Sure, the movie looks quite visually striking when compared to its predecessor from many years before, but the strong focus on costumes, makeup, and action means that it fell a bit flat elsewhere. It just lacked the spark of the original, and for a Burton film, you would expect much, much more. IMDb rating: 5.7/10 If the trailer for the revamped Psycho wasn’t enough to put you off, and you, too, have suffered through watching this movie, then you are not alone. The problem with this remake is that it is sadly quite abominable. It comes across as the most B-movie B-movie to ever exist, complete with overacting, additional weird scenes, and the ability to turn should-be tension into laugh-out-loud moments. IMDb rating: 4.6/10 While this remake definitely gave it a good go to modernize the film, and the cast is relatively decent in their respective roles, the reason it’s still on my list is because it doesn’t bring anything worthy to the table. It’s one of those unnecessary remakes that, in my mind fades into the background, whilst the original Carrie will forever live rent free in our heads. You just can’t beat the sheer terror, panic, embarrassment, and dark emotions conveyed by Sissy Spacek in that era. … Her skills and the sheer grittiness of the original will always outshine a reboot. IMDb rating: 5.8/10 Skip forward to 2005, and that same fog is haunting humanity in the reboot. Now, given that Carpenter is actually credited as a producer on the remake, I still don’t know how the film ended up being this disastrous. The characters have barely any personality so you don’t care what happens to them either way (never a good start), and it trades the original atmospheric eeriness for the generic teen slasher tropes. The first Fog knew what it was and what it wanted to be, but the second Fog was a pointless endeavor overall. IMDb rating: 3.7/10 Don’t get me wrong, this one isn’t actually that unenjoyable. The visuals are pretty cool, and you can kind of get lost in the live-action interpretation of a Pan-Asian metropolis; plus, you can’t knock Johansson for the effort she always puts in as an actor. That said, it’s got nothing on the original! It doesn’t have the same flair, and I think it gets a bit lost with the source material (which is the manga of the same name). That’s why I think it’s a pretty poor adaptation — if a reboot doesn’t stand out, then what’s the point of it? IMDb rating: 6.3/10 (It’s worth noting that at the time of its release, the film was also subject to a lot of controversy due to its casting. There are many mixed feelings about this, so this could have impacted its overall rating, too). In the original, the lead character was a deaf-mute hitman, but they stripped these unique features for the remake, so instantly, the character wasn’t as compelling. Mix that in with overall mediocre performances, and you’ll find yourself constantly asking why there was any need for a remake in the first place?! IMDb rating: 5.3/10 It stars Taron Egerton and Jamie Foxx, two actors I actually quite enjoy watching to be honest! I also quite liked the idea of the film being updated, bringing in a few more contemporary tropes, but it just didn’t work well in the final product. It’s an unnecessary run time for a film of this kind; plus, it offers a poor script and feels more like a parody than it was clearly meant to be. IMDb rating: 5.3/10 The casting is quite good, and the new setting of China is an appealing background, but I felt the film brought in too many typical Hollywood tropes to tell the modernized story. Mainly, the main kid is forced to leave his hometown after his parents’ divorce (an obvious move in a film like this). It also doesn’t help that the budding martial arts pupil feels much younger than in the original film, so I never felt convinced that he really wanted to apply the “serenity and maturity” approach to his entire life, you know?! Overall, I was just a bit bored watching this remake. IMDb rating: 6.2/10 Martyrs felt like a one-of-a-kind film that you just wouldn’t even want to replicate. So, of course, Blumhouse Productions remade the film in 2015 and absolutely annihilated it. At first it seems like a shot-for-shot remake, which still doesn’t offer the same kind of rawness, and then, it completely does itself over with trying to change the story and go in a different direction. The remake just couldn’t deliver anything like the original did, and it’s not worth your time. IMDb rating: 4/10 So, Cold Pursuit is a remake of the Norwegian action thriller film In Order of Disappearance and is about a snowplow driver who seeks revenge after his son is murdered. This is another film on the list in which the same director (Hans Petter Moland) did both the original and remake. Moland Americanized the story by changing key aspects of it to suit the culture at that time, but overall, I thought it was quite similar, and I genuinely can’t see any benefits by having another version of the same film to watch. IMDb rating: 6.2/10 I’ll start by saying, I like Ben Stiller, and usually, his films are genuinely funny if you like that kind of humor. When it comes to The Heartbreak Kid, though, it’s just not funny, and that pretty much kills the entire vibe when remaking a good comedy. It also doesn’t help that Stiller and Akerman’s characters are both unpleasant, so whilst the film leads you to root for Stiller, it’s actually impossible to. IMDb rating: 5.8/10 Don’t get me wrong, the original Wicker Man has its quirks, but it somehow works because it still delivers genuinely memorable chills with a great performance from Christopher Lee. The remake is just absolutely hilarious (completely unintentional, by the way), and Cage’s performance is probably one of his most overacted stints yet. On that note, I will leave you with the infamous line…NOT THE BEES! IMDb rating: 3.7/10 I’ll be honest, I’m not really a lover of the Annie films anyways; I always found the character and the whole story annoying (sorry), but the remake is my idea of cringing, cliché-ing, Auto-Tune hell. It’s also a film that tries so hard to not be like the original, it may have had a better chance of just being a like-for-like modernized version. IMDb rating: 5.3/10 I also quite like Spike Lee and Josh Brolin, so you think I’d be okay with the remake. But no, it’s just all over the place, and it doesn’t capture the strangely delirious energy of the original. Plus, I can’t get over the fact that this is one narrative that can’t be retold without losing the initial emphasis…unfortunately, Lee is at a disadvantage, because any fans of the original will never ever experience the initial jaw-dropping shock we experienced when the end of the original played out. IMDb rating: 5.8/10 The revamped version amplifies the very slightly touched on feminist themes of the original, whilst also trying to keep some atmospheric scare scenes to keep you on edge. The thing is, the 1974 version is one of the earlier slasher films, so it’s always going to win on the originality front, and the same goes for the plot twist at the end when we find out more about the killer. The remake naturally lost the good bits of the original, and made the big mistake to bring in supernatural elements, instead of keeping the reality that it’s more terrifying to have a real person as an ambiguous killer stalking you in your own home. IMDb rating: 4.6/10 The new version doesn’t part much from the original, and includes a lot of the same characters and scenes, with references throughout. However, those same characters lack any personality and feel incredibly dumbed down, and the film is let down by the typical problems I see in J-horror remakes; namely, swapping what J-horror is good at for a bit of Hollywood special effects and predictable jump scares. The remake totally misses the actual real building of tension that Asian horror is great at conveying, and it doesn’t land the feeling of genuine terror from something you can’t see. IMDb rating: 4/10 The core structure is still there in the remake, and if it wasn’t a remake, it may have been “okay” as a standalone film if the content was fresh at the time of release. In the end, though, it completely loses the psychological tension that we felt when watching the original, it feels a bit miscast in comparison, and the whole thing feels too contrived. IMDb rating: 5.8/10 IMDb rating: 5.7/10 This is a really weird and just awful remake to watch because it has this cringy desire to want to feel like High School Musical, whilst trying to follow the same formula as its predecessor. Yet, it decisively avoids any of the real grit and quite devastating events that made the original so good. It’s one remake I just can’t understand at all! IMDb rating: 5/10
