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.
Martin Scorsese remakes the classic thriller with Robert De Niro playing the ex-con seeking revenge against his lawyer. Scorsese makes the morality more ambiguous and bring out tensions within the family
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
Interesting little film that has gained a small cult reputation, a True Crime work based on a series of unsolved killings conducted by a masked figure in a small Southern town in 1946. A solid, quasi-documentary-like depiction that adheres to the facts for the most part
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
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
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
A thinking person’s disaster movie depicting Japan’s sinking into the ocean
Fine little tale of an introverted man who befriends a horde of rats and uses these to gain comeuppance. A hit that presaged a host of Animals Attack films throughout the 1970s.
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
A quirky low-budget black comedy from cult B movie director Roger Corman with Dick Miller as a wannabe who suddenly receives artistic acclaim when he exhibits dead bodies in plaster as works of art
A remake of the silent German Expressionist classic that replicates the unique look and sets. Interesting, although it now emerges more like a film noir with artistic pretensions than the avant garde work the original was
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
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
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
Eli Roth-produced remake of the Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter film Two Thousand Maniacs, this plants tongue in cheek, is fairly and squarely aimed at a frat boy audience and unapologetic about piling on copious amounts of gore and naked breasts
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
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.
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
One of the lush, beautifully produced modern Wu Xia (flying swordsmen) films. Produced and written by the legendary Tsui Hark
This remake of the Stephen King short story (this time with a script from King himself) is a much better film than the earlier 1984 version or any of its numerous sequels
Remake of the earlier Bob Hope Old Dark House comedy The Ghost Breakers now made as a vehicle for the duo of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Probably overly long and takes forever to arrive at the haunted house but has some occasionally amiable comedic moments
Remake of the classic Cold War thriller from Jonathan Demme that has been updated for the era of George W. Bush
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
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
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
Classic work of dystopian SF set in a future where an ultra-violent sport has been created to pacify the masses
Amiable romantic comedy in which Mel Gibson comes round after an accident in the shower to find he now has the ability to read women’s thoughts.
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
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
An amiable venture into the light fantasy films that were popular during this era., Here angels come down and intervene to aid a baseball team on a losing streak
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
A bizarre South Korean comedy about a businessman who is imprisoned by a possibly crazed man who insists that he is an alien. Things sit in an absurdly funny ambiguity. Later remade by Yorgos Lanthimos as Bugonia
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
A passable 80s horror in which Tawny Kitaen summons an evil spirit via an ouija board. That was a sufficient hit on video shelves that two sequels followed and then a remake.
The original feminist slasher film gets the remake treatment with interesting results
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 has the notoriety of being the very first ever splatter film and served to turn director Herschell Gordon Lewis into a cult figure. Shoddy and unpolished, you have to admit it goes for broke
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
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
TV mini-series remake of The Phantom of the Opera starring Jane Seymour that rewrites and rearranges much of the story to negligible effect
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
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
The original babysitter stalker film based on a short film that was then expanded out to feature-length following the success of Halloween
After a decade-long slump, Tobe Hooper started to show he still had what it took with this remake of the 1980 slasher film
Passable remake of the 1979 slasher film that streamlines the original and sets it all in amazing designer dream home
Following the success of the Hannibal Lecter films, Dino de Laurentiis smartly repackaged Thomas Harris’s earlier novel as a Hannibal Lecter prequel
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
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
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
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
Classic German silent film where a man sells his shadow, which then becomes a malevolent doppelganger that torments his life
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
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
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
Frank Oz conducts a remake of The Stepford Wives, which becomes a broad comedy take on the gender wars in the modern world
Loose remake of the 1980s slasher film The House on Sorority Row, competently made but in the end this never sufficiently surmounts the routine
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
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
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
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
Supposedly a feminist parody of the slasher film but one has doubts. For one, the film is lacking in discernible irony and otherwise no different from the other slasher films of the era bar the fact it was directed by a woman
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
The classic 1976 Anti-Christ film is given the remake treatment. The production look slick but quickly disappears into forgettability
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 remake of the old Disney comedy becomes a vehicle for Tim Allen, played with a manic slapstickery wherein Allen demonstrates there are few levels of silliness he will travel to in imitating dog-like behaviours
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
Bollywood remake of a ghost story that comes with one of the cleverer M. Night Shyamalan conceptual reversal twists
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
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 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
Disney live-action film about a boy and his dragon where the dragon is represented by animation
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
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
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 first of Disney’s live-action comedies, a comic variant on the werewolf story with Tommy Kirk turning into a dog. Mildly amusing but later efforts would do this type of comedy better
Big-budget modern Japanese remake of a 1970s disaster movie in which Japan starts to catastrophically sink into the ocean. Despite revisiting the original with CGI spectacle, this is a film in which hardly anything interesting happens
Roger Corman film that sets out to exploit the teenage themed fad of the late 1950s, offering up a caveman drama that comes with a surprise SF twist
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, this fails to hold a candle to the earlier 1979 version
An adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel/play And Then There Were None that relocates the story to an African safari and takes more of a horror movie focus
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
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
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
Roger Corman cheapie clearly influenced by The Fly in which a woman becomes a creature after using a beauty product derived from wasp venom
James Wong and Glen Morgan, the duo behind Final Destination, remake the 1971 film about a man and his rats. However, this is set in a stylised 1940s world with a caricatured performance from Crispin Glover that causes the film to lack any credibility
The fourth film version of the classic Old Dark House thriller, remade in the vein of the recent success of Murder on the Orient Express with an all-star cast of the day
Tim Burton’s remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a peculiarly lifeless confection that fails to find any of the zaniness of the original, something that one would have thought would have been Burton’s forte
This would be the last of the films made by stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen where he turns his creations towards conducting another Greek Mythology adventure. With an all-star cast playing the Greek gods.
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
One of a spate of Disney live-action comedies that was successful enough that it spawned two sequels. A young Kurt Russell is a college student who gets the contents of a computer accidentally transferred into his head
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
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
Zack Snyder debuts with a remake of the cult George Romero film. While this has a bigger budget, it is missing is the satire and gore-drenched effects that made the original memorable. This inspired the mid-2000s zombie film revival
Director John Carpenter did amazing things with his remake of The Thing but was not able to replicate such with his remake of Village of the Damned, which misses the taut atmosphere of the 1960 film
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
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
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
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