The Worst Movie Remakes Of All Time

In the 1971 British crime film Get Carter, London gangster Jack Carter returns to his hometown after the death of his brother. When he suspects foul play, he decides to dig deeper and find out who was really responsible. As he delves back into the city's world of organized crime, tensions escalate and violent conflict ensues.

The 2000 remake of Get Carter, starring Sylvester Stallone, was certainly not a bright spot in Stallone's career. This time, the story was set in America, with Carter a mob enforcer living in Las Vegas who returns home to Seattle after his brother's death. But it wasn't necessarily the change in setting that disappointed critics, although it did give the film a different feel — it was the fact that the plot seemed rather formulaic and contrived in comparison to the original, despite the fact that it should have been a suspenseful mystery. "Carter, who goes to Seattle to hunt down his brother's killer, may have entered a labyrinth of evil," wrote Owen Gleiberman for Entertainment Weekly, "but his response to it — revenge shorn of all vulnerability or nuance — is as hollow as it is monolithic."

In John Carpenter's 1980 cult classic The Fog, a mysterious fog covers a California town, bringing the ghosts of dead sailors that terrorize the residents. The concept could have been corny, but the well-made film's slow build to scary moments kept audiences hooked. It seemed like a film that could benefit from a remake with updated special effects, but as this 2005 effort shows, it's all too easy to completely botch the plot.

Although Carpenter did produce the remake, it didn't strike a chord with critics. The scares just didn't conjure up real fear, and the ghosts didn't come across as threatening or intimidating. And if a horror film isn't genuinely scary, it just feels boring and muddled — there's little reason to watch. Writing for ScreenCrush, critic Matt Singer questioned if it was "one of the worst movies ever made." In his review, he joked, "This movie's not even that foggy! The clouds in two-thirds of this movie are so sparse they wouldn't even warrant a push notification from your phone's weather app."

Remaking a classic horror film is no easy task for a director. The 1998 remake of Psycho made that clear. The original 1960 Psycho was chilling, and fans weren't exactly begging for a do-over — it's considered one of Alfred Hitchcock's best films, and just hearing Norman Bates' voice is still enough to make your skin crawl.

The remake didn't take much artistic license, opting instead for a shot-for-shot copy of the original. While watching it, it's hard not to ask why it was even worth shooting a remake if the film would barely deviate from the source material. Even most of the script and musical score was extremely similar. To top it all off, the film was nominated for a grand total of three Golden Raspberry Awards, and won for Worst Remake and Worst Director. "Even with Hitchcock's shot list... Van Sant can't come up with anything more than a wan tribute to the master, proving it takes more than a good storyboard to make a film work," Sean Axmaker wrote for Nitrate Online Review.

Total Recall, a fascinating science fiction film released in 1990, follows construction worker Douglas Quaid, who begins having disturbing dreams about life on Mars. He gets a memory chip implanted that will give him a virtual reality experience of working as a secret agent on the planet. But as the film goes on, the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred, and he struggles to figure out who he really is — and what he has really done on Mars.

Here's where the 2012 remake went completely wrong: it isn't even set on Mars. Instead, it takes place on a future, dystopian Earth. Sure, that concept could have worked well, but this version of Total Recall fell flat in other aspects. The action sequences were the only real bright spot of the film — everything in between dragged on with little excitement. "Whilst the action is grand in scope — and certainly high in production values — it somehow lacks any tangible sense of tension or drama," wrote Joseph Walsh for CineVue.

Nicolas Cage has a track record of starring in films that prove underwhelming for critics, and Bangkok Dangerous definitely falls into that category. The original Bangkok Dangerous is a Thai crime thriller about Kong, a gunman who can neither hear nor speak. He works as an assassin for hire, struggles to find real meaning in life, and eventually meets a tragic end. It's an intense film, packed with action and emotional scenes. Cage's version, however, couldn't hold a candle to the original — despite the fact that it was made by the same directors, the Pang brothers.

In the 2008 remake of Bangkok Dangerous, several key details are changed. Cage plays the protagonist, Joe, who isn't deaf or mute. The cinematography is visually confusing at times, and the idea of a hitman who eventually gains a conscience feels cliche. As Scott Nash remarked in a review for Three Movie Buffs, "The burnt out assassin shtick is old and tired."

The 1959 historical drama Ben-Hur is an undisputed classic that won 11 Academy Awards. Interestingly enough, this version of Ben-Hur was actually a remake, but it definitely improved on the original 1925 silent film, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It's got plenty of action, romance, high-stakes drama, and a famous chariot race that has impressed audiences for decades. It was difficult to see how a remake could have outdone the 1959 version — but that didn't stop Paramount from trying.

