5 Horror Remakes That Do the Originals Justice

Horror has to be the most ‘re-imagined’ genre of the lot, and predictably there are some hits and several more misses.  Here are five that manage to live up to their source material.

(I’ve omitted the inarguably excellent likes of The Thing and The Fly because they're remakes of '50s films, and as such are too drastically different to legitimately be compared.)

1.  The Last House on the Left

The original (1972)

The debut of terrormeister Wes Craven, Last House was an amateurish, stark, brutal revenge flick whose raw horror stayed with you long after.  Great tagline too: ‘Keep telling yourself: “It’s only a movie, it’s only a movie…”’

The remake (2009)

Nails its forbearer’s gruelling sense of impending dread to a tee.  Garret Dillahunt goes straight from dopey deputy in No Country For Old Men to one of the most effective amoral sickos in recent memory.  Does lose points for omitting the tasteful scene where one of the girls is forced to wet herself at gunpoint.

2.  The Hills Have Eyes

The original (1977)

Second out of the traps from Craven was this classic of the middle class terrorised by savages sub-genre.  Mutant rape and cannibalism-motivated baby-snatching are par of the course.

The remake (2006)

Sticks very close to the original but loses none of its power, delivering one of the goriest horrors of the decade.  Adds its own warped third act for good measure as we are introduced to a radiation-borne freak town that might not be as abandoned as it first seems…

3.      The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The original (1974)

Truth be told, I’ve never really been that fussed by Tobe Hooper’s original.  Despite being suitably bleak and ominous and making equally good use of its sparse landscape and cramped interiors, it really should have delivered better on its title's promise. 

The remake (2003)

The first product from big bang buccaneer Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes horror remake factory holds its own as a severely intense celluloid experience.  Jessica Biel running around in a vest top helps, as does utilising R. Lee Ermey’ Full Metal Jacket persona to better effect than the Toy Story franchise ever managed.

4.      Dawn of the Dead

The original (1978)

Another classic I never really warmed to: good, but not great.  Over-long, tonally all over the place… although it did feature one of the best horror lines ever: ‘When there’s no room left in hell, the dead will walk the earth.’

The remake (2004)

The best example on this list.  Takes the potential of its predecessor and gives it a millennial lick of paint, keeping the scenario but adding more characters (fronted by a great cast, including Ving Rhames, Sarah Polley and Jake Weber), a faster pace and a lot more bloody violence.  In fact, it's my favourite zombie movie of them all.

5.  The Amityville Horror

The original (1979)

James Brolin’s beard, the original Lois Lane and a lot of hi-jinks in a haunted house movie that revitalised a sub-genre that was starting to smell of dry rot.

The remake (2005)

Ryan Reynolds’ abs, new millennium  scream queen Melissa George (30 Days of Night, Triangle) and another less than homely dwelling in the woods that sees him go loopy and her give the old lungs a good workout.  An indirect apology for the woeful House on Haunted Hill and The Haunting remakes.

See also: 

5 of the Very Worst Horror Remakes

10 Greatest Horror Scores

Bad Santa (2003)

Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, 
Lauren Graham, Bernie Mac, John Ritter

Directed by: Terry Zwigoff

Written by: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa

Duration: 1hr 31mins

Rating: 4 out of 5

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, the season to be jolly, with everyone rocking around the Christmas tree… and so on and so forth.  Fair enough, I’m not disputing that. 

QUITE THE OPPOSITE OF JOLLY

But there is another side to the coin.  The pressure to spend spend spend, simmering family tension erupting into full-on feuds, the stress of trying to find 'the perfect gift’ (just one of the myths brazenly excreted by the annual advertising blitz)... plus the expectation that everyone should be so cheerful can itself become a burden.  For those who aren’t having a wonderful, jolly, rocking time, the surrogate feelings of loneliness and despair can escalate to a wintery nadir.

HO-HO-HUUUURRRGHH...

When we first meet Willie (Billy Bob Thornton), Bad Santa's anti-hero, he’s a snowflake’s breadth from that place himself.  Sitting alone in a bar, dressed in the familiar red and white outfit post-shift, Willie downs drink after drink, glancing with a mixture of longing and weary disdain at the groups of merry drinkers that surround him, whilst recounting his shitty life in voiceover monologue.  He then staggers outside into a snow-filled alley to vomit, in the one image that sums Bad Santa up.  At least, it would, if this movie was the one-joke affair that it could easily have been.  But it’s so much more than that.

CAN'T BLAME THE KIDS FOR THAT STAIN...

Willie has a seasonal scam: every December, he and his three-and-a-half foot partner Marcus (Tony Cox) gain employment at a different mall as Santa and Elf respectively.  Once they’ve sussed the joint out, they rip it off after hours, divide the loot, and go their separate ways ‘til targeting a new city next year.  This time round, however, proves to be anything but routine, as Willie gets involved with Lauren Graham’s perky waitress with a Santa fetish, unwittingly becomes a father figure for a bullied dim-bulb kid (Brett Kelly), and has to contend with Bernie Mac’s corrupt head of security and John Ritter’s jittery department store manager.

