The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Remakes are previous cinematic works that are given a new interpretation. Almost always the works being remade are popular works in a previous era that have stayed in the public imagination. A remake is an attempt to revitalise the property for a new era.
A remake will update an older work, changing many of the references for a contemporary relevance. It will offer more sophisticated effects and contemporary stars. It is common in films of the late 2010s/2020s for older works to be remade with some of the leading roles gender-flipped or raceswapped. In the majority of cases, the remake fails to have the effect the original had on audiences in that the earlier work was very much a phenomenon that belonged to its era, although there are some exceptions.
It is also worth discussing a remake vs an adaptation. We usually talk about remakes applying to previous successful cinematic works. However, when we refer to a work that was popular before becoming a film or there have been multiple film versions, a new film version is simply referred to as a new adaptation. Nobody ever talks about a remake of Hamlet (1603) or Pride and Prejudice (1813), for instance.
Variants include popular tv series being given film remakes – see Based on TV, or popular foreign-language films being given English-language remakes – see English-Language Remakes. Other types of remakes include animated films and tv being remade in live-action – see Animation in Live-Action.
A side piece of terminology that has come into use in the 2000s is the idea of a reboot where a popular ongoing series is usually revived and reworked in some way or simply an ongoing series is given a new actor and/or a continuity reset.
A remake of the 1992 film that starred Rebecca De Mornay as a psychopathic babysitter who enters a household seeking revenge. This updates the story for the 2020s, although is no less a conservative version than the original
A remake of the popular 1980s sword and sorcery film that was originally produced by Roger Corman. This version is directed by makeup effects artist Steven Kostanski who fills it with an amazing range of creature effects
Anaconda was a CGI monster movie that has subsequently gained a bad movie reputation. The idea of a comedy remake about conducting a remake of the film just seems a little too cutely meta
With Disney having remade most of their animated catalogue in live-action, other studios are now getting in on the act with this live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon
In recent years, we have seen successful revivals of the Scream and Halloween franchises. Now it is the turn of another classic 1990s slasher film, a reworking that emerges with hugely underwhelming results
The original The Crow is a cult classic. This long-planned remake from the perpetually terrible Rupert Sanders was an ill-advised move from every angle that gets just about everything from the mood to the conception of its character wrong
Robert Eggers of The Witch fame conducts a remake of the classic silent Nosferatu. This comes drenched in mood and period detail but Eggers also substantially changes the original
The Stephen King novel about a small town that is invaded by a vampire and is population taken gets its third screen adaptation in this film treatment. The 1979 mini-series is still the best version
A remake of the 1980s horror Witchboard. The original was just a VHS release and here is given a better budgeted workover, but disappears among a host of ouija-titled films of recent years
A remake of the work that launched Troma films. The original The Toxic Avenger was a gungily nasty film that readily trod way over all lines of good taste. In being cast with name stars, this has been cleaned up considerably
Disney’s original The Little Mermaid was an enormously fresh film. This is the live-action remake that came out amid much controversy and is inevitably a lesser shadow of the original.
The first of two Pinocchio adaptations of 2022, Here Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis delivers a live-action remake of the Disney animated film
The third screen adaptation of John Wyndham’s book, previously filmed as Village of the Damned, this gives the story an update in some interesting ways
One Cut of the Dead was one of the freshest takes on the overworked zombie film in recent years. Here Academy Award-winning director Michel Hazanavicius conducts a French remake but misses the mark
One of Stephen King’s best books is given a new film workover by Blumhouse. Keith Thomas made a standout directorial debut with The Vigil, but this is a disaster, one of the worst of all King adaptations
Terror Train starring Jamie Lee Curtis was one of the classics of the original slasher film fad. This is a remake
A darkly funny Danish film about a couple who accept an invite to visit another couple who seem to have no boundaries, before everything gets nasty
A valiant attempt to remake Clive Barker’s glistening and brilliant original that only emerges as a better made version of one of the sequels. This has a disappointing tameness that would never have inspired a series of sequels
