People like to poo-poo remakes of any kind. “Phooey and pshaw!,” they seem to say with their words. Well, ever hear of a little movie called Star Wars? That’s a remake of The Hidden Fortress literally shot-for-shot. The character names are exactly the same… oh darn, IMDb’s broken today, so you can’t check. At any rate, not all remakes are blatant cash-grabs, and even if they are, some of them are just as good or even improvements on the original. Nowhere is that more true than in the world of horror movies.
Not all horror remakes are good, but I feel like they tend to have a higher success rate than most. In some cases, the remakes are even better than the originals. And what better time to discuss these great horror remakes than Spooky Season, aka Nerdoween?
10. The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
Wes Craven’s early films are particularly grim and upsetting. His first, The Last House on the Left is a horror-fueled remake of the Ingmar Bergman drama The Virgin Spring and it is NOT FUN. But it nevertheless has an important place in horror history. His follow-up, 1977’s The Hills Have Eyes, does not enjoy that level of importance but is likewise a grim and horrible experience. So why not give the remake to Alexandre Aja who at the time had just made the New French Extremity classic High Tension? A family gets lost in the desert and a family of irradiated cannibal mutants terrorize and butcher them. It’s gnarly, but I’d rather watch the remake than the original if I’m honest.
9. The Crazies (2010)
The Crazies from 1973 is nobody’s favorite George A. Romero movie, but it’s one of his most effective. Showing the speed at which a neurotoxin sweeps through a rural Pennsylvania community, creating a population of frothing murderers, the horror comes less from the kills and more from the military’s complete inability to reverse, stop, or even contain it. The original was a dry run for similar themes and production values as Dawn of the Dead.
Conversely, the 2010 remake directed by Breck Eisner does focus on the horrifying murders—many especially grisly—befalling the little town, with Sheriff Timothy Olyphant and his wife Radha Mitchell among the small band of uninfected trying to overcome rabid neighbors and wanton government cover-ups. I was supremely shocked this movie’s not merely halfway decent but pretty darn good in its own right.
8. Evil Dead (2013)
Technically more of a reboot/requel, but Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead definitely goes back to the grueling terror of Sam Raimi’s 1979/1981 original. Updating the concept from just friends heading to a cabin in the woods for fun to be about friends in a support weekend for one of their own (Jane Levy) suffering from drug withdrawal. It’s a fascinating and resonant wrinkle to the familiar tale of demon possession that leaves the Ash Williams quips aside in favor of unbridled, oppressive nightmare stuff.
7. Suspiria (2018)
Remake Dario Argento at your own risk, I always said. Well, Luca Guadagnino did risk and turned in a completely different movie in every sense of the word, except for story and characters. A true reimagining of the source material, in which Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) begins her training at an elite dance school in the wall-separated Berlin of the early ’80s. Turns out, the school is home to a coven of witches, and anyone who looks into it befalls a grim fate.
Both films are gruesome and stylish in their own way, but Guadagnino’s movie actually focuses on the dancing, more of an afterthought in the Argento film. We also get the great Tilda Swinton playing triple duty as both one of the witchy dance instructors, an old German psychiatrist man, and a third character who shall remain nameless in case you haven’t seen it.
6. The Blob (1988)
This one is an improvement on the ’50s drive-in classic in just about every possible way. Chuck Russell’s direction and his and Frank Darabont’s script modernize the concept of a mass of unknown, carnivorous gloop engulfing the entire town and add much needed humor and characters you want to spend ample time with. And then they turn everything upside down by killing off major characters early and often with some of the grosses and most effective practical effects of the era. If you want to see people get dissolved into raw component parts, this is the movie for you!
The original is a fine example of sci-fi/horror in the middle of the red scare with some fun effects for the time. The remake on the other hand is something of a masterpiece of ’80s excess in horror, in the best way. Smart, scary, and supremely gross. The one thing the 1959 version has over the 1988 version is its main hero character. Steve McQueen in his first major role in the original. The remake just has a mulletted Kevin Dillon. Not even close.
5. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Long, long, loooooong before anyone had ever heard of either the DCU or the DCEU with regard to superhero movies, a Troma filmmaker and a commercial director wrote and directed a remake to one of the best horror movies of all time. Writer James Gunn and director Zack Snyder collaborated on a fast-paced, super-stylish remake of George A. Romero’s undisputed masterpiece, Dawn of the Dead, and it shouldn’t have been as good as it is. But it’s very good indeed.
