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.
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
A popular hit that spins the cyborg cop theme through a Cyberpunk future, while director Paul Verhoeven piles on excesses of violence and black humour. A darkly funny satire of Reaganite America, this is an entertainingly slick comic-book of a movie
This was intended as the third of the Tales from the Crypt films. A remake of the classic voodoo film I Walked With a Zombie, from Val Lewton, a producer who specialised in psychological ambiguity where we could not be certain if the supernatural was real. All of this is lost in the hands of bad movie director Avi Nesher.
Kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) that was a huge hit, spawning several sequels and an English-language remake, plus a horde of imitators. For all its reputation, the film is often crude, nevertheless does evince an eerie atmosphere
This tv movie was the first English-language remake of the classic French thriller Les Diaboliques. It follows the original closely and still works effectively, although being shot in colour rather than black-and-white lacks the stark tension. Sam Waterston gives a performance of amazing cruelty as the husband
Following the success of the Hannibal Lecter films, Dino de Laurentiis smartly repackaged Thomas Harris’s earlier novel as a Hannibal Lecter prequel
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
Ridiculous red-blooded, flag-waving film in which the Soviets invade the USA and a group of high-school teenagers maintain a lone guerilla campaign
![[Rec] (2007) poster](https://moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-2007-poster-3.jpg)
Furious and highly engaging Spanish Found Footage film about the infected dead taking over an apartment building. Three sequels and an English-language remake followed
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
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 fourth film from David Cronenberg, a clear (although by no means uninteresting) attempt to repeat the success of Shivers with Marilyn Chambers as a woman with a vampiric skin parasite that turns victims into maddened killers
A remake of the first Quatermass story conducted as a live broadcast tv movie. Quite a considerable technical achievement considering the limitations and one that works with quite reasonable results
Over Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, there hangs the single question of “Why?” The result seems a futile conceit, one only designed to infuriate those who regard the original in such high esteem
One of the defining classics of the genre, enormously influential, muchly imitated and parodied and possibly the most over-analysed film ever. Alfred Hitchcock expertly creates a creepy psycho-thriller in which he delights in lulling us and undermining expectation
Another among the fad for remakes of 70s/80s horror films. Any connection to the original Jamie Lee Curtis disco slasher is thrown out in favour of a generic modern slasher
Entry amid the 1980s slasher fad featuring Jamie Lee Curtis. A fairly dreary effort that comes with much disco dancing footage
Remake of The Bishop’s Wife with Denzel Washington as an angel come to aid an overworked pastor but falling for his wife Whitney Houston
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
Debate will always rage as to whether this was directed by Tobe Hooper or executive producer Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t alter the fact that it is a superlative rollercoaster of a ghost story that doesn’t always make sense but pulls its effects off flawlessly
The film that started it all. This takes what could have been a jokey premise and delivers it in bold, exciting stokes. What elevates the film is Rod Serling’s script. filled with embittered soliloquies that become a biting commentary on the human condition, before the film reaches one of the great cinematic twist endings
Tim Burton’s much disliked remake. Certainly, the ape makeups are superb. While Burton touches many points with the original, he has dropped the biting satire in favour of adventure, while the ending left everyone scratching their heads
This has become legendary as the Worst Film Ever Made. Maybe it is but the audience that celebrates its technical gaffes, the purple prose and bizarre bheind-the-scenes stories has contrarily made it one of cultish fascination
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
Bollywood remake of a ghost story that comes with one of the cleverer M. Night Shyamalan conceptual reversal twists
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
The 1978 Piranha is remade as a cable tv movie but has excised all the humour and witty genre in-referencing of the original
The second film from Joe Dante. Mounted as a quickie copy of Jaws by producer Roger Corman, Dante succeeds in peppering it with a lot of sly jokes and genre in-references
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 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
