Halloween is only a couple of weeks away, which means it's time to grab a bag of candy corn and watch a scary movie, preferably with a close friend you can scream with. Between your marathons of the "Scream" franchise and viewings of AMC's Fear Fest, you can head to theaters this weekend to catch the remake of "Carrie", starring Chloë Grace Moretz as the titular telekinetic teen. Moretz is reprising the role originated by Sissy Spacek in the 1976 film version, which is itself an adaptation of Stephen King's 1974 debut novel. That original film is now considered a horror classic -- how will the new "Carrie" measure up to its indelible legacy?
Hollywood has become notorious for the sheer number of remakes/reboots/re-imaginings it keeps pumping out. And perhaps no genre is more susceptible to this phenomenon than horror. Horror films are relatively inexpensive to produce, they generally star unknown (read: cheap) actors, and young audiences flock to them in droves. So over the past decade or so we've had to suffer through round after round of mediocre-at-best remakes of Japanese horror ("One Missed Call", "Mirrors", "Shutter", "The Eye", "Pulse") as well as interminable numbers of glossy re-packagings of classic slasher films starring fresh-faced actors with enviable six-packs but no acting talent to speak of ("Friday The 13th", "Prom Night", "The Fog", "Black Christmas", "My Bloody Valentine"). And heck, even some big names have been involved in DOA horror remakes: think Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of "Psycho" starring Vince Vaughn, or Nicolas Cage in the so-bad-it's-just-bad "The Wicker Man". But once in a blue moon, a diamond will appear in the rough. So here's a list of some of the best horror remakes Hollywood has ever managed to produce.
"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" (1978)Like this year's "Carrie", 1978's "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" was a remake of a film of the same name (from 1956) that itself was an adaptation of a novel (1955's "The Body Snatchers" by Jack Finney). While the same novel has since been adapted twice more (1993's "Body Snatchers" and 2007's "The Invasion"), this 1978 remake is considered the crown jewel of the material. With a stellar cast including Donald Sutherland, Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy, this version replaces the straightforward Communism allegory of the 1956 film with a more insidiously creepy atmosphere of terror. With its now-iconic "pod people," watching the film is an exercise in emotionally-exhausting paranoia. "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" is so good that to this day, some still consider it the greatest horror movie ever made.
"The Thing" (1982)I'm sensing a theme here... 1982's "The Thing" is a remake of 1951's "The Thing From Another World", which is based on the 1938 novella "Who Goes There?". Directed by master of horror John Carpenter ("Halloween", "The Fog", "They Live") and starring Kurt Russell, "The Thing" received mixed reviews upon its initial release: while it was lauded for its impressive makeup work and special effects, the results were too unexpectedly gory for some. But over the years, the film has slowly accrued respect, until it is now considered one of the best remakes of any genre. It shares common themes with "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers", as they're both films about an unknown alien life form surreptitiously taking over human bodies. But despite these similarities, the films feel surprisingly different: while "Invasion" is more a paranoid thriller, "The Thing" is a more outright terrifying film featuring some of the most memorable creature designs in all of horror.
"The Fly" (1986)Okay, this is definitely a pattern. David Cronenberg's 1986 horror film "The Fly" is a remake of a 1956 film of the same name, which was based on a 1955 short story by George Langelaan. Cronenberg had already established himself as a premiere director of scary films, although none of them had yet managed to escape status as "cult" films ("Scanners", "Videodrome"). He finally managed to break into the mainstream with this icky-gross-funny-scary movie starring Jeff Goldblum as scientist Seth Brundle, who starts mutating into a human/fly hybrid after a failed teleportation experiment. Goldblum delivers a delightfully unhinged performance as the Brundlefly (as he's affectionately known) becomes increasingly deranged, succumbing to the animalistic instincts of his insect-half. Featuring some classic gross-out moments (like vomiting digestive enzymes on his food), "The Fly" is a uniquely strange film whose effects hold up surprisingly well in our modern times.
