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.
An interesting if uneven remake of the 1950s SF classic from Scott Derrickson that smartly updates the story from the Atomic Age to a post-9/11 era where it now delivers a modern environmental warning
David Cronenberg adapts a Stephen King novel with Christopher Walken waking from a coma with clairvoyant abilities. An okay film if one that lacks the personal intensity and rich themes of Cronenberg’s original works
Satiric hit produced by Roger Corman, a spoof of Rollerball, with David Carradine as a driver in a futuristic road race where points are won by running down pedestrians. Also featuring a young unknown Sylvester Stallone
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
Classic fantasy film in which Death takes human form to visit a party and experience the human condition. Frederic March gives us Death as a comically eccentric outsider and the film has some great moments of imagination
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?
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
The second film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, a psycho-thriller made for Roger Corman where Coppola shows the glimmerings of style that made him a major director a decade later
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
Classic 1970s porn film about a spinster condemned to Hell who is sent back to the world to experience the lusts of the flesh. Made back at a time when the people involved seemed to care about making a good film as well
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
Classic French psycho-thriller that is gripping in its psychological games before reaching an unforgettable twist ending. It has been twice remade and its plot much imitated by others but never bettered
A South Korean film that came out around the same time as Frequency and has an almost identical premise about two people who start talking by radio while separated in time by twenty years.
This gets the nonsensical absurdity of the original Doctor Dolittle stories far more than the Eddie Murphy version. On the other hand, this was the era of Mary Poppins and this is made as a lumbering musical
Complete and utter bastardisation of Hugh Lofting’s charming Doctor Dolittle stories, which are turned into a modern comedy with Eddie Murphy and talking animals doing lots of pee and poop jokes
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
Remake of Heaven Can Wait/Here Comes Mr Jordan as a vehicle for comedian Chris Rock where the heavenly body mix-up now becomes about a black man ending up in a white man’s body
The original The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is a classic of silent German Expressionist cinema; this loose remake feels like Eraserhead reconceived with absurd Day-Glo disco decor
Claude Chabrol updates Fritz Lang super-villain Dr Mabuse to a millennial West Berlin where Alan Bates is a tv mogul who masterminds a mass suicide cult via messages hidden inside advertising
Filipino ghost story inspired by The Ring and Ju-on films that generates a reasonable haunted atmosphere in its story about mysterious happenings in an apartment building. This later underwent an English-language remake
One of the great tv series of the 1980s, a powerful and incisive snapshot of Thatcherite England, the backroom politics of the nuclear power industry and the environmentalist movement. A brilliantly written show featuring great performances
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 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
Disney live-action film with two psi-powered kids on the run. A popular hit that seems to have been mostly construed around a series of novelty effects set-pieces
Ferociously paced low-budget hit that put the names of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on the map. What made the film a cult hit was Raimi’s full tilt pace and entertainingly over-the-top splatter effects
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
Thailand’s Pang Brothers proved themselves some of the best horror directors in the world with this eerie film in which a woman starts to see the dead after receiving corneal implants. Several sequels and an English-language remake followed
Larry Buchanan must count as one of the all-time bad movie directors and in this ultra-cheap alien invader film, in itself a remake of Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), he is true to form
An English-language remake of the ghost story from the Pang Brothers follows the other film faithfully but in terms of atmosphere is a pallid copy of the original
Work of incredibly stark tension set amidst post-Cuban Missile Crisis nuclear anxieties with the US trying to recall a bomber that has been accidentally dispatched to drop an atomic bomb on Moscow
Live tv broadcast remake of the 1960s Cold War nightmare about an accidental nuclear release over Russia, now with an all-star cast. This proves far more suspenseful and expertly played than one might have thought
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
The adaptation of the Stephen King novel with Drew Barrymore giving a fantastic performance as a young girl with pyrokinetic powers on the run as she is hunted by a sinister government agency
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
The original and greatest of all SF serial adventures and a huge influence on George Lucas. Despite the primitive effects, this still has a marvellously rousing imagination that stands up today. Two serial sequels followed
Dino de Laurentiis climbed aboard the Star Wars fad with this remake of the classic serial. Against expectation, the film’s campy tone and eye-popping sets and costumes work and it has become an audience favourite
The third of the Flash Gordon serials, not quite at the heights of the previous two but with a colour and exoticism that was head and shoulders above the other serials of the era
A film about med students stopping their hearts so as to explore the afterlife. This aims for big ideas but befalls director Joel Schumacher who delivers pretty visuals but finds nothing any more profound than a figurative group hug
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
Remake of Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor where the charms of the original are buried under an excess of twee – where the professor now gets a cute robot assistant and the flubber becomes sentient
A teleporter accident causes a scientist to swap head and arm with a fly. This requires you to suspend believability but is otherwise one of the classic monster movies of the era. Several sequels and a remake followed.
