TOP TEN Worst Horror Remakes of the Decade

Published on: 16th January, 2010

TOP TEN Worst Horror Remakes of the Decade  | read this item

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The hatred towards Hollywood’s current obsession with remaking every movie ever made has gone beyond film geeks and now seems to anger almost everyone. Whilst some films may have failed to live up to their promise and have aged poorly, either due to lack of talent or simply being too much a product of their time, money-hungry studios have since turned their attention to those that most would consider bona fide classics. Thus, the last few years have seen such unnecessary ‘reboots’ (since remakes became a dirty word, studios have tried to fool audiences with various other euphemisms) as Dawn of the Dead, The Omen and other movies that are still hailed by both critics and fans as timeless classics.

This current onslaught of MTV-orientated crowd pleasers have rode on the wave of success that was first set forth by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: a depressing, sleazy and shallow rehash of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 grindhouse classic that saw action director Michael Bay’s production company Platinum Dunes first plant the seed for what was about to follow. Whereas the 1980s saw the rise of the franchise, with sequels becoming major business, the 2000s was the decade of the remake, and no amount of protest from fans managed to slow down the bandwagon.

Whilst there are simply too many to choose from, we have managed to narrow down a list of main offenders to just ten. These films have been selected for a myriad of reasons – from them being utterly pointless to simply shite!

QUARANTINE (2008)
It is a sign of the times when the Hollywood remake is released in America before the original movie. This was the case with Quarantine, Screen Gems’ English language rehash of Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s claustrophobic Spanish thriller [Rec], with Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter) as an ambitious journalist who is trapped inside a Los Angeles apartment block during a zombie-like outbreak. Although Quarantine was released theatrically on October 10 (with Dread Central’s review declaring that ‘This is just another missed opportunity that should never have been attempted in the first place’), [Rec] did not surface in America until it was sent straight-to-DVD by Sony nine months later.

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (2005)
The original When a Stranger Calls was released back in 1979, shortly before the initial slasher boom, and was inspired by a short film that director Fred Walton had shot the previous year. Taking only the first twenty minutes (which many critics have stated to be amongst the most tense of any horror movie) and stretching it out to ninety minutes, Screen Gems‘ PG-13 teen-friendly thriller was directed by Simon West (Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider), who was clearly out of his depth when handling tension and suspense. Variety’s Joe Lydon stated that ‘A modestly clever concept gets indifferent execution.’

FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009)
When will we learn? Bay’s Platinum Dunes had already produced six irritating and unwatchable efforts that worked more like feature length music videos than motion pictures (many directors involved in the company, including Bay, had a background in this medium), yet most of us were eventually fooled into believing that they had finally managed to master the art of filmmaking and would bring back Jason Voorhees in style with their remake of Friday the 13th. It’s a simple enough formula: a bunch of kids head out to the woods to party, Jason kills them all, one girl survives and eventually manages to kill him (at least until the obligatory sequel). Yet somehow German-born Marcus Nispel managed to make a mess of this and instead delivered something that was just ninety minutes of fake breasts, unnecessary sleaze and characters even too shallow and underdeveloped for a slasher flick.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (2009)
Why anyone would want to remake something as despicable and pointless as The Last House on the Left is anyone’s guess. After all, it was only after being interviewed for David A. Szulkin’s Last House on the Left: The Making of a Cult Classic that director Wes Craven went on record to justify why the movie was an important work of art. He had, for over almost thirty years, tried to distance himself from what is basically an amateur and poorly executed exploitation flick. Anyone unfamiliar with the original or any of the films that have so explicitly stolen from it over the years may be shocked by the brutality and nihilistic storyline, but Dennis Iliadis’ glossy thriller proved to be just as shallow as Craven’s effort. And Garret Dillahunt failed to come anywhere near the level of intensity that David Hess had originally put into the role of lead rapist Krug.

