With upcoming remakes of classic films like The Evil Dead, Carrie, and Oldboy set to storm the box office with their own touches for modern audiences, there is always the potential for a film that could live up to the original classics or at the very least act as companion pieces to the originals. We've seen them all before, and the remake machine just isn't going to stop any time soon. We've had our share of truly painful remakes like "Halloween," and "The Fog," as well as "Black Christmas," and "My Sassy Girl," but sometimes we're given remakes of classic films that are just as good as the original. Perhaps even better. Here are ten remakes just as good as the original classics...
10. The Hills Have Eyes
With KNB and Fox Searchlight leading the charge, the studio recruited new gen goremeister Alexandre Aja to direct the Wes Craven classic for a new age. And wouldn't you know it? It's just so much more watchable than the original. The Hills Have Eyes is one of the many Craven films that hasn't aged well at all, and for the most part features laughable performances, and a group of villains who look more like a wrestling team than anything. Save for the heavy-handed moralising about nuclear testing and the atomic age, The Hills Have Eyes is the perfect treatment for an imperfect film. Lensed with an orange tint, and set in a very gritty and hot desert landscape, The Hills Have Eyes gathers a wonderful cast of character actors including Kathleen Quinlan, Emilie DeRavin, Robert Joy, and Ted Levine, along with Aaron Stanford who goes against type as an inadvertent hero who spends most of the movie doing everything he can to think logically and avoid violence, and then must become a vicious cave man by the finale in order to save his new born daughter when she's kidnapped by a group of a deformed clan of psychos in the hills. With searing tension and excellent suspense, "The Hills" advances on Craven's weak narrative, upping the ante on the gore and horror, and providing an indefinite end to the hapless family who do everything to fight for their lives, yet are never quite in the clear once the credits roll. Oddly enough, like the original, the remake was ruined by a terrible sequel.