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
Based on a non-fiction, fringe science book that makes claims that the US Navy conducted experiments that turned a ship invisible during WWII, this spins the idea out into a modest time travel story
The long-planned film adaptation of The Phantom musical emerges as disaster under Joel Schumacher. The Phantom’s presence has all been watered down and the film exists as no more than a series of scenographic poses
Dario Argento takes on The Phantom and welcomely rescues it from musical romance and returns it to being a horror film. Despite a beautifully mounted production, Julian Sands’ Phantom is too weak and wimpy
On the back of popularity of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and the Elm Street films, Robert Englund was cast in this version where the emphasis is on the slasher element, which works far better than you might think
TV mini-series remake of The Phantom of the Opera starring Jane Seymour that rewrites and rearranges much of the story to negligible effect
Hammer Films’ attempt to update the classic story went astray – the Paris opera becomes a dreary English repertory house and Terence Fisher misses the tale’s grandeur
The second film version of the story, lavishly remaking the classic 1925 Lon Chaney version in sound and colour. Alas, all this serves to do is stuff and mount the story. With the addition of a sympathetic backstory and cast with a wimpily diminutive Claude Rains, Chaney’s magnificently mad Phantom comes across like an indignant fox terrier
The first and still the best version of the story. Made when The Phantom was a horror story rather than a weepie romance, everything from Lon Chaney’s performance to the amazing Gothic design and directorial set-pieces is classic
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
Disney live-action film about a boy and his dragon where the dragon is represented by animation
Pearl White was the original serial heroine in The Perils of Pauline. During the 1960s Batman craze, the serial was revived as this campy comedy
Dennis Potter was the greatest writer to ever work in televisio. This mini-series is one of his most celebrated works, featuring characters bursting out into lip-synched Golden Oldie songs, making biting contrast to their downbeaten lives
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
Fine Australian from Richard Franklin that jumps aboard the popularity of Carrie concerning a coma patient who demonstrates psychic powers
A Hong Kong supernatural fantasy that has been made as a copy of the ground-changing A Chinese Ghost Story. The last film directed the legendary King Hu, the man who created the Wu Xia film
Excellent film from Alejandro Amenabar in which a handsome playboy finds himself in the midst of a baffling series of reality flips before arriving at an SF twist ending
Cult director Takashi Miike jumps aboard the J-horror fad of the 2000s and makes a Ringu copy that substitutes haunted videos for haunted cellphone calls. Two sequels and an English-language remake followed
Classic caveman vs dinosaurs prehistoric drama later to be remade as the more famous version with Raquel Welch. This plays as fairly creaky today but gains an undeniable vividness with the raw ferocity of its dinosaur scenes (played by optically enlarged lizards)
This live-action remake of the classic Disney animated film benefits from Glenn Close chewing scenery in grand style as Cruella De Ville but the latter half essentially degenerates into no more than a series of Home Alone-styled slapstick violence scenes
The last really good animated film made during Walt Disney’s lifetime and for the next couple of decades. Filled with cuddly anthropomorphism and charmed delights
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.
TV mini-series remake of the 1959 nuclear war film. With no longer the need to make messages as in the original, the story has been expanded out with a lush romantic sweep
The first major film confronting nuclear war full on with the world’s last survivors gathered in Australia. Slightly ponderous today but nevertheless full of potent imagery
The classic 1976 Anti-Christ film is given the remake treatment. The production look slick but quickly disappears into forgettability
This is where all the cliches of Devil Children began. A big hit among the 1970s occult boom, this is essentially Sunday tabloid Christianity – a lurid, doom-filled take on Book of Revelation End Times prophecies that moves with a slick polish and a series of schlocky deaths every few minutes
The second film version of I Am Legend, this rewrites the book’s vampires as mutants and abandons its mood of paranoia for a fantasy of hippie utopia and Charlton Heston in square-jawed action hero mode
Electrifyingly ultra-violent film from Park Chan-wook who ably borrows from Takashi Miike. The film equally becomes a conceptual twister as the protagonist is forced to go on a reality-bending quest through his own life.
