13 Best and Worst Modern-Horror Movie Remakes
Last weekend, horror fans were blessed (or cursed) with a new version of Poltergeist, the 1982 Tobe Hooper/Steven Spielberg collaboration that taught a generation of young, impressionable moviegoers to fear static-y TVs and reflections of themselves clawing their faces off. Whether an update was really necessary is, of course, beside the point; regardless of need or want, we’re still getting a movie in which another little girl intones “They’re he-eere,” as well as a new reminder that suburban families should watch out for homes built on ancient burial grounds. And if you’ve always wanted to see a haunted clown doll jump out of the shadows, well, guess who’s in luck?
Given the love for Eighties horror, as well as the Golden Age of Slasher Flicks and their grungy early Seventies forebears, it’s not surprising that filmmakers have been mining this fertile period for remake fodder over the past decade or so. In fact, today’s would-be Wes Cravens and John Carpenters have occasionally done some very interesting things with yesterday’s name-brand scary movies. So we’re taking a look at a baker’s dozen of redos, reboots and reimaginings of modern-horror classics (with a landmark Americanized version of a Nineties J-horror title for good measure) and seeing how they measure up, quality-wise. Some are cash-ins and others are creative breakthroughs. Whoever says the second time can’t be a charm, however, has clearly never seen Piranha 3D.
The Ring (2002)
A journalist (Naomi Watts) investigates a series of mysterious deaths and ends up wrangling with the curse of an evil videotape — the kind that, seven days after viewing, causes death by lanky-haired, double-jointed female ghosts.
Faithful to the original: Very. This is Japan’s Ringu in a highly Americanized version, big budget-ized with a marquee-name star and some suicidal horses thrown in.
Nostalgia factor: The U.S. version came out just four years after the ur-text for the modern J-horror boom dropped, so no attempt was made to throw back to the good ol’ days of 1998. That said, the movie is about a cursed VHS tape — so watching it now, the nostalgia factor is rather high.
Treatment of iconic villain: The original’s Sadako is a waterlogged ghost in the machine who can’t seem to keep her hair out of her face; the remake’s Samara is a full-on she-demon who much more believably stops hearts on sight.
Level/quality of kills: Samara basically scares people to death so there’s nothing too over the top or inventive here. But the distorted face of her victim in the closet is a thing of nightmares.
Scary: Surprisingly yes. Roger Ebert said that the story dips into “the dizzy realms of the absurd,” and he wasn’t wrong. Still, the unnerving visuals and atmospherics, as well as Watts’ bravura performance, manage to bypass the analytical center of most viewers’ brains and make skin crawl.
Gory: The view from the bar at your average sushi restaurant is gorier. Watts does take a dive into a well full of decades-old little-girl putrefaction, but even then most of the nastiness is implied rather than shown.
Rating: 6/10
13 Best and Worst Modern-Horror Movie Remakes, Page 1 of 13