13 Horror Remakes That Nobody Really Wanted

The remake of notorious French horror Martyrs is upon us, and along with it comes the all-too familiar complaint from film fandom there are no original ideas anymore. Obviously this point is debatable, but it's clear that in recent years the industry seems hellbent on regurgitating anything that was ever good; or, at least, anything that showed a profit. Nowhere is this more commonplace than in horror. As nowadays the genre and its audience are deemed comparatively small fry in modern cinema, many people get it in their heads that horror fans will just eat up anything that's dished out to them, regardless of whether it's something they've literally seen before. This cynicism has only intensified over the past 13 years as, starting with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003, and Dawn of the Dead in 2004, a huge percentage of theatrically released horror has been remakes. The films that have emerged in this wave have polarized opinions, with some (e.g., The Hills Have Eyes and Maniac) being broadly accepted as equal or even superior to the originals, but others being justifiably dismissed as nothing more than lazy, blatant cash-grabs. Still, while in some instances the remake/reboot approach was perhaps inevitable (notably for the long-running franchises Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street), there have been plenty of instances in which seemingly no one wanted to see the film remade except the financial backers. Here are 13 of the ones the fans were crying out for the least.