A Bloody Good Time 12.10.09: The Ten Worst Horror Remakes Ever Made

Posted by Joseph Lee on 12.10.2009

Ever wonder why people complain about remakes? This is why.

Logo courtesy of Benjamin J. Colón (Soul Exodus)

Welcome again to A Bloody Good Time.

Last week we looked at the worst horror sequels and this week we're looking at the worst horror remakes. Let's look at some feedback first.

Meirsch replied: Compounding "The Ring 2's" crimes against humanity is the fact that the Japanese version--Ringu 2--is actually pretty watchable. Why they shit all over its premise to completely re-write the American version (DEER ATTACK) is one of those scabs that you just can't stop picking at.

Oh man I completely forgot about the horror that was the deer attack. I think maybe they were going for a "Damien's trip to the zoo" vibe there, but failed miserably.

Rey complained: you put halloween 5 and totally forget about halloween 3.
actually, everyone forgets halloween 3. no mike meyers, no loomis, no loyds. basically H3 is like a batman movie revolving around the city of gotham and no mention of batman.

I didn't forget it. I can actually watch Halloween 3 on the strength of Tom Atkins. Halloween 5 has no redeemable factors.

Mike34ism suggests: I think Troll 2 needs a place on that list. That movie made me want to scoop my eyeballs out with the thumbs.

As I mentioned, I wasn't including sequels in franchises that began sucking. Troll was awful, so there'd be no point in saying Troll 2 was doing it a disservice. Besides, I like Troll 2 for it's badness. It's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.

Sammy says: Highlander 2 should have made the list.

No it shouldn't. Highlander 2 is not a horror film. I hope you're new to this column.

Jamal said: Friday the 13th part 8 and Nightmare on Elm Street 2.

I completely blanked on Freddy's Revenge, focusing on Freddy's Dead and deciding it wasn't bad enough to throw on. Jason Takes Manhattan isn't nearly as bad as Jason Goes to Hell, though. If I had remembered either of them, they'd have ranked 9 and 10, and probably moved Silent Night Deadly Night 2 and The Ring Two off the list. Sometimes I lose track of bad horror films. I prefer to keep in mind the good ones.

It's not going to be hard to keep track of all the crappy remakes that have been released. I know it seems like I praise remakes a lot on this column, but really I just like to keep an open mind and give something the benefit of the doubt before I blindly trash it. You lose undiscovered gems that way. But there's nothing gem like about these films, as they are some of the most uncreative, uninspired attempts to cash in on a somewhat recognizable name I've ever seen. Some of these remakes weren't even based on popular films, just those with names you may have recognized on your video store shelf.

While I advocate some remakes happen or even hold my breath when an iconic franchise is being retooled, I can get behind a remake that tries and fails. Many of the remakes on this list are guilty of being completely devoid of any sembelance of creativity, made simply to get some quick cash. Even if you dislike Rob Zombie's Halloween, the last thing you can say about it is that it was bland. So whether they are artistically bankrupt or suck out loud, each movie on this list deserves it's spot. Let's dig into the Ten Worst Horror Remakes Ever Made!

Honorable Mention

The Wicker Man(2006): The reason this movie doesn't make the list is simple: I haven't found the energy to watch the whole thing. I'll tell you, it's amazing that your will to watch a film, even to laugh at it's badness, is sapped completely when you come across a popular internet video detailing how awful it truly is.



If you're done laughing, we'll go to the actual list.



#10: The Shining (1997)

There are some that prefer this version to Kubrik's original. I've even heard that King himself likes this version better. There is one thing that The Shining has going in it's favor and that is that it is more faithful to it's source material. There were some tweaks to the original story that King was not happy with and so he worked with Mick Garris to create this new miniseries for television. That is just the problem though. He worked with Mick Garris. I can't completely hate the man (he brought us Masters of Horror) but Mick Garris is really hit or miss with his King adaptations. Even The Stand has it's flaws. For every Story of the Century there is Desperation or this. While it may be more faithful to the novel, it's overly long and has a lot of problems that are too glaring to make me like it.