A reboot of the film series adapted from the popular videogame. Produced by James Wan, this emerges as a kinetic and enjoyable effort that has clearly designed to introduce an ongoing franchise
A remake of the original zombie film Night of the Living Dead conducted in animation
Japanese remake of the Vincenzo Natali film where a group of people wake up in mysterious labyrinth of identical cubed rooms filled with death traps
The original feminist slasher film gets the remake treatment with interesting results
A remake of the great and underrated film and Italian comic-book about a masked super-thief who constantly outwits the authorities, this comes with style and wit to spare and strikes the note perfectly
A reimagining of the long-running Wrong Turn series of Backwoods Brutality films, this does imaginative things with the set-up and emerges as the best of the series so far
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, Guillermo Del Toro’s remake of the 1947 film noir tale about a fake clairvoyant is an exquisite piece of mood and design
An uncredited remake of Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer, this is the single worst film I have seen in the last few years. It is surely the horror equivalent of The Room
A South Korean film that remakes The Caller about a girl who finds she can make phone calls across time to another woman only to find that the caller is a psychopath who begins to wreak havoc with her timeline
Robert Zemeckis’s remake of the Roald Dahl story and Nicolas Roeg film proves a head-scratching effort that misfires on almost every cue
The Soska Sisters take on remaking the classic David Cronenberg film about a woman with a blood-drinking skin graft who leaves a trail of rabid victims. The sisters smartly update the original, bringing a host of new ideas to bear
The tough hard-boiled Korean gangster film is a genre of its own. This uniquely has a detective and a crime kingpin deciding to join forces to track down a serial killer. Slated for remake by James Wan
The Disney live-action remake of Mulan finally arrives mired in controversy but the film itself proves a solid production for the most part, although never quite soars as a work of fantasy
The controversial remake of Child’s Play where Chucky is no longer possessed but become an artificially intelligent smart toy. This seems to misconstrues everything that the fanbase of the series celebrates by a mile
A remake of the work that has been cited as the first slasher film. This is less a horror film than a horror film that has been hijacked by a political agenda, delivered with a relentlessly loud and damning misandrist tone
Jon Favreau had success recreating The Jungle Book in live-action with CGI animals and does the same with The Lion King – only to produce an exacting, lifeless replication missing the charms of the original
A gender-swapped remake of What Women Want in which Taraji P. Henson gets the ability to read men’s thoughts. Henson displays no talent for comedy and this is a spectacularly unfunny film
Another remake that nobody asked for. The 1990 film is reworked in a script that ditches almost all of the afterlife themes and instead seems to want to be a film about veterans addicted to reality-blurring drugs
The 1956 The Bad Seed is the original evil child film. All other psycho children films draw themselves from here. This is a remake directed by actor Rob Lowe who also plays the father. McKenna Grace gives a superbly chill performance as the child
Dario Argento’s original Suspiria was an almost entirely narrative-free work set around a series of extravagantly arty deaths; this remake could not be a more different film. Not to say it is uninteresting in what it does
The Picnic at Hanging Rock with its hauntingly unsolved mystery is considered one of the greatest Australian films of all time; this mini-series in six one-hour parts drags every beat of the story out and pads the slim original with so many other character mini-dramas and backstories that the mystery is drowned out
One of a growing industry of zombie films that leech off the George Romero name. This remakes Romero’s Day of the Dead, which means it cherry picks key elements and rearranges them in a different way but lacks everything else that Romero offered
The fourth film version of the Disney comedy about a mother and daughter who swap bodies for one day. This was made for the Disney Channel and comes as a grating teen musical
Eli Roth’s remake of the classic Charles Bronson vigilante film is an ugly affair. In an era where school shooting are a weekly scourge in the US, do we really need another fantasy about one man becoming empowered and sorting things out with a gun?
I far preferred the 1990 mini-series to the cinematic remake of the Stephen King book. This emerges as a lesser copy of tv’s Stranger Things, which did the whole 80s nostalgia/horror story far better
The idea of a zombie film all shot in a single take. This proves a novelty amusement but then the film spins this on its head and becomes positively ingenious.