PERKINESS  =  OFF THE SCALE

Despite appearances, Bad Santa really is a traditional festive movie.  It’s about a cynical loner who discovers the true meaning of Christmas – this may be by way of pissing his pants, having sex in changing rooms and kicking a little person in the balls, but it’s a familiar, Grinch-esque journey all the same.  Willie is not an easy character to root for at first glance – he is, after all, a profane, anti-social, career criminal.  But loathe as we may be to admit it, there is a bit of Willie in all of us whenever we get overwhelmed by the demands of the season and feel like drinking ourselves into oblivion to block the whole ordeal out.  His nonchalant reaction to wetting himself and his instinctive reach for a flask of bourbon as soon as the last child jumps off his knee mark Willie out as an alcoholic early on; maybe it’s his fault his life has turned out this way, maybe it isn't – either way, the man is obviously sick and deeply, deeply unhappy.  As the film progresses, we find ourselves pitying him, and then warming to his misanthropy.  He’s self-serving, but not cruel; detached, but not sociopathic.  And he may be surly, but at least he isn’t fake, pretending to be happy or forcing everyone else to be.

BERNIE MAC'S IS ONLY THE SECOND SURLIEST FACE ON SHOW

Willie’s bad-tempered partner Marcus – certainly the brains in their little crime enterprise – typifies the kind of abuse the world has dished out to Willie his whole life.  “Your soul is dogshit, everything about you is ugly,” he chides him during one of many confrontations. “You’re a total loser, Willie – and you know it!” He’s right: Willie finally relents and goes for the old exhaust pipe/hose exit strategy.  But what stops him?  It’s realising that he has to stick up for the much-maligned kid; no one else will, like no one ever looked out for Willie his whole life.  Thus begins his first step on the road to redemption, made all the more gratifying since he’s had to come so far from the brink.

"CAN I FIX YOU SOME SANDWICHES?"

I shouldn’t neglect to stress quite how funny Bad Santa is.  The tone is blacker than the darkest lump of Christmas coal, the dialogue as hilarious as Ethan and Joel Coen's names on the credits (as executive producers) would suggest, and there are skilled comic turns by BBT, Cox, and the late duo of Mac and Ritter.  But the key point is that Bad Santa is a unique beast, an endlessly quotable Christmas movie that has just as much heart as spite, and that delivers the desired yuletide glow without the all-too standard side order of nauseating schmaltz.  ****

Die Hard (1988)

Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, 
Bonnie Bedelia, Paul Gleason, William Atherton

Directed by: John McTiernan

Written by: Steven E. de Souza, Jeb Stuart

Duration:  2hrs 11mins

Rating: 5 out of 5

With Christmas fast approaching, it's the perfect time to re-visit the best seasonal movie of them all.  And what can you possibly say about Die Hard?  A couple of things spring to mind immediately.  Firstly, I absolutely love it.  Secondly, it is definitely not the greatest action movie of all time.  How come?  Two words: no shotguns!  How can you consider it the complete shoot ‘em up experience when there’s no pump-action action? 

IN CASE YOU WERE DOUBTING THE MOVIE'S FESTIVE CREDENTIALS

Minor quibble aside, the film is, of course, a masterpiece.  Not every modestly budgeted popcorn flick starring a prematurely balding TV actor goes on to birth its own subgenre.  Like his namesake Carpenter’s best work, John Campbell McTiernan Jr. delivers a taut, claustrophobic movie that spans a  less than 24-hour period, with no prologue, epilogue or any other unnecessary padding.

EXPLOSIONS:  SURELY TOP OF EVERYONE'S XMAS LIST

Classic set pieces come thick and fast: McClane’s first run in with a foe (“Nine million terrorists in the world and I gotta kill one with feet smaller than my sister!”); under the table in the boardroom (“Thanks for the advice!”); the lift shaft and air vent (“Now I know what a TV dinner feels like….”); the homemade C4 bomb (“Let's see you take this under advisement, jerkweed!”); the fire hose jump (“I promise I will never even think about going up in a tall building again…”).  Steven E. de Souza and Jeb Stuart’s script may be easy to pick quips from, but it’s no mere barrage of one-liners: it’s crafted tighter than a kettle drum and delivers an outer challenge for its protagonist (thwart the bad guys and save the day) that exists in perfect tandem with his inner conflict (salvage his ailing marriage).  The cast is littered with memorable supporting characters (Sergeant Al Powell, FBI Agents Johnson and Johnson, Deputy Chief of Police Dwayne T. Robinson, Karl, Ellis, Thornburg…) and, of course, Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber.

But this is Bruce Willis’ film.

WE GET:  SMIRKY...

... ANXIOUS...

... PANICKED...

... ER, JUMPY...

... COCKY...

... BEATEN...

... BLOODY...

... ANGUISHED...

... AND, FINALLY, VICTORIOUS

"IT'S CHRISTMAS, THEO!  IT'S THE TIME OF MIRACLES!"