What could have been an incredible historical epic with updated special effects turned out to be a box office bomb. The aesthetics were downgraded by haphazard editing and lackluster CGI, and aside from a few exciting action scenes, little about the film stood out. "A thrill ride in parts, as long as you can forgive the hokiness, wooden dialogue, and long-slog running time," Alison Rowat wrote for The Herald. Moral of the story? Some classic films should just be left alone.

Based on the 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, 1963's The Haunting follows a group of people who are invited by a paranormal investigator to find out what's going on in a supposedly haunted house. The dark, shadowy sets make it feel like evil is genuinely lurking around every corner, and the realization that the house is genuinely haunted makes the characters feel like their grip on reality is slipping.

The 1999 remake The Haunting could have been better than a standard haunted house film, yet it never measures up. The participants are lured to the house under the assumption that they're taking part in an insomnia study. But once the researchers leave, the house comes alive. It's still an intriguing setup, but the mediocre script doesn't exactly lend itself to great acting; moments meant to be dramatic and frightening come across as unintentionally funny. "Once the screaming begins, so will your laughing," Carlo Cavagna wrote for About Film. "The Haunting is so absurd, you might find it to be reasonably enjoyable escapism, depending on your appreciation for camp."

The 1985 zombie film Day of the Dead follows a group of scientists and soldiers who live in a bunker in the aftermath of a zombie invasion. Several zombies are kept captive for the purpose of research. Predictably, this arrangement is unstable, and a conflict breaks out that threatens the very survival of the human race.

Day of the Dead is a bloody film, but it balances the violence with a genuinely thoughtful critique of society and the breakdown of human communication in the modern era. However, the 2008 remake forsakes any attempt to bring a real message to the audience in favor of gore and guts. There's no real commentary on the state of humanity, the special effects look cheap, and the zombies are so intelligent and agile that they operate less like zombies and more like evil human beings with superpowers. "Like infected zombie areas put under quarantine, I would lock this film away in a box and leave it there for good," Jordan Snowden quipped in a review for Pittsburgh City Paper.

The 1975 film Rollerball practically inhabits its own genre — it falls somewhere between sci-fi and sports movie. The futuristic story centers on star rollerball player Jonathan, the most famous and talented guy in the game, whose success is used against him when the powers that be decide that the rules of the sport should change to ensure that he is forced out — by killing him, if necessary. Jonathan is supposed to become an example, proving that man can only succeed through violence and uninhibited individualism.

The 2002 Rollerball remake doesn't deliver in terms of relevant social commentary. It takes place in the present instead of the future, and it's mainly focused on action sequences, ignoring the political undertones that made the original worth watching. The narrative is choppy, the characters are underdeveloped in favor of spotlighting violent Rollerball games, and the dialogue isn't exactly riveting.

The 1980 film Fame follows a group of high school students after they gain acceptance to the prestigious High School of Performing Arts in New York City. As they study their respective crafts, they face difficult obstacles in the classroom, on stage, and in their personal lives. There are moments that slip into melodrama, but overall, the characters are relatable and sympathetic, and the musical numbers were a hit.

The 2009 remake of Fame just doesn't have the same atmosphere. It's too slick and polished, like it was intended to be an after-school special rather than a film about authentic, complex, and ambitious characters. It lacks the original's gritty edge, seeming to take cues from High School Musical and Glee instead. Critic Roger Ebert gave the film two stars, writing, "The new Fame is a sad reflection of the new Hollywood, where material is sanitized and dumbed down for a hypothetical teen market that is way too sophisticated for it."

The 2008 American remake of the Japanese film One Missed Call has the distinction of being one of the few films to score a whopping zero percent on the Tomatometer. The original One Missed Call wasn't exactly a classic — the plot, about people receiving voicemails from their future selves dying, was quite similar to other popular horror films like The Ring. This meant there was a real opportunity for the remake to outshine the original — and it completely missed the mark.

It just wasn't scary enough for the critics, and for a film that should have been gripping and suspenseful, the plot was actually rather boring. Even if you don't speak Japanese, don't subject yourself to watching this remake — unless, of course, you happen to find poorly reviewed horror films entertaining in a "so bad it's good" way. Instead, just turn on the original and read the subtitles.

1972's The Heartbreak Kid is a different kind of romantic comedy. Self-absorbed Lenny is married to clingy Lila, and on their honeymoon, he ditches her to pursue a manipulative college girl named Kelly. He impulsively divorces Lila and proposes to Kelly, but it becomes clear that her sole reason for marrying him is to rebel against her father. At their wedding, Lenny ends up ignored by almost everyone, including the bride, and this dark comedy ends on a depressing note.

The 2007 remake of The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller, didn't push the boundaries of the genre like the original. The characters were nasty to the point of being unsympathetic and practically unredeemable, adding up to another stale rom-com that failed to differentiate itself from films with similar themes. In fact, Rolling Stone dubbed it the worst remake of the year. In a review for eFilmCritic, Peter Sobczynski described the film as "an ugly, hateful and deeply unfunny bit of hackwork."