First of all, the acting. This isn't the first time I've bashed something with Courtland Mead in it but he is one of the most annoying child actors I've seen. He's a far cry from Danny Lloyd in the original. And speaking of those who don't live up to their predecessors, how about that Steven Weber? This man manages to overact more than Jack Nicholson, and that's an astounding feat. Yes, the worst part about this miniseries is the acting, which is pretty bad all around. Sure there are scenes exactly from the book and Jack Torrence doesn't use an axe, but the acting is horrible, so much so it makes the entire movie difficult to watch. When you add the epic length to the extraordinary bad acting, that makes this miniseries a long, drawn-out, painful experience.



#9: The Hitcher (2007)

I remember remarking at about the thirty minute mark of this remake to my friend: "This isn't that bad. The characters are actually pretty smart". The original version of The Hitcher isn't a work of art and outside of Rutger Hauer's performance it's not very memorable. I had no problems with the idea of this remake. But when you watch this and it slowly degrades into typical horror fare (the bad kind) you realize that something is terribly wrong with this movie, and it's too late to turn back. Sean Bean is okay enough, but he seems to be channeling the prior performance more than doing anything on his own. This remake starts out with promise and potential and then squanders it all away quickly for a movie that isn't scary and insults it's audience.

The two lead characters started out more intelligent than you'd expect people in these movies to be. However the movie decides that an intelligent battle with a smart killer would be too much for the people they're pandering to, so they both have an IQ drop of about fifty points and remain that way for the rest of the film. That's just poor scriptwriting. Sean Bean's Hitcher also seems to be able to teleport and do magic tricks because he pulls off some impossible feats in order to catch up to the victims or escape from the police. This remake makes the list because it's not just dumb, it's insulting. Other movies here are dumb but I don't think they expect or hope their audience to be just as dumb.



#8: Prom Night (2008)

The original Prom Night is a good example of a "whodunit" story with a caveat that the killer could be anyone. Scream modeled itself after this premise, and even said as much in the film. The remake of Prom Night is so bland and void of personality that it's virtually indistinguishable from any generic slasher out there. Except while most of those have the added benefit of blood, while this film is both bloodless and lifeless. Prom Night's biggest problem isn't that it's bad or dull, it's that it required no effort whatsoever in order to complete. Anyone with a word processor and a couple of slasher films to watch could come up with this script in a matter of hours.

The story is one you've probably seen a million times. A serial killer terrorizes a girl's family several years ago, escapes and starts killing her friends at Prom. It bares no resemblance to the original other than the fact that it's a killer killing on prom night. I don't know how many other variations of "bland" I can use to describe it without repeating myself, so I'll just repeat myself. This is the blandest horror film I think I've ever seen. I mean at least I Know What You Did Last Summer and all the other Scream rip-offs had some merit. This has a bland killer stalking bland teens with PG-13, bland kills. This has nothing going for it. I mean absolutely nothing. Even to the most avid horror fans who can tolerate a lot, this offers nothing entertaining or worthy of your time.



#7: The Haunting (1999)

The original version of The Haunting is a classic ghost story that scared me out of my wits when I was a child. I've yet to go back and revisit it but I remember it being very well-done and can't imagine why it wouldn't hold up. The classics usually do. This remake is a huge missed opportunity in the amount of talent it has going for it in the acting department. Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Virginia Madsen are all decent-great depending on the role. You also have Owen Wilson...for some reason. Not that I don't like him but it seems odd that he'd show up here. It's like having Chris Kattan in a remake of House on Haunted Hill. Oh...he was? Some people have weird ideas for casting.

Strong cast, decent premise and all the potential in the world do nothing to help this stinker. In short it falls apart quickly and gloriously. The CGI is awful, the script is riddled with cliches and the worst part about this is that it's boring. It runs at almost two and a half hours, which is far longer than a ghost story movie needs to be. You're going to have to have some compelling writing and scares in order to keep an audience entertained for that long. This movie lacks that and ends up being an insufferable bore that will make even the most avid movie-watcher constantly check the time. At least The Shining is a miniseries and comes in installments. This is one long, long, long movie.