The Moonlighting veteran takes the opportunity to make his mark on the big screen and runs with it.  McClane is an action hero who doesn’t steamroll his way through challenges with brute force but instead relies on his wits and tenacity.  He’s still good in a scrap, naturally, but is ultimately a vulnerable human being who just wants to get through the night alive.  Die Hard ushered in the more sensitive 90s action movie era, and the scene where McClane sits alone on a sink pulling glass out of his foot and nearly breaks into tears radioing Powell an apologetic message for his wife is powerful stuff, belying any notion of Willis not being a capable actor.  The fact that Bruce’s tendency for choosing duds meant he never quite lived up to his potential as a challenger to Schwarzenegger (who is cheekily name-checked here) and Stallone remains one of cinema’s greatest tragedies.

Oh, and what is the best action movie of all time?  I dunno; Hard Boiled, probably.  *****

Winter's Bone (2010)

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, 
John Hawkes, Garret Dillahunt, 

Directed by: Debra Granik

Written by: Debra Granik, 
Anne Rosellini

Duration: 1hr 40mins

Rating: 4 out of 5

Children bounce on a squeaky trampoline.  A dog runs wild amongst rusty farm machinery. A teenage girl hangs laundry on a packed line, squinting against the cold wind and keeping a wary eye on the kids.  Her pretty but hardened features peer out attentively from layers of coat and hood, her blonde locks blowing in the breeze.

CAN'T IMAGINE WHAT THEY PUT ON THE TOURISM PAMPHLETS

This is a bleak place: sparse, run-down, poor; nothing grows here. Dead leaves crack under foot, neighbouring properties are separated by barbed wire, not white picket.  It’s also a female place: the men are nowhere to be seen, especially in this household, where seventeen-year-old Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) has been left in charge of her little brother and sister by her mother’s debilitating depression and her father’s on-going absence.  Her dignity and resilience are plain to see – “Don’t ask for what should be offered,” she chastises her siblings, after turning down a charitable advance.  

LAWRENCE: BY FAR THE NICEST SCENERY ON SHOW

When we finally meet a male, more than five minutes in, he brings trouble.  A police car is not a welcome presence in these parts and, sure enough, Garret Dillahunt’s sheriff bears bad news.  Ree’s father has been arrested for cooking crystal meth and has put the family home up as bail.  If he fails to turn up for his trial in a week’s time (a close to forgone conclusion), the state gets the house.  So begins Ree’s journey into finding her drug-peddling pops, turning over a succession of rocks to find increasingly unpleasant creatures underneath who  consistently deliver one  clear message: “You need to turn around, and get yourself home.”

NOT EXACTLY A WELCOMING BUNCH

Debra Granik’s adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel takes place in America’s desolate Ozark mountain country, and the setting is a character in its own right.  Winter’s Bone is at its core a horror movie, a social realism slasher flick; the enemy here isn’t some bogeyman, but the community itself.  Ree encounters drug addicts, wife-beaters, social miscreants and the sinister gang who rule the area more than anyone with a badge, and a sense of dread builds as she heads towards a dénouement that even offers its own gruesome ‘eeugh!’ moment.  The rural backdrop brings to mind the backwoods killers sub-genre – and indeed, Dillahunt was murderous Krug in the (surprisingly solid) Last House on the Left remake.

YOU CAN ALWAYS DEPEND ON THE KINDNESS OF FAMILY...

Far from adding a distracting Hollywood sheen to a supposedly down-to-Earth tale, Lawrence’s wholesome good looks are actually an asset to the role.  This is a girl who, in another life, could have been homecoming queen, head cheerleader, all that apple pie stuff.  (This concept is portrayed most vividly by the casting of Sheryl Lee in a cameo – Lee, of course, played the ultimate all-American girl gone wrong archetype in Twin Peaks.)  Ree has been molded into something much tougher and more resourceful by the very monster that she now fights against: her environment.  She is a scream queen who goes about her business quietly, a pin-up concealed under a duffel jacket; Ripley without the aliens, Laurie Strode with no Michael Myers.  To describe her as a feminist icon would not be an overstatement.  Winter’s Bone was 2010’s big indie hit and Lawrence, in an Oscar-nominated performance, its breakout star.  With next year’s The Hunger Games threatening to be the new Twilight, Lawrence may soon be a huge star – and on this evidence, she would deserve it.

“YOU WAS WARNED...  YOU WAS WARNED  BUT YOU 

WOULDN'T LISTEN.  WHY WOULDN'T YOU LISTEN?"

Also worth mentioning is the movie’s sole helpful male, John Hawkes’ uncle Teardrop (and even he is rarely without his nose in a mound of cocaine, or merrily offering his stash to a repulsed Ree), who ends up guiding his young niece into the underworld and even rescuing her at one point.  It took me a while to work out where I knew Hawkes from, then I clocked that he played scrawny Pete Bottoms, Liquor Store Clerk, in From Dusk Till Dawn (“I never said ‘Help us!’”).  Also recognised by the Academy, Hawkes delivers a grubbily nuanced performance that channels a young Harry Dean Stanton, ensuring that Winter’s Bone is more than just a one-woman show. Recommended.  ****