10 Best Horror Movie Remakes Of All Time

Horror remakes are a tricky business. Generally speaking, they carry a negative connotation with them because, more often than not, if a studio sees fit to remake a film it means the film has a following and is beloved by many. And so, in many ways, attempting to cash in on that love or recreate what made the original film such a classic is a bit of a fool's errand.

But sometimes, the filmmakers behind these remakes pull off a miracle. Sometimes, they're able to craft a film that is either on par with or surpasses the original. With the trailers for upcoming horror remakes/reimaginings of both Suspiria and Halloween hitting the web this week, it's a good time to remember that horror remakes can actually work. Both Suspiria and Halloween have some incredibly high expectations to live up to, but so too did a great many of the these, so nothing is out of the question.

From monsters to zombies, and from vampires to the deranged madmen behind and in front of the camera, these are the horror remakes that have blown away expectations.

George A. Romero's original 1978 film is a cult classic that works because of the auteur's unique strengths of character building and suspense. To try and replicate anything from Romero's career would be foolish, so the creators of the remake wisely chose to stray from the source material.

The 2004 version is directed by a very-early-in-his-career Zack Snyder, and the result is a film much more in-tune with Snyder's strengths as a director. Namely: intensity. Everything is cranked up to eleven in the name of making a more visceral experience. The once slow-moving flesh eaters can now run. Where the original only had four characters, the remake has nearly a dozen. And instead of building suspense, Snyder goes for the more immediate option every time, resulting in a lot more jump scares but also a lot more overt tension.

The zombie genre as a whole owes a LOT to Romero, but it is often underestimated just how much the current wave of zombie entertainment owes to Snyder's remake. Screenwriter James Gunn took the bones of the original Romero films and forged a solid and politically relevant narrative for post-9/11 audiences, and Snyder took Gunn's ideas and ran with them.