The oddest collaborations of its era – between Hammer Films and William Castle renowned for his sensationalist gimmicks, who conduct a remake of James Whale’s droll horror comedy. Alas, Castle only turns out a broad farce
A classic Old Dark House thriller from director James Whale, a droll comedy of wonderfully stylised Gothic mood and featuring a near-perfectly cast line-up of eccentrics creeping about
Remake of the Jerry Lewis film is a comedic tour-de-force for Eddie Murphy as he swings between a shy 400 lb professor and a manic, testostoronally charged health junkie
Jerry Lewis is either a low him or hate him figure; whatever the case, one should give this, his best film, a chance … It is Lewis offering his own comedic spin on the Jekyll/Hyde story, which contains a great performance on his part as he swings between a socially inept nerd and smooth lounge singer
The Roger Corman 1950s cheapie about a mystery man who proves to be an alien space vampire is remade as a vehicle for Traci Lords. The script is essentially the same but with the addition of a lot of topless women
One of the classic B-budget films directed by the legendary Roger Corman back in his heyday. Concerning a mysterious alien vampire, this comes with all the quirks and dry humour of Corman’s films of this era
Werner Herzog conducts a remake of the silent German classic with Klaus Kinski as Dracula. A very different film to the original but quite unique in Herzog’s individualistic way
Vampire erotica that is largely premised around seeing Alyssa Milano take her clothes off and little else
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 first screen adaptation of Dracula and one of the most amazing of all vampire films, a German Expressionist fairytale that exists in haunted netherworld through which stalks the crepuscular figure of Max Schreck
Gripping Danish thriller in which morgue attendant Nicholaj Coster Waldau finds a serial killer is playing games with him. Filled with paranoia, sharp twists and lashings of black humour
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
One of the most influential horror films of the 1980s, creating a series of dream horror copycats. Before the campy, makeup effects driven sequels kicked in, Wes Craven’s original creates a genuinely unearthly series of nightmare jumps
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
George Romero produces a remake of his groundbreaking zombie film. This adheres closely to the original but manages to modernise it in interesting ways
The film that created the modern zombie genre, that took a creature from voodoo and reinvented at a something stumbling and wanting only to devour flesh. George Romero creates a horror film that shoots out all cozy, established convention
Remake of George Romero’s seminal zombie classic. The 3D is no more than a gimmick, while elsewhere they are some radical changes – a white Ben, a lame explanation for the zombies, some far-too-cute in-jokes – that fails to match the effectiveness of the original
Absolutely extraordinary directorial debut from actor Charles Laughton who transforms the story of an evil preacher (Robert Mitchum) pursuing two children into something approaching a stylised Expressionist fairytale
Another pointless remake of an 80s horror film. The original was a cheap Evil Dead ripoff driven by cheesy effects; this provides more professional effects but only becomes a slickly produced assemblage of cliches we have seen dozens of times before
A remake of the original zombie film Night of the Living Dead conducted in animation
Gripping psychological thriller in which a niece suspects that Robert Montgomery who has charmed her aunt may be a psychopathic killer
A classic Wu Xia/flying swordsman film from the genre’s 1990s’ heyday, a remake of one of the earlier foundational hits of the genre. Produced by the legendary Tsui Hark
Classic horror film, later remade as House of Wax, with Lionel Atwill giving a wonderfully mad performance as a waxworks curator who covers murdered bodies in wax
Another in the fad for remakes of 70s/80s films. where the 1981 slasher film gets reworked if this did not come with the 3D gimmick, it would be no more than a routine direct-to-dvd release
Classic from the heyday of the slasher film, an effort that was clearly designed to exploit another holiday title in the wake of the successes of Halloween and Friday the 13th. This snappily adapts the slasher formula and does better than most of its ilk in serving it back up
Nominal remake of the Boris Karloff The Mummy, which has now been inflated into a big budget Indiana Jones adventure. Stephen Sommers lets the film overspill with CGI spectacle but the exercise is deflated by a jokey, unserious attitude
The original mummy film starring Boris Karloff. Unlike the sequels where the mummy became a slow, shuffling creature, this is a subtle classic with haunted mood.
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
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
A parody of the Backwoods Brutality film. One of the very first films produced by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma fame
The first and best version of the oft-told story in which shipwreck survivors are forced to survive with their bare hands while being hunted by a mad Russian aristocrat
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 classic bad movie Cat-Women of the Moon in which explorers to the Moon encounter an all-women society. Things do not improve in the bad movie stakes here
The original Mighty Joe Young was a wonderfully underrated giant ape film. This is a remake conducted in the post-Jurassic Park era that adds CGI but holds none of the magic of the original
Many of the people involved in the 1933 King Kong came back together to create another giant ape film. Much overlooked, this is one of the masterpieces of stop-motion animation
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
Stunning anime remake of Metropolis based on an Osasmu Tezuka. The visuals and particularly the design are overwhelming – like a Cyberpunk film set in a stylised Art Deco world
Fritz Lang’s visionary work was something way ahead of it time and is one of the few silent films still screened today. The film’s politics are naive but Lang’s visions of the city of the future and the first screen robot are vivid.
Ponderous big screen remake of Death Takes a Holiday where Death in the form of Brad Pitt comes to Earth, engages in a romance
Dracula director Tod Browning reteams with Bela Lugosi in a remake of the silent London After Midnight. A vampire film that has much atmosphere but is ruined by a ridiculous ending
Palm Springs was one of the funniest and most delightful variants on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme. This is a French language remake that relocates the story to the Moroccan desert
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.