Which horror remakes completely ignored what made their originals special?
Ever heard of A Nightmare on Elm Street or Day of The Dead?
Keep watching to learn more about the worst horror remakes of all time.
Look, no one will tell you that William Castle's 1960 fright flick 13 Ghosts is
any sort of masterpiece, but it often looks like one when it's compared to the 2001 remake.
Castle's chills and thrills are traded in for unfunny jokes
and Matthew Lillard stumbling around like he's about to lose his mind.
Even if Thirteen Ghosts wasn't a remake, it would still stink. There's no nuance to the film,
and not many good scares either. The movie just sort of happens,
occasionally hurling shrieking ghouls at the audience. The makeup work created for the ghosts
is actually quite impressive, but it's barely visible thanks to the overly jittery editing.
The whole thing is meant to be frightening, but it'll probably just give you a headache.
“What’re you staring at?”
It really shouldn't be that hard to remake a Friday the 13th film. The formula is painfully
simple, after all: Jason, a hulking, hockey masked ghoul, goes around offing the horny teens who dare
to invade his summer camp. Seems pretty easy to grasp, but the folks behind the 2009 remake
didn't seem to get it. The most recent Friday the 13th film strives to achieve some of the
playfulness of the original franchise, but it's way too far up its own butt to pull it off.
There's not a single character in this movie worth paying attention to.
Sure, the original Friday films were loaded with disposable characters,
but they always featured at least one or two people you were supposed to care about. Here,
it doesn't matter which goon Jason goes after first. There's also an abundance of pot-based
humor, which feels completely out of place: the entire opening of the film is about a group of
youngsters trying to find a mythical marijuana field. Does Jason like to toke up? Who's to say.
*Howling*
Robert Harmon's queasy 1986 thriller The Hitcher pitted Rutger Hauer against C. Thomas Howell,
and it was surprisingly wonderful. This 2007 remake trades in the things that made the '86
film unique, including some not-so-subtle queer subtext, for a boring chase movie.
Sean Bean is pretty good as the murderous Hitcher,
but he can't hold a candle to Rutger Hauer's almost otherworldly performance.
Do you like point-and-shoot movies where the director just sets up their camera,
lets it roll, and then knocks off a bit for a nap while the actors do their thing?
If so, you'll probably love The Hitcher! The film's director, Dave Meyers,
has never made another feature film after this, and that’s not surprising at all.
The 1979 When A Stranger Calls is another one of those films that isn't exactly great, but has a
lot of charm. The film takes the urban legend about prank calls coming from inside the house,
and turns it into a concise little thriller. The 2006 remake, from Con Air director Simon West,
is just an excuse to crank the soundtrack up with loud noises with the hopes of making
tweens squirm in their seats. The original film may be a bit tame in terms of gore, but it's
also got some real frights to it. The remake, on the other hand, is completely toothless.
There's nothing the 2006 version of When A Stranger Calls likes to do more
than fake out its audience with unfocused shots and musical cues.
There's nothing here that even approaches frightening, or even tense,
but the soundtrack insists on treating every mundane object like a monster in hiding.
Editing like this is the easiest way to take all of the bite out of your horror movie.
Wes Craven's original A Nightmare on Elm Street is a horror classic, and rightfully so. Freddy
Krueger, the dream-stalking boogeyman with the iconic razor claw, is one of the most
recognizable monsters in the horror world. The Freddy Krueger Craven created is an odious,
unsympathetic monster who likes to toy with his victims. The 2010 remake, on the other hand,
thought it would be a good idea to make it seem like Freddy was a sympathetic character
to be pitied, only to change their mind at the last minute. Spoiler alert: it doesn't work
at all. Try as he might, Jackie Earle Haley just can't make his version of Freddy scary.
“In your dream.”
Rooney Mara is a great actress, but it's easy to understand why she hated working on
Nightmare so much that she considered leaving acting altogether. Her take on ultimate Final
Girl Nancy is an utter snooze: maybe since the character is supposed to be sleep-deprived,
Mara intentionally played her as if she's a zombie. Or maybe she was just so bored
with the role she didn't even bother to emote. Either way, it doesn't work. The
end result lacks all the goofiness and charm that made the original franchise so popular.
Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House was adapted into a sparse, super-creepy film by Robert
Wise in 1963. It's subtle, psychological, and effective, and it continues to be an
underappreciated horror classic. The 1999 remake, from Speed director Jan de Bont, is none of those
things. De Bont's The Haunting thinks more is better, and overloads itself with big, loud
special effects, including a skeleton that jumps out of a fireplace and a giant swinging pendulum
that knocks Owen Wilson's head clean off. While Jackson's book and Wise's film were all about
the psychological elements of horror, the remake just wants to scream "BOO!" as loud as it can.
Even if de Bont hadn't been building off of the subtle original, this film simply fails on its
own. There's nothing scary about a skeleton that jumps out of a fireplace. There just
isn't. De Bont is an action filmmaker, and The Haunting is shot like an action movie rather
than a horror film. Lili Taylor, who's normally a fantastic actress, was apparently ill-equipped to
work in such a special effects-driven feature, having come from a primarily indie background,
and it shows. She seems especially lost among all the bells and whistles of this junky feature.