#6: Shutter (2008)

I'm going to go ahead and spoil the big twist ending, so be aware that the following paragraph contains SPOILERS! The ghost is haunting Joshua Jackson because he let his friends rape the woman and then the reason he had pain in his neck the whole movie was because she was sitting on his head. He then proceeds to electrocute himself for no reason whatsoever. END SPOILERS. The motives of the ghost and the entire ending sequence make no sense at all. Even if the ending were not that bad, the build-up is quite dull and not scary. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I watched this film (I rented it blindly) but what I got was a very dull and stupid ghost story with a retarded finish.

That's what I wrote for my worst horror films of 2008 list and it's just as true now. Shutter spends a predictable, boring seventy minutes leading up to an absolutely stupid twist ending that appears to be there just for the sake of it. This isn't Asian horror remaking at it's worst, but it's pretty close. I mean the worst I would have said is that it was dull until the ending, which if you avoided the spoilers all I can say is that you won't see it coming, but that's probably because you have a higher IQ level than the people responsible for the script. So congratulations, you're smarter than someone in Hollywood. Surprising, I know.



#5: When A Stranger Calls (2006)

I should have expected Prom Night to be as empty of effort as it had come from Screen Gems, who also gave us this insipid remake. I've remarked several times before that it's a shame this film made as much money as it did in 2006 when the far superior effort Slither bombed. I still stand by that. As it turns out, people will go to these creatively bankrupt films like sheep and tend to avoid anything original. (And Slither wasn't even all that original!) When A Stranger Calls was sure to give away it's big plot twist in the trailer, which is a fault of marketing more than the film...but maybe they knew something we didn't at the time.

The twist ("the calls are coming from within the house") is the only thing this movie has going for it. If you know it's coming it takes all of the suspense (what little there is) out of the buildup and once the twist is out of the way the movie devolves into a paper-thin cat and mouse scenario where the killer hunts down Camilla Belle, who may be one of the worst new actresses in Hollywood this side of Megan Fox. The caller is voiced by Lance Henriksen, so that's a bonus...but Lance Henriksen tends to whore himself out to a lot of crap movie roles. Just for the record, if you take a close look at the films distributed by Screen Gems over the years, it's 95% awful.



#4 Day of the Dead (2008)

Unlike most horror remakes on this list, the straight-to-DVD Day of the Dead at least tried to be something different. Here is what I've written previously. Outside of a Bud the Zombie reference, it's largely unlike the original Day in most respects. However, that doesn't make it a good film. It doesn't even make it an okay film. First of all, Nick Cannon was cast, and was given a fairly big role. Nick Cannon cannot act. He spends the movie delivering excruciating one-liners that are just terrible and being annoying in every conceivable way. Next, the zombies. These zombies can walk on ceilings and walls? Why? Well they never explain that. Nor does it ever come up again than it did in a throwaway scene. Steve Miner, who gave us Friday the 13th: 3-D and Warlock, should be ashamed of himself for participating in this film.

Yes, there's many things this movie fails at doing and being entertaining is one of them. How can a zombie run with it's decaying body is something horror fans overlook for films like the Dawn of the Dead remake. But being dead and coming back to life does not give a zombie SUPERPOWERS. They are running around in this thing like they're Spider-Man. That's one of the things that bothered me the most, right next to Nick Cannon and his absolutely horrible acting. I don't need you making "token black guy" jokes and He-Man references in my zombie movie, thank you.



