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 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
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
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)
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
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
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
Fine Australian from Richard Franklin that jumps aboard the popularity of Carrie concerning a coma patient who demonstrates psychic powers
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
TV mini-series remake of The Phantom of the Opera starring Jane Seymour that rewrites and rearranges much of the story to negligible effect
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
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
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
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
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 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 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 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 1978 Piranha is remade as a cable tv movie but has excised all the humour and witty genre in-referencing of the original
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
Bollywood remake of a ghost story that comes with one of the cleverer M. Night Shyamalan conceptual reversal twists
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Entry amid the 1980s slasher fad featuring Jamie Lee Curtis. A fairly dreary effort that comes with much disco dancing footage
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
![[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
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
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
Following the success of the Hannibal Lecter films, Dino de Laurentiis smartly repackaged Thomas Harris’s earlier novel as a Hannibal Lecter prequel
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
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 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.
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
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
The No 1 cult film of all time, more a phenomenon than a film, a demented glitter rock homage to mad science cinema and 50s sf films run through with celebration of a gender-bender joie de vivre
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
Classic work of dystopian SF set in a future where an ultra-violent sport has been created to pacify the masses
Remade, the 1975 dystopian film about future sports is stripped of any of its big message (even of its future setting) and is turned into no more than a formulaic action film
Classic film and one of Roman Polanski’s finest works, the comically paranoid story of a housewife who increasingly comes to believe that the child she is pregnant with was fathered by The Devil
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
One of the best Stephen King adaptations made as a tv mini-series concerning a town overrun by vampires. Director Tobe Hooper excels himself, staging the book in terms a series of captivating set-pieces
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, this fails to hold a candle to the earlier 1979 version
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
Remake of the classic tv movie with Shannen Doherty investigating her sister’s death among deviltry in a girl’s school
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
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
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa conducts a remake of the British thriller Seance on a Wet Afternoon. Where the original was a mundane film that depicted a kidnap scheme involving a fake medium, Kurosawa builds this out as an actual ghost story
Standout thriller with Kim Stanley as a medium who fakes a child kidnapping with husband Richard Attelborough to prove her powers
A light whimsical short story about a daydreamer is turned into a bloated and ponderous vehicle for the musical and comedy set-pieces of the perpetually wet-eared Danny Kaye
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
Stark black-and-white thriller from John Frankenheimer about a military coup in the US. Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling delivers a superb script
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
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
A strange mix of 1950s hypnotic regression fad and AIP B monster movie elements that has undeniable mood and verve
Taking only the name of the 1950s B movie, this is otherwise a horror film about an imprisoned mermaid creature that wields a sinister threat. This works with a modest effectiveness
Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel throws much of the book out but has duly become a classic. Jack Nicholson goes grandly mad amid Kubrick’s stupendous production and unsettling set-pieces
Stephen King expressed dissatisfaction with the way Stanley Kubrick handled his novel and here remakes it as a tv mini-series that adheres more closely to the book. While Kubrick’s film is far better, this is not bad where even the perpetually awful Mick Garris subdues his tendency to overdo everything towards some subtlety
One of the most extraordinary works ever made for tv. From the pen of Dennis Potter, a mini-series that blends film noir, meta-fiction and autobiography
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
Disappointing remake of Brian De Palma’s 1973 Siamese twins psycho-thriller that changes many elements and crucially lacks De Palma’s stylistic showmanship
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 original feminist slasher film gets the remake treatment with interesting results
Called the Russian 2001. Andrei Tarkovsky makes one of the great SF films, a haunting ghost story set on a space station as an alien planet below drives the crew mad with recreated doppelgangers of their loved ones
Loose remake of the 1980s slasher film The House on Sorority Row, competently made but in the end this never sufficiently surmounts the routine
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 remake of the classic film noir psycho-thriller. Now the story is conducted in colour and with a name star cast but misses all the atmosphere the original had by a wide mile
Great psycho-thriller with Terry O’Quinn as a man determined to marry into the perfect family who then slaughters the family when they fail to meet expectations. This digs into 80s Family Values with scabrous regard
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
Ira Levin’s original novel wherein the men of a town replace their wives with subservient android duplicates seems to have its satiric point blunted when it comes to the film adaptation
Frank Oz conducts a remake of The Stepford Wives, which becomes a broad comedy take on the gender wars in the modern world
Strong and powerful formative entry in the Backwoods Brutality genre where Dustin Hoffman and wife Susan George stir up locals in a small Cornwall town and are forced to mount a brutal siege after he shelters a man hunted by a lynch mob
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
Classic German silent film where a man sells his shadow, which then becomes a malevolent doppelganger that torments his life
A thinking person’s disaster movie depicting Japan’s sinking into the ocean
The work on which the cult of director Dario Argento was built. The film consists of a series of extravagantly arty deaths at a girls boarding school, although comes without any real plot connecting this
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
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
One of the lush, beautifully produced modern Wu Xia (flying swordsmen) films. Produced and written by the legendary Tsui Hark
Tarzan turned into a tedious softcore work designed to highlight the talent-free Bo Derek in a state of undress. This directly remakes the 1932 Johnny Weissmuller film – the original was an adventure classic, this is just an expensive nudie film
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
Larry Clark remakes the old Roger Corman film and makes a beeline for his usual proclivities about teenagers having sex in a fairly outrageous post-apocalyptic work
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
One of the better entries among the 1980s slasher film cycle – and even featuring the era’s quintessential heroine Jamie Lee Curtis. Essentially Halloween aboard a train, at which the film does the basics of the genre with perfect competence and undeniably stylish photography