Sofia Coppola’s remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood film. The original was a work of brooding Southern Gothic of repressed sexual tensions; Sofia seems more interested in making a costume drama that is a stretch to call a horror story any longer
Death Race 2000 was a hit for producer Roger Corman. It was remade minus the satire as a straight action film with Death Race; here Corman remakes the original (albeit very cheaply) and restores the satire
Another remake we never asked for. Considering that this had the entire CGI revolution to conceive of the afterlife journey and merely has to top Joel Schumacher, it is amazing how dull and uninteresting this emerges as
One welcomes a collaboration between Tsui Hark, the godfather of Hong Kong fantasy cinema, and Yuen Wo Ping, fight choreographer for The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but the the results are oddly disappointing, with Yuen’s talents seeming buried under the CGI
The Tom and Jerry cartoons have the distinction of being considered the most violent ever. The question is why anybody considered why we needed an animated remake of Willy Wonka but with the addition of Tom and Jerry
This live-action remake of the Disney animated film is mounted with a lavishness. On the other hand, the romance at the centre never fully warms up, while the human characters have the show stolen from under by the cutlery and furnishings
A revival of Jumanji. The original’s boardgame is now a videogame that sucks the players inside. The adventure elements are routine but the film’s has comedic fun with its bodyswapped characters
One of the lush, beautifully produced modern Wu Xia (flying swordsmen) films. Produced and written by the legendary Tsui Hark
A remake of Eli Roth’s first film? Why, given that the original only came out 14 years ago, is anybody’s guess. This literally recycles the original’s script but is deaf to its sarcastic humour of the original
There was a lot of hate centred on this for recasting what is considered a classic film with an all-girl cast. It emerges mostly likeably, no better, no worse on the whole, where the new ensemble make a solid showing
Nothing indicates how miscalculated this remake is than the fact it has been placed in the hands of the director of the High School Musicals and sundry Disney Channel fodder
Another Disney remake that hardly resemble its source – the original was light slapstick with a big cartoon dragon, this is a sober wild child story where the dragon is now an endangered species
Blood Feast was the world’s first splatter film. This is a remake with a better budget but suffers a tameness that fails to come anywhere near the go-for-broke rawness of the original
Live-action remake of the Disney film that gives the animals life through top of the line CGI effects. The results are impressive aided in large part by near-perfect voice casting
This offers the bizarre novelty of being the version of Plan 9 from Outer Space that Ed Wood would have wanted make if he had a decent budget. Surprisingly enough this is played straight, although you question whether what Wood was trying to make was a modern zombie film
It has become an overused phrase in this site’s critical arsenal to say “yet another 70s/80s remake that is inferior to the original”. The 1982 Poltergeist was one of the great ghost stories of the era; this hits all the beats and with bigger effects but fails to find any of the haunted mood of the original
Eli Roth home invasion thriller where two malicious girls turn family man Keanu Reeves’ life upside down. Roth creates a strong opening but hits the peak of the film not too far in and thereafter loses direction
Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby was a classic film that popularised the modern interest in occult and deviltry on film; this sad remake is something that only parrots the cliches that have set in in the ensuing 46 years and clumsily mishandles all of Polanski’s comically edgy paranoia
Remake of the Ozploitation film where the original’s Most Dangerous Game scenario set in a dystopian future is lamely rewritten as a reality tv show and another Hunger Games ripoff. The original was fairly terrible; this has a lack of conviction in most regards that makes it even worse
Spike Lee makes a vampire film (even though the title gives the impression is he has detoured off into gospel). The even bigger surprise is he conducts a remake of the Blaxploitation classic Ganja & Hess
I have to admit despite all the bad feeling for this, I liked it. While what went on in terms of the man inside the machine was cut and dried in the original, this has been shifted to give us a “the soul of Robocop” story . Moreover, the original’s biting satire of 1980s corporations and politics has been smartly updated to tackle some big 2010s issues
Bollywood remake of a ghost story that comes with one of the cleverer M. Night Shyamalan conceptual reversal twists
This remake of the Australian classic about a coma patient with psychokinetic powers is astonishingly bad. Richard Franklin’s stylish scares are replaced by laughably overwrought sequences
Directors Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson conduct a remake of their earlier film about resurrected cheerleaders. The question might be why – both have demonstrated they can do far better than this
Ben Stiller’s remake of the unfunny Danny Kaye vehicle about an impractical daydreamer has no more depth than an inspirational postcard and takes a long time to deliver it
One of the few remakes of the 00s/10s that delivers the goods. While messing around with the plot set-up with mixed results, this quickly goes for broke to create a satisfying show on most accounts
This is a Canadian-made remake of the Alyssa Milano-starring erotic vampire film The Nosferatu Diaries: Embrace of the Vampire. For some reason, this is now minus the erotica and emerges as tepid
Another pointless 70s remake that replicates the 1976 Carrie almost scene for scene but misconstrues the material by a mile. Crucially, it comes without the sensational casting that made the original, nor a Brian De Palma at the helm
I was never a particular fan of the Schwarzenegger original and this improves on it somewhat. This is far better conceived as an action film with some amazing Cyberpunk designs. On the other hand, the two decades interim has made the story’s Philip K. Dick-ian reality bendings seem commonplace
Controversial remake of the 1980 psycho film. The remake’s unique take is that everything is shot in first-person from the point-of-view of the killer.