#3: Godzilla (1999)

When I first trashed this remake on this column during my Godzilla Retrospective, some of you cried foul. "It's just an average monster movie" you said. "If it wasn't Godzilla you wouldn't have it as much" you said. Wrong. Ruining Godzilla for American audiences is the least of this film's problems but it does manage to do that in abundance. Godzilla doesn't breath fire, he can apparently hide inside of a big city even though he's a gigantic monster, he reproduces raptor-esque babies and loves him some fish. Oh and he singles out the stars of the movie for no discernible reason and tries to eat them. Why? Because this thing needed some tension. But outside of ruining Godzilla, what are the other flaws in a movie that is filled with them?

It's dumb. It's just dumb. And not in the "big dumb action disaster movie" way that makes movies like Armageddon and Independence Day a guilty pleasure. This is like a monster movie with down syndrome. You know what? That was harsh of me. I apologize to anyone with down syndrome or related to someone with it for comparing them to this wretched film. But seriously, the fact that basic things like common sense never seem to enter the equation in this movie really make you wonder what is going on in Roland Emmerich's head when he sits down and begins to make these things. I haven't seen 2012, but I really, really doubt it is worse than this abomination. It's a remake riddled with plotholes, stupid annoying characters that you could not care any less about and it neuters the star attraction and makes him look like a dumb iguana. I'm just glad Toho showed him who was boss.






#2: One Missed Call (2008)

Where do I begin? I guess by saying I labeled this as not only the worst horror film of last year, but one of the worst films of any genre that I've ever seen. If you judge it by what other critics say, it has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. A zero. That means that out of all the people who watched it for that website, no one liked it. At least there are some people (God help them) who like the other movies on this list. I really hated this one when I watched it. There isn't a single point in this film that works to it's advantage. Pick a feature and it's a failure. I had to stop this film on a number of occasions and it took a lot of willpower to force myself to sit back down and finish. That's a flaw of my own: no matter how bad the film is I usually force myself to keep watching it, just to say I did.

I said before when I put this on my worst films list that I didn't need "perspective" in order to tell that this film was bad. It's just as bad now as it was then and time is going to show that it was one of the worst of it's kind. There is no character development, not that I could find myself caring about any of them since they are very annoying. The characters die and the story loosely follows Takashi Miike's original (which wasn't all that great, but deserved better than this garbage). The ending is really confusing, but that's either because I just stopped caring at that point or it was poorly written. Either option doesn't work in this film's favor. I've written too much in my time of this column about how bad this is and I'd rather not write anymore. Go see it if you don't believe me. But don't blame me if you have a terrible night.



#1: Psycho (1998)

Who would have the balls to tackle Alfred Hitchcock's greatest work without any regard to the perfection that was the 1960 original? Why the very pretentious Gus Van Sant, that's who. Hey I like Good Will Hunting as much as the next guy, but good lord what was this man thinking? Not only did he think he could do a serviceable remake of the classic, but he thought that he was going to show that anyone could do what Hitchcock did, apparently. This is a shot-for-shot remake of the original, with new actors and in color. But other than that, the film is almost exactly alike the original. Almost. There are a few tweaks here and there, for the worst, but this is largely an echo of a great work. Anyone can shoot a movie but Hitchcock made a film. Gus Van Sant has balls alright, but he could not pull this off.

This film also has two large flaws working against it. One of them is not the casting of Vince Vaughn because while the man is no Anthony Perkins, I think he admired the role enough to try his best and that shows. No. The first flaw occurs during the shower scene. Norman Bates watches his first victim in the shower, just as he did in the original. In the original it was about seeing the forbidden fruit and this brought "Mother" out to stop him from seeing the naked woman. But in this film, Norman is nothing more than a sleaze with two personalities because a single noise occurs in the shot which sets this Norman apart from the other and makes the movie as a whole a terrible attempt to remake it. The other flaw is the random flashes of things that show up when people are murdered..but compared to the butchering of an iconic horror character, that hardly seems that bad, does it?

Beware: the clip is a tad NSFW:



That's it for me. Next week I think I'm going to take a look at murderous Santas...because 'tis the season, I guess. Two weeks from now I start counting down the best horror films of 2009. That should be fun. See you back here for all of the holiday festivities.