Horror Movie Remakes That Are Better Than The Original

At a time when it seems like every movie ever made is being eyed for a remake or reboot, the horror genre has found itself particularly ripe for pillaging. The '70s and '80s were a fantastic time for horror, and the classics of that era all seem to have made their way back to screens in recent years, rebooted for a new generation—with decidedly mixed results.

But we all seem to forget that remakes and reboots have been around for as long as Hollywood, and sometimes, a good yarn needs more than one attempt to get it just right. For proof, just queue up these horror remakes that actually turned out better than the original films.

The 1958 sci-fi/horror classic The Fly was probably terrifying to audiences of its time. In it, a scientist experimenting with teleportation gets his atoms mixed up with those of a common housefly; as a result, he's stuck with a giant fly head while pursuing the fly, which has his tiny human head, in an attempt to fix the mistake. It plays about as silly as it sounds, but for the 1986 remake, director David Cronenberg took the same premise to a truly horrifying, totally logical conclusion.

Jeff Goldblum gives the performance of his career as Seth Brundle, the scientist whose mixup doesn't produce any noticeable results at first...until he starts to change in very unsettling ways, both physically and mentally. Featuring an equally strong supporting performance by Geena Davis, some of the most disturbing practical special effects of a decade filled with them, and perhaps the most insanely visceral and frightening climax in all of horror, Cronenberg's The Fly is a true classic—it even boasts one of the greatest and most widely imitated taglines ever ("Be afraid... be very afraid"). No less an authority than the great Roger Ebert wondered why Goldblum didn't receive an Oscar nomination; in a retrospective on the film, Ebert said, "The Exorcist aside, I can't think of another horror film as intense as The Fly."

Speaking of videocassette cover art that gave '80s kids nightmares, William Lustig's 1980 slasher film Maniac is an undeniable classic of the genre. Its grimy, low-budget aesthetic and the wild-eyed, none-too-subtle lead performance of co-screenwriter Joe Spinnell only add to its disturbing charms, and some of the practical gore effects—like the infamous shotgun-through-the-windshield scene, filmed on a New York City street with no permit—are jaw-dropping even today. But the film isn't exactly the work of a master craftsman (Lustig's previous directorial efforts were entitled Hot Honey and The Violation of Claudia), and its truly creepy moments are offset by an uneven tone.

Not so the 2012 remake, which understands its tone all too well. Co-written by none other than Alexandre Aja and directed by French horror vet Franck Khalfoun, the film asserts an incredibly bold narrative choice: it follows the exploits of brutal serial killer Frank Zito (Elijah Wood, shattering your image of him) from an almost exclusively first-person point of view. This means the main character is almost never onscreen (except, for example, when he sees himself in mirrors), and there's no cutting away—or even looking away—when Frank springs into murderous action, scalping his screaming victims as the camera looks dispassionately on. It's an intensely disturbing approach—well-written, expertly shot, and with a ridiculously impressive performance by Wood. 

The 2010 Mexican film Somos Lo Que Hay (We Are What We Are) was a confounding piece of work: a dark, brooding, well-made psychodrama about a family of cannibals, and how they adjust after the family patriarch dies. It was well-received, but—as noted in some of its reviews—suffered from a tone that some went so far as to call "relentlessly humorless," and fielded a cast that could be less than engaging. 

The English-language 2013 version borrows the basic premise of the original, but little else. It trades the 2010 film's urban setting for the backwoods of the deep South, investing the proceedings with an American Gothic feel that is much more appropriate to the lurid subject matter. Director Jim Mickle, whose previous efforts included the underrated vampire flick Stake Land, uses the material to raise questions about the dangers of tradition and religion that were completely absent from the original, and he trades that film's ending—a fairly standard tangle with police, including the obligatory shootout—for one of the most bizarre, haunting conclusions of any horror film this decade. We Are What We Are might not exactly scare your pants off, but it will stick with you long after viewing, and it's superior to its source material in pretty much every regard.

The story of a cursed videotape that kills you when you watch it might have sounded silly to American audiences before Gore Verbinski's The Ring was released in 2002. The idea was ported over from 1998's Japanese horror hit Ringu, and sure—on its surface, the premise sounded ridiculous, unless you were one of the lucky viewers who happened to catch the "killer video" on late-night TV, where it aired several times in advance of the film's release with no explanation. Then it probably sounded completely plausible.

Of course, The Ring has become a classic, and Ringu is a very good film with several genuinely creepy moments—and also a film which, unfortunately, suffers from the stilted and theatrical acting style typical of Japanese releases of the time. Verbinski's remake is a finely tuned machine with slowly building tension—in the form of a seven-day countdown to death for whomever watches the tape—baked right in. The carefully unpacked story of bizarre tragedy, a mother's desperation, and one very, very malevolent little girl moves relentlessly toward a nerve-shredding climax—or what we think is the climax. After an apparent resolution and a brief denouement, the real horror kicks in, with a deliberately paced, searingly terrifying scene that has lost absolutely none of its power. The Ring is an improvement in every way over the original, and—despite its PG-13 rating—is one of the scariest films of all time.

It's tough to believe that John Carpenter's The Thing, a remake of 1951's The Thing From Another World, was indifferently received upon its 1982 release. Perhaps the world simply wasn't ready for Carpenter's masterpiece, which took the bones of the original's plot—a stranded group of researchers in Antarctica face off against a deadly alien being—and turned it into a master class in relentlessly escalating tension, coupled with some of the most insane,  stomach-turning gore and makeup effects that have ever been put to film.

Gone are the plodding pace and lumbering plant-monster of the original, replaced with an intensifying, paranoid claustrophobia and a shape-shifting nemesis that might be standing right next to you in the form of a trusted buddy or an innocent dog... until it's exposed, and the madness begins. Rob Bottin's bizarre special effects setpieces, featuring such famously insane sights as a severed head sprouting spider legs and an open chest cavity becoming a giant, gnashing mouth, are still considered among the greatest ever 35 years after the fact. 

Carpenter's direction was never more disciplined, and the stellar cast includes Keith David, Wilford Brimley and Carpenter muse Kurt Russell at his steeliest and most badass. The world may not have been ready in 1982, but perhaps no film has undergone such a dramatic critical reappraisal. Originally dismissed as "instant junk" and a "geek show," The Thing is now widely recognized as one of the best horror films of all time.