#10 Best Horror Remakes (and We Do Mean Remakes)

October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true. Most people take that to mean highlighting one horror movie a day, but here at FSR, we’ve taken that up a spooky notch or nine by celebrating each day with a top ten list. This article, about the best horror remakes, is part of our ongoing series 31 Days of Horror Lists.

Remakes and reboots have been part of cinema for as long as the medium has existed. Filmmakers have always loved to tell new versions of the same stories. And yet, few things frighten film fans more than remakes. This is especially true for horror fans — whenever new remakes are announced, you can hear a collective groan ripple through the horror community.

It’s a bit of a bizarre phenomenon, isn’t it? It’s not like a remake replaces the film that came before it. One of your beloved movies is getting remade? Guess what, your movie is still there. Worst case scenario, the remake is bad and quickly forgotten. But the best case? The remake is awesome, and now you have two great versions of the same movie to love.

I can’t say for certain that horror remakes occur more often than remakes in other genres, but they feel more frequent. And their success rate is similar to any other film in the genre. Some work and some don’t. Most end up somewhere in between. Since we’re here to celebrate horror remakes, though, you can just push aside those middling films and those that are terrible.

We’ve put together a collection of remakes that you can enjoy and use to win arguments with your annoying friends who tell you remakes are never any good. A quick note: this is a remake list, not a list of new adaptations of stories, novels, etc. So no, you won’t see John Carpenter’s The Thing or David Cronenberg’s The Fly anywhere below.

Keep reading for a look at the best horror remakes as voted on by Anna Swanson, Brad Gullickson, Meg Shields, Jacob Trussell, Kieran Fisher, Rob Hunter, Valerie Ettenhofer, and myself. And if you don’t like our choices, please feel free to remake our list with your own picks.

10. My Bloody Valentine (2009)

The 3D gimmick has never been my thing, but now and then it works. And in 2009, it worked for Patrick Lussier and his remake of 1981’s My Bloody Valentine. Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles) returns to the small mining town he grew up in after the death of his father. His return coincides with the tenth anniversary of a Valentine’s Day massacre, from which Tom barely escaped. Much to his surprise, Tom is now viewed as a suspect.

Lussier shifts things a bit from the original, particularly with the killer, turning this one into more of a murder mystery. The kills are plentiful, with the 3D element used to celebrate the film’s gory carnage, throwing it straight out of the screen and right into our slasher-loving faces. And then there’s Tom Atkins. You always win with Tom Atkins. (Chris Coffel)

9. The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

The best remakes improve on the film that came before, and in that regard, The Hills Have Eyes succeeds. Not to discount a single frame of Wes Craven’s classic 1977 shocker – it still shreds every nerve you’ve got four decades later – but by leaning fully into the nuclear-anxiety the original touches upon, Alexandre Aja’s remake has the metaphorical framework to build a blood-soaked story that (dare I say it) elevates it from being just another shocking rehash.

As much as you want the widowed father to kill ‘em all, you also feel a modicum of pity for these mutants caught between their shitty lot in life and the machines of war that created them. With Aja’s white-knuckled hand on the wheel, The Hills Have Eyes is a sticky, sweaty onslaught that proved in 2006 the mid-aughtss remake train could be so much more than a blind money grab. (Jacob Trussell)

8. Fright Night (2011)

Walking into a movie with your arms crossed is never fun, but sometimes our primordial brains can’t help themselves. We’ve been burned too many times by remakes. The original Fright Night from 1985 is a gosh darn delight. Who would dare put their spin on it? Say hi, Craig Gillespie. Huh. The guy who directed Lars and the Real Girl? Yup. He would also go on to helm I, Tonya. That’s a little unexpected, and that’s exciting.

Gillespie’s Fright Night achieves all the giddy bits of nostalgia that the original film was going for, but it does so with a different kind of bouncy glee. This Fright Night leans even further into the perpetual awkwardness that all teenagers face, and the courage we all must adapt to make our way out of high school and into adulthood. Ten minutes into this flick, and your arms will uncross and relax. The 2011 Fright Night is here to have a good time, and you will, too, if you allow it. And frankly, there are too few Anton Yelchin films in this world, and the heart he supplies in Fright Night is a pure blessing. (Brad Gullickson)

7. Maniac (2012)

Franck Khalfoun tackled his 2012 remake of William Lustig’s notorious 1980 slasher by using a point-of-view gimmick. On the surface, that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, and yet it works brilliantly. Elijah Wood stars as Frank Zito, a disturbed young man with mommy issues searching for love.

Unfortunately, Frank’s idea of love includes murdering his partners, scalping them, and attaching their scalps to mannequins. Khalfoun directs with style, Wood gives a chilling performance, and the POV perspective puts us in the killer’s shoes, giving us an intimate relationship with an onscreen killer rarely seen. (Chris Coffel)

6. House of Wax (2005)

“Remakes are always worse than the original,” you say? Then how do you explain the scenes in Jaume Collet-Serra’s House of Wax redux that’ll absolutely make your skin crawl? This is a gnarly take on the original that’s mostly remembered for its cast of mid-2000s TV heart-throbs, among them Chad Michael Murray, Paris Hilton, Jared Padalecki, and Elisha Cuthbert.

