was awesome and it makes me want Zombie to do a Big Joe Grizzly spinoff movie. It would have to be a prequel but I am all for it.

 

6. Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Written by James Gunn and directed by Zack Snyder, Dawn of the Dead is a very different take on the material than what we got in the original but it is terrific front to back. With a great cast including Sara Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Webber, Mekhi Phifer , Michael Kelly, Ty Burrell and Matt Frewer, there is just a ton of talent on this movie and it shows. Taking the basic premise of hiding in a mall from zombies moves away from the statement on consumerism in the first movie and more into basic human nature in crisis. The film goes to some really dark places and its use of soundtrack and imagery brings it alive in a way that will make the film stick with you. This is easily one of my favorite zombie movies. I am very fond of the original, which is a classic, but I think I like this one more.

 

5. Evil Dead (2013)

This is another remake in which its mere mention was shouted down as the highest form of sacrilege. When word came down that no Ash and it was serious that became fuel for the hate fire. The thing here is that the original Evil Dead was a serious horror film. The series didn’t get funny until Evil Dead 2 which was essentially a remake of the first movie itself. The lack of Ash here is very smart because I don’t know that I would be cool with having him be any one but Bruce Campbell. As bad as the Freddy Kruger thing was with Nightmare, it would be way worse with Ash. Instead of trying to remake the magic that was Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, director Fede Alvarez and producers Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert went with a whole new set of characters who encounter the cabin and the necronomicon and shit gets really gory and really horrifying. This is a vastly different movie from pretty much any of the originals and it works both as a straight horror film and as an allegory to addiction and recovery. The effects here are pretty mind blowing and the whole thing is enormously visceral. Evil Dead earned its right to exist in spades.

 

4. Fright Night (2011)

As has been covered on many of these lists in the past, the original Fright Night is one of my two favorite movies of all time. So when a remake was announced I was very skeptical. When the cast announcements were made, I started getting more excited and the fact that it was written by Marti Noxin, not my favorite Buffy writer but still a Buffy writer, made me think that this could work. And it did. I really dug this version of the story. It is similar enough to be Fright Night but it was different enough that it didn’t step on the original’s toes. I think it is pretty much perfectly cast as well. David Tennant, Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, Toni Collette, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Imogen Poots and Dave Franco? Yes please. Everyone did a great job here and brought their characters to life in the way this movie needed as opposed to slavish duty to the original. Farrell’s Jerry Dandrige is a very different kind of monster than Christopher Sarandon’s was and likewise Yelchin’s take on Charley is very different than William Ragsdale’s. What this leaves us with is two great vampire movies that take on similar material but in different ways and I really dig that. Also the country style cover of 99 Problems over the closing credits is awesome.

 

3. Nightwatch (1997)

I never saw the original Danish film but this one, a film about a night watchman at a morgue who gets caught up in a serial killer investigation, is one of the legitimately scariest movies I have ever seen. When I worked at video stores and people would ask for a recommendation of the scariest movie in the store I sent them home with this. I never had any complaints. It is intense and brutal made all the more so by the fact that there is nothing particularly far fetched about it. It is something that could happen in those heightened circumstances and director Ole Bornedal, who directed the Danish original, has a steady and sure hand and knows exactly how to draw tension and execute scares. Nightwatch is nothing short of incredible and stars Ewan McGregor, Nick Nolte, Josh Brolin and Patricia Arquette are all perfect here at least once you get used to McGregor’s American accent. If you haven’t seen this, you must and you must quickly. It should be mentioned that this has nothing to do with the 2004 Timur Bekmambetov Night Watch.

 

2. The Fly (1986)

This David Cronenberg classic so completely eclipses the 1958 original it isn’t even funny. They are both very different films, certainly, but the remake brought a new feel and energy to the film that really set it apart from the original and in fact other horror/sci-fi films of the time. Jeff Goldblum is excellent as he transforms into the Brundlefly and the film digs deep into the horrors of losing oneself and the lengths one would go to regain their humanity. The horror is more existential here than straight forward horror but the special effects and gore are top notch made for an impactful film.

 

1. The Thing (1982)

A remake of the 1951 The Thing From Another World, John Carpenter’s the Thing is a journey into paranoia that is horrifying and claustrophobic. The premise is simple: a research station in Antarctica is infected by an alien that can assume the identities of people it kills and the survivors don’t know who to trust and have limited resources with which to defend themselves. This movie frankly makes my skin crawl and I can’t imagine a more horrifying scenario.  The Thing has been imitated by shows, movies and video games for years but it remains the best example of its concept. I have not seen the prequel of the same name but I know that The Thing is a masterpiece that is better than a lot of original concept. If we rejected remakes out of hand, we would not have this great film and that would make Kurt Russell sad and no one wants a sad Kurt Russell.

 

And there is my list. Let me know what you think in the comments below and share your lists.