What remains from Romero’s ode to the evils of consumerism is the central premise: a group of people hole up in an empty shopping mall during a zombie apocalypse. The remake has more people, faster zombies, way more action and explosions, and far less of the pathos and metaphor. But it actually has more humanity and arguably more believable characters. It also introduced me to Richard Cheese, so thanks for that, movie. Twenty years later, it might still be Snyder’s best movie and proved what Gunn could do with proven properties. A banger all ’round.
4. The Ring (2002)
Gore Verbinski’s American remake of the 1998 Hideo Nakata film Ring has the dubious honor of being the one and only Hollywood redo of a J-Horror film that actually works. Even Takashi Shimizu’s own American remakes of his Grudge movies don’t quite have the bite of the OGs. And it is certainly worthy of an argument, but I sort of think the American The Ring is a bit better than the original in some big ways. Sporting a bigger budget helps, no doubt, but I think the mood and atmosphere hit harder for me, as does the central mystery.
Again, the overall premise is largely the same. A haunted video tape kills people seven days after they watch it and a single mother (Naomi Watts) has to try to solve the mystery of the strange tape and the ghost within it before her time, and her son’s, run out. After 22 years, we’re right at the end of the period of time where this movie can truly impact people given that nobody has VHS players anymore, much less physical media. A newer attempt utilizing a cursed YouTube video or whatever the hell exists but is not good. The Ring is a time capsule in so many ways, but it still packs a punch where it counts.
3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Three separate remakes of the 1956 Cold War classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, have his screens over a period of 50 years. Only the first remake, Philip Kaufman’s from 1978, is truly successful, and might even rival the original for quality. Set in a gloomy, chilly San Francisco, the movie follows a group of disparate people as they all come to realize a slow invasion of otherworldly creatures is underway, in which they duplicate and assimilate members of the human race while they sleep. It’s a supremely terrifying idea, made all the more gruesome with ’70s effects.
The remake adds an undercurrent of self-help gurus and phoney psychologists to make the survivors think they’ve lost their minds, which is very of the moment. The movie has an incredibly tense, paranoiac air the whole way through which just gets more and more effective by the end. And let’s not ignore the fact that the cast is truly incredible. Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, and a very un-Spock Leonard Nimoy all hit on all cylinders. It’s a tremendous accomplishment.
2. The Fly (1986)
Speaking of Jeff Goldblum, we have what still might be his best and most Goldblumy performance. One of the major themes of this list, I’m realizing, is that in the late ’70s through the late ’80s, Hollywood made a lot of great horror remakes of kinda hoky ’50s sci-fi movies. The Fly from 1958 had a great premise, a scientist working on teleportation whose molecules meld with that of a housefly. In practice, that was a guy in a lab coat wearing a giant fly mask and glove walking around scaring people. Fun for the time, sure.
But put it in the hands of Canada’s grisliest director, David Cronenberg, and we have a tragedy of a man’s slow loss of self amid disgusting body horror that still nauseates today. What you don’t get in 1986’s The Fly is a man in a fly mask. Instead, it’s a metaphor for everything from drug abuse to cancer or the AIDS epidemic as a woman (Geena Davis) watches her new boyfriend literally change, decay, and fall apart in front of her eyes. Brundlefly is both monster and victim, and it’s simply one of the best films of its kind.
1. The Thing (1982)
While putting together this list, thinking of entries and ranking them, proved more difficult than I expected, number one was never in doubt. How good is John Carpenter’s The Thing? It’s so good I bet some people don’t even realize it’s a remake. The 1951 sci-fi thriller, again, is fun and effective for its time. The 1982 film is the pinnacle of practical effects, paranoid atmosphere, subtle Lovecraftian themes, and a perfect ensemble to play it all out.
People talk way too much about how much the movie flopped on its initial release, and that is tragic as it meant Carpenter wasn’t able to continue making movies at this scale. But most works of genius are misunderstood in their own time. This movie rips. Rob Bottin should have won 13 Oscars for his creature work on this alone, creating still to this day the best interpretation of an uncanny, unknowable entity which can absorb and look like anything. Not just the best horror remake, not just the best John Carpenter movie, it belongs in the pantheon of best horror films—maybe even just films full stop—in the history of everything.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.