Instead, it should be remembered for the squirm-inducing sequence where one character tries to help free another from his wax encasing and instead peels off the guy’s skin while he sits helplessly immobile. Or the scene where a character whose mouth is super-glued shut tries to wave for help through a grate and gets her fingertips clipped off. The film overall might be less-than-perfect, but House of Wax deserves a spot in the body horror hall of fame for its most creatively excruciating moments. (Valerie Ettenhofer)

5. The Crazies (2010)

I have a confession: I’ve never seen George Romero’s 1973 film The Crazies. Does that make me a blasphemer? Maybe, but that’s for the courts to decide. I have seen Breck Eisner‘s 2010 remake, however, and I can tell you that it rules. A plane crashes in a rural Iowa town unleashing a military virus that turns the locals into lunatic killers. The townspeople become struck with paranoia, unable to know whom they can trust and whom they can’t. Eventually, that doesn’t matter because the military comes in to clean things up.

The Crazies works because it seems very plausible, even more so now in our current political climate. Would you be surprised if our government accidentally unleashed chemical warfare on us? Me neither. (Chris Coffel)

4. Piranha 3D (2010)

I believe it was Godard who said all you need to make a movie is a swarm of prehistoric piranhas and teenagers on spring break. This is a sentiment Alexandre Aja (the only director to land two spots on our list of the best horror remakes — and he co-wrote and produced a third!) knows well and a fact he utilizes to its full potential in his remake of Joe Dante’s 1978 cult classic.

Piranha 3D is a rip-roaring horror comedy with carnage to spare. It’s bloody, bombastic, and unabashedly ridiculous. This is a film that never takes itself too seriously and is all the better for it. And, naturally, it delivers a feast for the senses in the form of bloodthirsty piranhas. What more could you ask for? (Anna Swanson)

3. Evil Dead II (1987)

Sam Raimi‘s 1981 original The Evil Dead contains a streak of black humor, but it’s more of a straight horror movie than a comedy. The follow-up — arguably both a sequel and a remake — sees Raimi combine his love of The Three Stooges and scary movies to make the ultimate splatstick nightmare. It feels more like the movie Raimi and company had always wanted to make at the time, and the increased budget allows for much better special effects and ambitious set pieces.

While the results are hilarious, the film doesn’t lose any of the menacing edge that made the first movie such a groundbreaking hit either. Evil Dead II is wild and relentless, with laughing household ornaments and severed hands among the many ghoulish delights that add to Ash’s torment. (Kieran Fisher)

2. The Blob (1988)

Now, I’m not saying goop makes every film better. But I am saying that this amount of goop makes a film about goop better. The original 1958 version of The Blob is a playful if innocuous B-movie about a malevolent meteor wreaking havoc in small-town America. It’s all very terrifying in theory: a flesh-eating alien pile of goo, growing larger and bloodier with each victim. In execution, the film defaults to an oddball fun-factor that, to its credit, is what sets the original apart from the more self-serious B-movie fare.

And we should be so grateful because, without that upbeat jam-colored gelatin, we wouldn’t have the 1988 remake. And that’d be a shame indeed. Chuck Russell’s titular blob doesn’t just crawl, it shoots out of corpses, sucks people down drain pipes, and scurries improbably fast across ceilings. It is tongue-in-cheek body horror that didn’t come to play nice. The remake isn’t just gleefully over-the-top, it raises the stakes with improved special effects that impress the horror and hunger of this Jell-O pudding from beyond the stars. (Meg Shields)

1. Evil Dead (2013)

Odds are you’ve already read a few controversial and/or outrageous takes in our list of the best horror remakes, so here’s one more. Not only is Fede Alvarez‘s Evil Dead the best of the bunch, but it’s also the best of the Evil Dead films. Yeah yeah, it’s all subjective, but also, I’m right. Raimi’s films are comedies, and while there’s nothing wrong with a good horror-comedy, the prioritizing of zany slapstick and gory silliness just can’t compete with the purely visceral horror that Alvarez delivers.

The film’s copious gore and bloodletting aren’t fun in the traditional sense and instead mesmerizes in its visual splendor, technical perfection, and terror-inducing presence. This is a film where we feel the violence rather than merely witness it. From the bodily carnage (that tongue slice!) to the demonic transformations, this is a gloriously oppressive watch that eschews the slow burn usually associated with dread to instead pair it with fleshy renderings and liberal sprays of crimson pain.

The cast delivers across the board as well, but it’s the always fantastic Jane Levy who carries the brunt of the horror. While Raimi’s characters, outside of Ash, are forgettable, Levy’s Mia is someone we quickly come to care for. The more she suffers, the more we suffer, and her transformation into a pained and pain-dealing hellspawn delivers horror that’s both physical and emotional. This is not just the good stuff; it’s the best stuff. (Rob Hunter)