"The Ring" (2002)Proving that the first time often is the best, Hollywood's very first remake of a Japanese horror film remains the gold standard of the genre to this day. Re-imagining the events of 1998's "Ringu" as taking place in America instead of Japan, director Gore Verbinski ("Pirates Of The Caribbean") imbued the entire film with a washed-out look and a mounting sense of dread. Boasting a strong lead performance by Naomi Watts and several memorable supporting roles by the likes of Brian Cox, "The Ring" does for television screens what "Jaws" did for the ocean. And it features perhaps the most iconic phone call in a horror movie -- after "Scream", of course. Oh, and both the American and Japanese films are based on the first of four novels in "The Ring Series", published in 1991 by Koji Suzuki (who also co-wrote the screenplays of both versions). Of course.
"Dawn Of The Dead" (2004)Before he pioneered the slow-mo-speed-up move with "300"; before he bombarded Metropolis with apocalyptic destruction in "Man Of Steel"; and before he bitterly divided fanboys the world over by casting Ben Affleck as Batman, director Zack Snyder made his feature film debut by helming this remake of George A. Romero's classic 1978 zombie film. "Dawn Of The Dead" isn't as rife with the overly-stylized gimmicks that Snyder adopted for "300" and have since become his trademark, but the comic book sensibility he brought to that film is in early evidence here, with a jittery, kinetic style that gets the adrenaline pumping and the heart racing. It is perhaps a little less focused on allegories of consumerism and a little more focused on brain-splattering action than the original, but audiences were impressed with his modern-day update of such a classic film. Without a doubt Snyder's biggest legacy from "Dawn Of The Dead" is introducing the world to "fast zombies," which have since become as prevalent as their less ambulatory ancestors, featured in other properties like "28 Days Later" and "World War Z".
"Let Me In" (2010)This American remake was released an unusually brief two years after the original Swedish film on which it was based, the 2008 vampire film "Let The Right One In" (which is -- surprise! -- based on a novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist). The American version moves the film's events from Sweden to Los Alamos, New Mexico, but otherwise it is nearly a shot-for-shot remake of the original. The idea of this irked many people before the film's release, who were pre-judging it based on the failure of other carbon-copy remakes such as Gus Van Sant's "Psycho" and Michael Haneke's "Funny Games". But directed by Matt Reeves ("Cloverfield"), the American version managed the impossibly tricky feat of paying direct homage to its predecessor while carving out its own spot on the shelf of classic horror. Much of the film's success is due to the performance of Chloë Grace Moretz (of the new "Carrie") as Abby, an old soul trapped in a young body. Her friendship and romance with young Owen is one of the most surprisingly touching/disturbing/sad relationships in horror history, and Moretz conveys Abby's tortured persona with shocking ease. "Let Me In" is a remake that absolutely shouldn't have worked, but somehow became a complex, bloody, frightening, moving film that succeeds wonderfully in its own right.
"Evil Dead" (2013)The most recent entry on this list is undoubtedly also the most controversial. It divided fans and critics alike; while some hailed it as an instant classic, others derided it as unnecessary. But those who complained that the remake lacked the slapstick humor element of the original are mistaking Sam Raimi's original "The Evil Dead" (1981) for its much funnier sequel, 1987's "Evil Dead II". The first film in the Evil Dead franchise was Raimi's earnest attempt to craft a terrifying movie. The only humor in it stems from the camp factor of the production's incredibly low budget, cheap special effects and wooden acting. Raimi embraced that inadvertent humor with the sequel, which ramped up the laughs to "groovy" levels of absurdity. But when the filmmaker set out to craft this new version, he didn't want to remake the campy "Evil Dead II". He wanted another shot at "The Evil Dead" -- so he set out to make the film he intended to make the first time, only this time with the proper budget and studio backing. (Raimi produced the film with newcomer Fede Alvarez in the director's chair.) What results is a grueling experience that is one of the bloodiest, most gleefully unhinged horror movies in recent memory. It strains credulity that this film managed to scrape past the MPAA with an R rating. Whether the film's ample scenes of mangled body parts and fountains of spurting blood are fun is entirely up to you -- but seeing Raimi finally achieve what he set out to do over three decades ago is a satisfying, crazy good time.
Tweet us @Stagebuddy to tell us your favorite horror remakes -- and where you think the new "Carrie" will fall in their ranking!
