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.
The fourth film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers starring Nicole Kidman, this badly miscues many key scenes and is missing all the paranoid mood of the original film
The finest film to come out of 1950s SF cinema, concerning an invasion of pods that replicate people but for their emotions. The sense of paranoia and psychological tension is unsurpassed
An excellent remake of the Cold War classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The original has now been smartly retooled for the 1970s and slots right into the Me Generation era with paranoia perfectly intact
One of the spate of teen monster movies of the 1950s, this is a B movie that at least has the benefit of not taking itself too seriously and the creation of some memorable alien creatures
The second film adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel following The Island of Lost Souls. This has remade with a decent budget but the story’s primal charge has been cleaned up
A legendary cinematic train wreck filled with behind the scenes stories of fired directors and star egos. Despite all of this, this remake of the H.G. Wells novel emerges as a well made and watchable film
The first and best screen adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr Moreau. Wells was not happy but Charles Laughton is a great Moreau and the film develops a remarkable sexual undertow
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
One of the early directorial films from Roger Corman, a surprisingly vigorous and well written variant on the alien body snatcher film featuring one of the memorable alien creations of the era
Sentimental Frank Capra film that had become a Christmas classic where an angel shows depressed everyman James Stewart the alternate world that would happen if he had never been born
The film about a killer mutant baby that made the name of director Larry Cohen who developed a cult following. Cohen infuses it with rich imagery and dark sense of humour. Several sequels followed
Larry Cohen’s 1974 cult classic about a killer mutant baby gets the remake treatment. Even though Cohen co-writes the script here, the remake manages to wring anything interesting out of the original
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
Unsettlingly spooky Japanese ghost story from Takashi Shimizu that spawned a number of sequels, reboots and English-language remakes. This was the third of the films and superior to all that came after
A popular Robin Williams starring hit about a boardgame that unleashes jungle-themed chaos in a small town. A cute effects-driven idea that ultimately becomes an incredibly safe fantasy
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
The Disney animated version of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli tales, the one that everybody remembers, a lively affair with talking and singing animals
The first of the Disney live-action remakes of their animated films. Stephen Sommers abandons the talking animals and gives us a film that it more Tarzan than Rudyard Kipling set in a lush fantasy version of India
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
Perhaps the greatest of all monster movies, one that has attained iconic status. A masterpiece of stop-motion animation, it imbues Kong with character and attains a delicate fairytale-like atmosphere
The infamous miscalculated Dino de Laurentiis remake of King Kong where the stop-motion is replaced by Rick Baker in an ape suit, while the fairytale romance is replaced by Jessica Lange as a flower child who cracks jokes
Peter Jackson’s dream project, a remake of the 1933 film, and his finest work as a filmmaker. Jackson builds the original out considerably and his command of the effects gives us something quite dazzling
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
Wes Craven’s first film, a savage shock to the system about a group of psychopaths that brutalise two girls. With this, Craven inaugurated the Backwoods Brutality film; this is still one of the best of the cycle
A disappointing remake of the harrowing Wes Craven classic where the violence has been tamed down and the film is entirely missing the irony of the original’s savage ending
This was the second film adaptation of conceptually ingenious Ursula Le Guin novel about a man whose dreams change reality around him whenever he wakes up
A strong and unusual Swedish vampire film that is less a horror film than one about friendship between a boy and the very strange girl next door who we gradually realise is a vampire
An acclaimed mini-series about a frumpy woman taking gleeful revenge on the husband who abandoned her. Essentially Fatal Attraction rewritten with a feminist manifesto with hilariously barbed results
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
The beginning of the big Disney renaissance of the 1990s. An adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale that is conducted with an enormous degree of energy, colour and good cheer
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 original, Roger Corman’s zero budget film about a killer plant is an hilarious black comedy that has become a cult favourite and remains his most well remembered film
Roger Corman’s no-budget comedy about a killer plant is remade as a multi-million dollar musical with top-drawer effects. Missing is the original’s black comedy but this has many appealingly eccentric delights of its own
Sound remake of the silent Alfred Hitchcock film, starring big man Laird Cregar as the new lodger that a family believe might be Jack the Ripper. Cregar gives a wonderfully melodramatic performance
Fourth version of the tale about a family who believe their boarder might be Jack the Ripper. This is updated to the present and abandons most of the story for a mind-bending pretzel of identity speculations
Alfred Hitchcock’s third film about a family who believe their lodger might be a killer. This was made during the silent era but Hitchcock uses extraordinary visual tricks that blow you away
A lost film from the great silent actor Lon Chaney [Sr] who would undergo great physical makeup transformations for his role. This also has the distinction of being the first Hollywood-made vampire film
Excellent Australian-made Nature’s Revenge film with a couple on a weekend at a beach at siege from nature. Like the film’s obvious model The Birds, the attack occurs for never-specified reasons
Pointless remake of the cult Australian Nature’s Revenge film. This takes place amid some gorgeously shot natural scenery, is very faithful to the first film but seems to entirely miss the paranoid tone
Hugely successful and probably overrated classic from Frank Capra about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas that offers the secret of immortality
Stodgy, bloated musical remake of the 1937 classic about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas. The film dies an ungainly death with a cast awkward in ill-fitting costumery
Fritz Lang was an extraordinary director of the silent era and this was his first sound film. Peter Lorre gives an amazingly craven performance as a child murderer who becomes hunted by the criminal underworld
The Hollywood remake of Fritz Lang’s film about how the criminal underworld hunts a child killer. Lang’s film is a classic but this comes with visuals maybe even superior to Lang’s version
The Hollywood remake of The Hands of Orlac, a classic with Colin Clive as a pianist who believes he is possessed after receiving hands transplanted from a killer. With a fascinatingly demented performance from Peter Lorre
One among the spate of 1960s psycho films with Stella Stevens dealing with her brother and sister, one of whom is a killer
Effort from the heyday of mad science cinema about a scientist who has perfected an immortality treatment. Better budgeted than most of the other cheapies of the era and better written, although suffers from a slow talkiness
The fourth film version of The Lodger with Jack Palance as a new tenant that a family believe might be Jack the Ripper This has neither the style or the melodrama that the previous versions did
John Frankenheimer film. concerning a Communist plot for creating a brainwashed assassin, Frankenheimer shoots with stark and blackly funny effect and this has duly become a cult classic
Remake of the classic Cold War thriller from Jonathan Demme that has been updated for the era of George W. Bush
The very first Hannibal Lecter film. Under Michael Mann, this comes with a stylistic flourish very different to what the films became when Anthony Hopkins took the role
Muchly reviled slasher film that has undeniable effect in its determination to go all the way. I would argue that it is actually a far better film than Friday the 13th
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.
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
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
Ponderous big screen remake of Death Takes a Holiday where Death in the form of Brad Pitt comes to Earth, engages in a romance
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.
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
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
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 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
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
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
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 parody of the Backwoods Brutality film. One of the very first films produced by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma fame
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
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 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.
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
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
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 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
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
Gripping psychological thriller in which a niece suspects that Robert Montgomery who has charmed her aunt may be a psychopathic killer
A remake of the original zombie film Night of the Living Dead conducted in animation
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
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
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
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
George Romero produces a remake of his groundbreaking zombie film. This adheres closely to the original but manages to modernise it in interesting ways
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
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
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
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
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
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
Vampire erotica that is largely premised around seeing Alyssa Milano take her clothes off and little else
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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 classic 1976 Anti-Christ film is given the remake treatment. The production look slick but quickly disappears into forgettability
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
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 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.