John Carpenter's The Thing is a remake itself, but it's the perfect example of
exactly what a remake should be. The remake of Carpenter's film, 2011's The Thing,
is not. Some defenders of the 2011 version make the argument that it's technically a prequel,
but it's hard to deny that it's pretty much a remake since they share the exact same name.
While The Thing has some of the most mind-blowing special effects in horror history,
the 2011 version is chock full of terrible CGI, none of which comes anywhere close to
the original. What made the Carpenter film so disturbing was the fact that the practical effects
really made it seem like it was all happening. Here, everything looks like a cartoon.
A story like this, which involves a team of isolated scientists trapped in a claustrophobic
space with an alien lifeform, should seem, well, claustrophobic. Instead, director Matthijs van
Heijningen Jr. shoots everything wide, making the film feel like it was shot on a Hollywood
backlot set rather than the remote Antarctic. There are some good actors in this film,
like Mary Elizabeth Winstead, but none of them seem to know what they're doing. Instead,
these characters, who were supposed to have been isolated together for months, have zero
chemistry together. Compared to Kurt Russell and his compatriots, the difference is night and day.
John Carpenter's The Fog is a moody New England ghost story,
a spooky tale dripping with atmosphere and charm. Carpenter himself wasn't thrilled
with the final product when it came out in 1980, but it's since grown into one of his classics.
Since all Carpenter films seem doomed to be remade, and since Carpenter himself
loves getting those remake paychecks, a remake of The Fog hit theaters in 2005.
This new take on The Fog trades Carpenter's simple, in-camera effects
for dumb CGI. Also, there's a scene where a monster hand comes out of a drain
and turns an old woman into a skeleton. How spooky! Wait, no, it's pretty dumb.
Pirate ghosts who come out of an unearthly fog to seek bloody vengeance should be an easy home run,
as far as storytelling goes. Unfortunately, this remake doesn't even get that right, and adds some
nonsense about reincarnation to the plot instead. All of the actors here are dreadful — especially
Tom Welling, who looks and acts like a plank of wood from Home Depot in a flannel shirt.
“Well, I can’t help that, can I?”
Oh boy, where to even start? Robin Hardy's 1973 feature The Wicker Man is an eerie,
sun-dappled bad dream, equal parts ominous and surreal. Neil LaBute's 2006 remake is… none of
those things. LaBute takes Hardy's film and turns it into some sort of gonzo thriller,
with Nicolas Cage running around the movie as if he's on a coke binge.
Moreover, he's just run out of coke, and he can't find the car keys he needs to go drive somewhere
to buy more coke. Oh, there's something about bees too, which is...whatever, it doesn't matter.
While The Wicker Man certainly isn't a good movie, it's easy to admire just how goofy it is, and how
committed Cage is to his freaky-deaky performance. That said, the film is a mess, and even though
Cage and LaBute have tried to claim they were intentionally trying to make the movie funny,
no one’s actually buying it. The central mystery here, with Cage looking for a missing girl,
never works, and as fun as it is to watch the actor behave like a loon,
it just doesn't really make sense in the context of the film.
Eli Roth's Cabin Fever has aged badly for a few reasons: most of all, the humor.
“Oh, Lord, don’t drop that, I tell you what. If you do,
that’s powerful stuff. All the foxes in this community will come down here.”
Still, Roth had a clear vision in mind, and worked hard to create a memorable gross-out horror flick.
Then, for some strange reason, Roth's 2002 film was remade in 2016.
Roth may not be that great of a filmmaker, but he's an auteur when compared to the 2016
remake's director, Travis Zariwny. This film feels like Zariwny watched Roth's film and said,
"Let's remake that, but with no budget or skill.” Even the gross-out gags, which are
pretty much the only good parts of the original, are watered-down and poorly put together.
The cast, made up of actors you've never heard of and will likely never see again,
seem ill-equipped to carry your luggage from a hotel front desk to the elevator,
let alone star in a movie. Shot with all the grace of a local used car lot commercial,
Zariwny's Cabin Fever is one of the ugliest looking movies ever made.
After the surprising success of the Dawn of the Dead remake in 2004, a Day of the Dead
remake seemed inevitable. Unfortunately, when we got one in 2008, it was embarrassingly bad.
As is the case with all of George Romero's zombie films, the original Day of the Dead was more of
a reflection on humanity than a portrait of the undead. On the other hand, the remake just wants
to throw a bunch of over-the-top ghouls in your face for 86 minutes, until you have a headache
and want to take a nap. The original film featured Bub, a fascinating zombie character who's slowly
learning to be human again. The remake gives us Bud instead: a character who keeps stressing he's
a vegetarian, which leads to the predictable gag that he doesn't eat humans once he's zombified.
There's nothing even remotely enjoyable about this. It's neither good nor "so bad it's
good." It exists solely to cash in on its famous title, which is the worst thing a remake can do.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more SlashFilm videos about your favorite movies are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.