Summary
- Horror remakes were a trend in the 2000s, but many of them were cheap cash grabs that lacked originality and failed to offer anything new.
- Some horror remakes, like the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre and 2011's Fright Night, were bright spots in a sea of bad remakes.
- Films like the 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the 2013 Carrie remake missed the mark and disappointed audiences worldwide, lacking the substance and organic display of the originals.
Oh, horror movies. The genre critics hate it and audiences look down on it but everyone seems to love. It's one that's never lost its popularity and has survived countless franchise experiments, revisions, retcons, and even the deaths of studios. However, this doesn't mean it's infallible and always effective among fans. In the early 2000s, there was a trend that most people despised, and few films survived. Horror remakes were all the craze in the 2000s. It was a wash to give classic horror films a new coat of paint for the 21st century and up the original blood and gore.
Update September 3, 2023: It has been a while since a big-budget horror remake was released, but we remember what it was like, so this list has been updated with even more horror remakes that missed the mark.
There's nothing inherently wrong with rebooting a popular film and/or franchise. But there's also no rule that says they have to be bad, and most of these films are... questionable, to say the least. There certainly were a few bright spots like the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 2009's Friday the 13th, or 2011's Fright Night. There was even the J-horror remake craze that gave audiences classics like The Ring and The Grudge. Yet many of these horror remakes were bad, just cheap nostalgic cash grabs that did not offer anything new. Here's a look at some of the worst horror remakes and reboots.
14 Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is easily one of the scariest movies of all time, no question. Loosely based on true events, put together in the early '70s on a shoestring budget, this thing played like some sorta snuff film. It's chilling. It's such a great horror film that once the sequels stopped coming, Hollywood tried to reboot it not once, not twice, but... you get the idea. The latest iteration was made by Netflix in 2022, and it disappointed audiences worldwide. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is ultraviolent, but lacks the substance that made everyone afraid of heading to Texas ever again.
13 Halloween (2007)
John Carpenter's original Halloween is a standard-bearer and genre-defining landmark in the history of slasher flicks and a movie that's genuinely scary. Shock rocker and former White Zombie frontman Rob Zombie is such an avowed fan of B-movies, horror and gore (and all things '70s) that putting him in charge of rebooting the franchise seemed like a decent idea.
Sure, House of 1000 Corpses didn't get his movie career off to a promising start, but it does have its fans. The Devil's Rejects was much better. Then came Halloween. Ex-pro-wrestler Tyler Mane is imposing in the mask, but fans weren't keen on Zombie's version of the story. It's not exactly a terrible film, but it's insanely different from the 1978 masterpiece.
12 One Missed Call (2008)
The American remake of The Ring was so great that it most assuredly inspired many other filmmakers. Unfortunately, it also inspired many nightmarish remakes. Hollywood went crazy for Japanese horror stories in the wake of the success of The Ring. The American remakes of The Grudge and Dark Water are not without their fans, but dreck like The Eye, Pulse, Mirrors, and Shutter are much harder to defend. One Missed Call is probably the worst of the bunch. It has one of those very rare zero percent scores on the Tomatometer.
11 Prom Night (2008)
Released the same year as One Missed Call, Prom Night took an original horror film that wasn't that great to begin with and made it even worse. The original at least had Halloween scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis and the late Leslie Nielsen. The remake starred Brittany Snow from the Pitch Perfect movies. We'll give it some bonus points for casting Jessica Stroup, who suffered through The Hills Have Eyes 2 the year before. It's hard to find someone who saw, much less liked this one.
10 My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)
My Bloody Valentine 3D, even with Jensen Ackles hanging around, just didn't work. The film retold the concept of the Canadian slasher of 1981 but lacked consistency and was released to display its 3D effects, and not even those look good. It also arrived when 3D was seen as a cheap gimmick before Avatar would revolutionize what audiences would think of 3D eleven months later. This was quickly forgotten by horror audiences worldwide.