David Cronenberg remakes the 1958 film, transforming its improbable scenario into a fascinating study of biological transformation with Jeff Goldblum genetically mutating into a fly hybrid. Kafka’s Metamorphosis with a lot more slime.
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
John Carpenter’s immediate successor to Halloween is a suspenseful and scary ghost story about undead sailors descending on a small town in a fog bank, even if the narrative logic holding everything together is thin
One of the worst among the 2000s fad for remakes of 70s/80s horror films. John Carpenter’s 1980 original has been transformed into a teen horror film where the spookiness collapses into frequently ridiculous shock effects
The original version of the Disney live-action comedy with mother Barbara Harris and a young Jodie Foster as her daughter who swap bodies for one day. The performances are hilarious and this is filled with witty deadpan gags
Enjoyable remake of the 1970s Disney comedy about a mother and daughter who swap bodies. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan nail the swapped roles to perfection
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
A copy of John Carpenter’s Halloween that proved a big success and spawned a long-running series of sequels. Both films created the slasher film, which came to overrun horror in the 1980s, although this is a cruder film than Halloween
Another 1980s horror remake that had much potential. However, this proves to be just another Friday the 13th film by the numbers, albeit with a bigger budget, and widely misses the mark
Slick well made film that successfully transplants the vampire to modern suburbia. Made with a top-drawer arsenal of effects, including taking a leaf from An American Werewolf in London and showing a detailed man into bat transformation
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
Brutal Michael Haneke film where a family’s weekend getaway becomes a nightmare when two boys enter the house and proceed to torture and kill them. Haneke adds a level of meta-fiction that taunts the viewer’s participation
Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his earlier home invasion film has a sense of pointlessness to it. But in following the original so closely, it also cannot help but work where it did
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
Fascinating Blaxploitation vampire film. In contrast to the more popular and cheesier Blacula, this is arty, oblique, almost an experimental film that manages to offer a unique take on the vampire film
The 1939 Bob Hope comedy remake of The Cat and the Canary was a big hit; here he and Paulette Goddard are put through the same in what is all but a sequel. Hope is on top form again
An overrated classic that is nevertheless an undeniable fixture of 1980s pop culture. Overlong, it is largely carried through Bill Murray’s lazy sarcasm and the sterling work from the visual effects team
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
Strong and dramatically absorbing Swedish thriller featuring one of the most original and provocative heroines on screen in some time. A word of mouth hit that later underwent a lesser English-language remake
The very first Godzilla film. Essentially a copy of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, it has incredibly stark effect despite the primitiveness of the effects. In it you can see Japanese nation struggling to expiate the pain of the Atomic Bomb.
The Old Dark House film hit a peak in the late 1930s. This was a comedy variant featuring the entirely forgotten comedy act The Ritz Brothers stumbling around an old mansion
Classic 1940s afterlife fantasy with Spencer Tracy as a pilot killed in action who is sent back as a guardian angel. This works fantastically well due to a great character arc and a sharp Dalton Trumbo script
John Carpenter’s all-time classic, the film that created the slasher film and has been much imitated, not to mention multiply sequelised and remade. None of these however come anywhere near recapturing Carpenter’s eerie spookiness
Another inferior entry in the mid-00s fad remake of 70s/80s horror films. Whereas John Carpenter gave us Michael Myers as evil incarnate, Rob Zombie gives us Michael Myers as a misunderstood and unloved kid
One of the thrillers influenced by Fatal Attraction with Rebecca De Mornay giving an ice cold performance as a nanny who infiltrates a family seeking revenge for the death of her husband.