This Syfy Channel production can’t seem to decide if it is a sequel or a remake of the 1984 film. Michael Paré turn up in both versions but goes from being the hero to a menacing heavy. The original had its moments but this is generic and routine in all ways
TV mini-series remake of the Michael Crichton medical thriller that pointlessly changes and over-extrudes a tight and effective original, while director Mikael Salomon adds absurd red herrings and keys away major surprises well in advance
The idea of remaking John Milus’s ridiculous 1984 survivalist fantasy about a Communist invasion of the USA maybe counts as one of the most absurdly unnecessary of all remakes. The film laughably tries to deal with the absence of a Soviet Union by creating a boogeyman out of North Korea
Backwoods Brutality Chilean style. This has the look and feel of a lost 1970s film that some people insist on calling grindhouse. Not the most polished work but this does deliver assorted brutality, gore and cannibalism
A horror version of Frequency where Rachelle Lefevre has phone conversations across time with a disturbed woman who then starts causing people to disappear and altering the timeline. Cleverly told and with some chilling twists
Another wholly unnecessary remake that waters the raw savagery of the original down to a safe tepidness. Everything that the original set down has now become formulaic
Another 1980s horror remake that resurrects and changes the original to little purpose. This fails to understand that what was original in 1985 lacks much when placed alongside contemporary vampire films
A Chinese Ghost Story was one of the greatest Hong Kong fantasy films; this remake gets everything wrong. The aerial combat scenes are replaced by CGI, the characters rewritten and the Buddhist elements eliminated
Chinese remake of the romcom where Mel Gibson was suddenly able to hear women’s thoughts. A second time over, the premise seems slight while the film crucially fails to create much passion between its two stars
Tsui Hark, a key figure of the modern Wu Xia cycle, makes a lushly extravagant, Chinese-backed flying swordsman epic. Featuring a wide canvas of characters who come together in a series of very entertaining playoffs
Though pitched as a prequel, this is essentially a remake of John Carpenter’s classic. Alas, this only finds the same phantasmagoric outlandishness as Carpenter did in a couple of scenes that may be moderately impressive for those who have never seen the original
Guillermo Del Toro produced cinematic remake of a 1970s tv movie, this creates a good deal of creepy mood and atmosphere with Katie Holmes as a mother who finds goblins in the cellar, but never pushes any of it in a way that jolts audiences in their seats
Yet another in the fad for 19870s/0s horror remakes, a merely efficient revival that reduces the wild, outré scares of Wes Craven’s original to conveyor belt shocks
A film remake of one of the great tv series of the 1980s. A complete betrayal by the original’s director Martin Campbell that strips all the politics and simply makes it into a Mel Gibson revenge film
This has almost nothing in common with the 1980 film it is supposedly based on. Instead we get a home invasion film where Darren Lynn Bousman of Saw sequel fame shows that constant scenes of brutality and torture are all that he has in his arsenal
Popular animated adaptation of a children’s book. This hits all the right story arcs and in sufficiently likeable measure to work amiably. Two sequels and a live-action remake followed.
The harrowing 1970s raped woman on a revenge spree film is given the remake treatment, although is watered down in many key areas. The revenge scenes however are played up for a particular nastiness
Heavily disappointing remake of the Ray Harryhausen film where the replacement of Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation with CGI fails to achieve any magic
George Romero’s underrated classic gets a makeover amid the 00/10s fad for remakes of 70s/80s horror films. Alas, Romero’s modest classic about a madness-inducing biospill has a big-budget thrown to emerge as just another zombie film
The 1941 Lon Chaney Jr The Wolf Man is given the remake treatment in a way that builds out on the creaky original with lavish sets and state of the art transformation effects
Another in the fad for 70s/80s remakes where Alexandre Aja for once captures the spirit of Joe Dante’s 1978 original by planting tongue in cheek and wading in with mind-bogglingly gory enthusiasm
Another pointless 1970s remake, in this case of the little-known British psycho-thriller about two tourists stalked in the French countryside (now transplanted to Argentina) with ho-hum results
Loose remake of the 1980s slasher film The House on Sorority Row, competently made but in the end this never sufficiently surmounts the routine
Revival of the Disney Witch Mountain films of the 1970s. Now the films have been dragged into the post-X Files era and flashy effects added to negligible result
Disastrous remake of the classic 80s horror film, which comes shorn of its biting satire on Family Values and turned into just another teen horror film
Live-action English-language remake of the anime short about a demon-hunting vampire girl. The original is reduced to no more than a series of slick by-the-numbers action poses