THE FOG (2005)
It has been proven time and time again that no one can remake John Carpenter. Jean-François Richet’s mediocre Assault on Precinct 13 was a perfect example, and even Carpenter himself fell short with both Escape from L.A. (a remake dressed up as a sequel) and Ghosts of Mars, which took the set up of Assault on Precinct 13 and placed it in a science fiction environment. Rupert Wainwright’s uninspired update of the 1980 classic The Fog was perhaps the worst of all, with Selma Blair hopelessly miscast in the role previously played by Adrienne Barbeau. And Smallville’s Tom Welling attempting to fill the shoes of Tom Atkins is just laughable.

HOUSE OF WAX (2005)
‘Why wasn’t House of Wax number one on our list?’ I hear you ask. One very simple reason: we get to see Paris Hilton brutally murdered. Without that little treat, this film would have been as shite as all of Dark Castle’s other efforts. The company, formed by produced Joel Silver and filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, had already revamped the likes of House on Haunted Hill and Thir13en Ghosts, but Jaume Collet-Serra’s teen thriller House of Wax (which co-starred 24’s Elisha Cuthbert and Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki) was certainly one of their most annoying efforts. The original had seen Vincent Price as a demented museum sculptor who transforms his victims into the latest attractions of his show. But at least we got to see Paris Hilton die.

PROM NIGHT (2006)
Originally released in 1980, Paul Lynch’s Prom Night was certainly the most disappointing of Jamie Lee Curtis’ run of slasher films, replacing the tension of Halloween with some rather irritating disco sequences. Having worked on such shows as ER and Prison Break, Nelson McCormick (whose second genre feature was the recent remake of The Stepfather) was hired to bring Prom Night to a new generation of horror fans. Taking its cue from When a Stranger Calls, this was another PG-13 disaster from Screen Gems, with Brittany Snow, Scott Porter and Jessica Stroup sleepwalking through their thankless roles.

THE WICKER MAN (2006)
There was a time, many moons ago, when Nicolas Cage occasionally flirted with the idea of becoming a good actor. He often chose offbeat roles, gaining acclaim for such films as Raizing Arizona and Wild at Heart, but his hard work all went to Hell when he tried to reinvent himself as an action hero with The Rock and Con Air. Ever since then, he has made some terrible career choices (see Ghost Rider for further details), but one of his most critically mauled turns was as the lead in Neil LaBute’s truly awful remake of The Wicker Man. Taking over the role from Edward Woodward, Cage gives an bland and ridiculous performance, but the tepid script and pedestrian directing does little to help.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003)
Blame this movie for every crap remake that has been released over the last few years. If it was not for Michael Bay and this MTV-inspired drivel, maybe the horror genre would not be regurgitating itself time and time again. Sure, this has helped to make the genre popular again at the box office, but most of us would give that up in a heartbeat if it meant we would not be subjected to some of the atrocious remakes that are filling the multiplexes around the world. Jessica Biel and Eric Balfour head the cast of youngsters who fall foul of R. Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket) and his family of inbred slaughterhouse rejects. Leatherface ceased being effective many years ago and this film simply upped the violence and jettisoned the tension of the original.

HALLOWEEN (2007)
If there is one movie that deserves any little bit of criticism that it has received then it is Rob Zombie’s ill advised remake of John Carpenter’s classic Halloween. The franchise had long since run out of steam and thankfully 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection had seemed to bring it to an end. But singer-turned-director Zombie decided to give the formula a trailer trash spin by adding full frontal nudity, graphic violence and not one sympathetic character. This may have worked well with The Devil’s Rejects, whose villains were portrayed as the protagonists, but with a story in which the heroine is supposed to be likable, his brand of childish and excessive violence only serves as a distraction. Both Malcolm McDowell and Scout Taylor-Compton are miscast as the two leads and boogeyman Michael Myers ceases to be effective once his troubled childhood is revealed. And Zombie’s recent sequel shows that he should stick to music.

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