9 Carrie (2013)
Stephen King's first novel was a breakthrough horror adaptation in 1976. Oscar nominations for Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, appearances by Nancy Allen and John Travolta, and director Brian De Palma - sure, let's remake Carrie in 2013! Hiring Kimberly Peirce was a smart move.
But even the director of Boys Don't Cry and a promising young actress couldn't save the 2013 version of Carrie. What's so wrong with the film, is its mistaken portrayal of everything that made King's work an organic display of anger and revenge. Carrie isn't a villain from a superhero film, and here she looks like it.
8 Poltergeist (2015)
Gil Kenan's reboot of Tobe Hooper's 1982 horror masterpiece, was simply unnecessary. It aimed at bringing audiences to the concept of a family haunted by poltergeists but instead opted for horrible script decisions. Poltergeist is just boring and uninteresting and features the worst inclusion of a drone camera in a screenplay ever seen. The weird thing is the cast is impressive, as it includes Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Jared Harris.
7 The Stepfather (2009)
Horror reboot The Stepfather has nothing of the wit that made the 1987 version memorable. It's a simple remake that aims at nothing but to please younger audiences that wouldn't have felt as connected with the previous version of the story about a teenager who suspects his mother's new boyfriend is a very bad guy. To the movie's credit, Penn Badgley's role as young Michael is actually pretty good.
6 Black Christmas (2006)
Almost nobody remembers the 2006 version of Black Christmas. Few people know it actually exists. Heavily affected by reshoots and edits caused by the conflicts between the director and the Weinsteins, the film retells the story of the sorority girls being stalked by a maniac during Christmas but lacks everything that made Bob Clark's slasher memorable. It's not a horrible film per se. It's just a forgettable slasher piece from the 2000s remake craze. When people think of the Black Christmas remake, they are more likely to remember the 2019 version.
5 House of Wax (2005)
Why mess with a Vincent Price classic? 1953's House of Wax has a 95 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes! More than a half-century later, Hollywood had the bright idea to remake the film with smug teen soap actor Chad Michael Murray, The Girl Next Door's Elisha Cuthbert, and... Paris Hilton. Plenty of jokes were made about how Hilton may as well have been an actual wax statue. Plenty of sickos watched it just to see a B-celebrity they hate get fake killed. Any way you slice it or melt it, the 2005 version of House of Wax was just bad.
4 The Fog (2005)
Released during the remake crazy of the 2000s, the re-imagining of John Carpenter's ghost movie, The Fog, is a boring and uninspired reboot of the concept that features familiar faces trapped in a horrible script. Carpenter's film heavily used practical effects, and he insisted on pacing the film as a slow-burn horror fable, but the 2005 version is ridden with digital effects that look horrible, and almost nobody remembers seeing it.
3 A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Platinum Dunes produced a remake of the Wes Craven classic, confirming why most of their films weren't a good idea. The 2010 version of Freddy Krueger's story, A Nightmare on Elm Street, was a bad execution of the concept, starring great actors like Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, and Kyle Gallner. Despite a talented cast, not even they could save the film from being a laughing stock to audiences and critics.
2 The Omen (2006)
Was there a reason for The Omen to be made and released, other than to take advantage of the release date 06-06-06? Probably not, as the final product is a horrible film that attempts to recreate the dread the Richard Donner film famously capitalized on in 1976. The film tells the story of a family whose son they believe is the Antichrist. They decide to do something about it, and bodies start dropping. The original The Omen is fondly remembered, while the remake is only notable for its release date.
1 The Wicker Man (2006)
We saved the best of the worst for last. It's The Wicker Man! The reboot starred Nicolas Cage in a particularly bonkers performance. The movie's so bad that audiences regularly flock to Quentin Tarantino's New Beverly Theater to take in ironic midnight showings. It's even spawned memes. Cage has gone on record claiming he was more or less in on the joke. Whatever happened with The Wicker Man remake, it was the work of writer/director Neil LaBute, a director, screenwriter, playwright, and actor we never would've imagined could make this.