Why do we have so many remakes? Is there any single question—maybe not worded quite exactly like that—that you hear more from horror fans on the Internet? I see it asked every single day in one form or another. “Why do we have so many remakes?” It’s an easy answer, too, which makes how often I see the question so mind-boggling. It’s obvious, and it’s obvious in the way you wouldn’t think it would be obvious. One of those answers that’s staring you in the face with its painfully solid clarity.
We have so many remakes because they make money. It’s as simple as that. The only reason any popular trend exists in film is because people go see it. That’s how the remake boom happened. Studios had a harder and harder time getting people into the theater to see new content, so they take a property that people are already intimately familiar with. Viewers vote with their dollars (and then complain about the very trend they helped to create).
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With that in mind, it’s kind of amazing that there are remakes that actually go unseen. Those that fall by the wayside. Sometimes, they fall flat upon their initial release and gain their audience later on. Sometimes, they never get their due. Read on for seven surprisingly good remakes that nobody saw!
All Cheerleaders Die
Lucky McKee’s remake of his own film has to be one of his most under-seen. But I loved it. I had so much fun with this flick. It’s an attempt to go back to the tone and style of titles like Heathers and Buffy, but it’s totally and completely a Lucky McKee production at the same time.
Silent Night
Steven C. Miller’s very loose remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night is over-the-top, but it’s designed to be that way. Had it been given a larger release, it might have actually found an audience. Sadly, it remains largely under-seen.
Carrie
I know, it’s shocking to list Carrie because everyone has an opinion on it. Except I’m not talking about that Carrie. Before the 2013 theatrical remake, there was a 2002 TV adaptation starring Angela Bettis of May as the titular character. It’s closer to the book in a way that Kimberly Pierce’s film promised, but did not deliver on.
The Wizard of Gore
This is a very different film from Herschel Gordon Lewis’s Wizard of Gore, and it’s fairly low budget, but not as low as the original. There’s a lot of neat stuff stylistically in this version, but what really makes it work is an eccentric lead performance by Crispin Glover in one of his most overlooked roles as Montag the Magnificent.
The Toolbox Murders
Maybe the last good film Tobe Hooper made, Toolbox Murders was kind of surprising because the first one wasn’t very good. It was a strange movie to remake to begin with. The redux takes a more supernatural turn that you would expect. It also features Angela Bettis, so maybe she’s a good luck charm.
The Shining
Mick Garris’ The Shining is mostly referred to as Stephen King’s The Shining and it exists because King had talked for so long about how the film everyone knew and loved was so far removed from the story he had written. So in the ‘90s he wrote this miniseries and it was brought to life by his go-to-guy, Mick Garris. There are aspects that don’t work, where it could have been serviced by being less faithful to the book—the hedge animals are terrifying on the page, but don’t work on screen—but there are also times when it is just as scary as Kubrick’s movie and has a deeper understanding of the characters.
Related: Does Stephen King Still Hate Kubrick’s The Shining 40-Years Later? Well, Sort of.
The Thing
People sometimes forget that one of the most beloved horror movies of the past forty years was a complete and total failure when it was first released. It seems ridiculous to put The Thing on a list of remakes that nobody saw, but it’s the truth. It took people years to finally start watching it. They began to see it as the masterpiece that it actually is, but this was decades after the flick’s initial release. The Thing will always be the classic example of a masterful remake that nobody saw.
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