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
Fourth film version of The Hands of Orlac about a pianist who receives hand transplants from a murderer and believes they are possessing him. Compared to the first two versions, this is dull and prosaic
Classic German silent film about a pianist who receives hand transplants and believes they are possessed. Superbly stylised direction from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari director Robert Wiene and with Conrad Veidt putting his all into the contorted mime work
The third film and least version of the classic horror story about a pianist who receives hands transplanted from a murderer and is driven mad believing they are possessing him
Completely madcap film from Takashi Miike, a black comedy about a family who run a guesthouse where the guests keep dying. This comes replete with musical numbers and Claymation sequences
This is the finest haunted house film of all. In Robert Wise’s hands, the ghosts are unseen and only ever psychological and suggested – the results are terrifying. Adapted from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
The original 1963 version of The Haunting was a masterpiece of unseen psychological horrors. This, in which all of the psychological horrors are replaced by loud and unsubtle CGI bombast, is one of the worst remakes of all time
Warren Beatty co-directs/stars in a remake of the afterlife film Here Comes Mr Jordan. Amiably lightweight but this was over-praised at the time, inexplicably receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture
The film that put the name of Clive Barker on the map. A work of considerable imagination where Barker delves into forbidden pleasures and fuses the film with S&M imagery for the memorable creations of the Cenobites
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
One of the original Hollywood afterlife films of the 1940s light fantasy boom, twice remade, most notedly as Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait. Amiable and likeable while avoiding any deeper issues
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
The second film from Wes Craven, a classic in the 1970s Backwoods Brutality cycle with a family stranded in the desert as they come under attack from a family of cannibals lurking in the hills
Wes Craven’s Backwoods Brutality classic gets a gore-drenched makeover from Alexandre Aja. One of the better amid the 2000s fad for horror remakes where the original is dragged into the modern day in some interesting ways
One of the best horror films of the 1980s, a grippingly suspenseful work where C. Thomas Howell is caught in a series of taunting psychological games across the interstate after offering psychopathic hitcher Rutger Hauer a ride
Another disappointing remake of an 80s horror film, this misses the gripping suspense and everything that worked about the 1986 original and turns it into just another teen horror film
The film that launched Vincent Price as a horror icon where he plays a mad waxworks curator who covers murdered bodies in wax. A remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum shot in the original 1950s 3D fad.
One of the key films from William Castle, the P.T. Barnum of the horror genre. Castle always approached horror like a carnival barker. Castle does not have much style but the luridness of his shocks proves entertaining
The announcement of the remake of The Haunting was followed by this remake of the 1959 William Castle film, which turns out far more unpretentious and altogether more fun than the bloated flop of The Haunting
A slasher film from the classic 1980s heyday set during a party at a sorority house. This has been praised as being one effort that is well above the rest of the genre.
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.
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
Monster movie featuring mutant fish monsters come onto land to breed with women. Absurdly entertaining, this at least brings the interspecies lust in films like The Creature from the Black Lagoon out into the open
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
Defying the sensationalistic title, this is actually a fairly reasonable entry in the 1950s alien body snatchers fad in which wives discover their husbands have been taken over by aliens come to Earth to repopulate their species
Rather tatty remake of I Married a Monster from Outer Space made for tv. This is routine tv filler that has been churned out with little care or feel for the original.
TV movie remake of a 1960s psycho-thriller about two girls making prank calls and uttering the title phrase – only to inadvertently call a killer. The premise makes a lot more sense updated to the 80s
One of the most raw and savage films ever made, this sits on a dividing line between true horror and exploitation as we experience Camille Keaton being raped with no detail spared before exacting a brutal revenge
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
One of the greatest of all 1950s SF films in which average man Grant Williams begins to shrink in size. A film that is as much an effects tour-de-force as it is an existential allegory about a man in an alien universe
An appealing comedy remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man with Lily Tomlin as a housewife who starts to shrink after exposure to household cleaning products. One of the better films from the usually terrible Joel Schumacher
A South Korean entry in the fad for Asian ghost stories that were popular in the 2000s following the successes of Ring and Ju-on/The Grudge. This later underwent remake as Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors
Classic of the 1950s alien invader genre in which a young boy discovers that the adults around him are being taken over by Martian invaders. Director William Cameron Menzies makes striking use of sets to further a sense of alienation
Tobe Hooper’s remake of the 1950s alien invaders classic for Cannon Films has much better effects and more technical proficient than the original but misses any of its paranoid, alienated mood