20 Surprisingly Great Horror Movie Remakes

20. Silent Night, Deadly Night

One huge benefit of remaking a movie that wasn't great in the first place is that your odds of improving upon of it are considerably higher. 

And that was evidently the case with the recent reimagining of Silent Night, Deadly Night - the controversial 1984 yuletide slasher whose sequel spawned the infamous "Garbage day!" meme, and was remade once before in 2012.

This new take from Mike P. Nelson, who previously remade backwoods slasher Wrong Turn, sticks to the basic hook of a dude in a Santa suit killing people, though fleshes out the characterisation and dials back the more "problematic" aspects of the original while still serving up a slew of grisly kills.

While the new Silent Night, Deadly Night undeniably softens its tone to make most of the victims less sympathetic - including slicing up a room of literal Nazis at one point - it does ultimately make the deaths more satisfying to behold.

Considering that this remake was released with only minimal marketing, it was a genuine surprise that it turned out to be one of 2025's very best slashers and an easy improvement over the O.G.