Evil Genius Horror Movie Reviews
Pass the Popcorn:

Remakes SUCK!

Have you noticed how there’s always a horror remake coming out? Always. Currently, you can see the remake of The Last House on the Left. But remakes are doomed to be pale versions of the original, and so in comparison, they suck.


Four Reasons Remakes Suck:

1) Additional, Unnecessary Crap: In the 2007 remake of Halloween, we see more of Michael Myers childhood. We see his family life; we see…stuff that just doesn’t help us fear Michael Myers. The great thing about the original Michael Myers was he was an unknown man in a featureless mask. We didn’t see his face. We hardly saw his family. He was a mystery, and we’re afraid of what we can’t see. But in the remake we get the white trash family, Michael talking as a child, and the mystery is gone. The fear is gone. Now he’s just a guy.

2) Random Changes: Speaking of Michael Myers’s family, in the original Halloween, we did see his parents ever so briefly. Not a clear shot or anything, but we see enough to get the idea. They seemed to be a typical, middle-class suburban family. In the remake, they are abusive white trash. It was scarier with the Myers family being quiet, “normal”. Now there’s reason for Michael to go crazy and kill people. His family is dysfunctional. He’s picked on at school…and with the logic added, the fear is lost. The same happens in The Hills Have Eyes. In the original, the Hill Clan are just savage, psychotic mountain dwellers. But in the remake, they are mutated by exposure to radiation from a military nuclear test facility. Now we understand the problem. Now, with all the additional make-up, they aren’t as scary. Now we also have a message about the danger of nuclear weapons, and now we’re just not as interested.

3) Marketing for Larger Audience: The horror greats from the 70’s that are being remade these days, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, The Wizard of Gore, they pushed the envelope, they did something beyond the pale, and are remembered for the chances they took. But the remakes tone things down to appeal to a larger audience. Gore is lessened, violence muted and the results are less enthralling.

4) They’re Remakes: The very concept is flawed. It’s a remake. It’s taking an original idea and presenting it again, which means it’s not original. Remakes are the bread and butter of the horror genre. It seems for every original movie to come out, there’s a remake along side it. But why do we go see them when the original is so much better? Because we hope this time they’ll do something new to recapture that feeling we had when we saw those films that first time. That shocked horror, that repulsion without the ability to turn the film off even with the remote in our hands. So we throw our money away on them and leave the theater to talk about how it wasn’t as good, how it was an insult to the original’s concept, and when we get home we slide the original DVD into our player and watch, with new eyes, our original love with greater appreciation.