10 Best Slasher Horror Movie Remakes Of All Time

To name Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) as the most important film in the origins of the slasher genre as we would come to know it in the decades to come, would be no understatement. The legendary director shocked audiences at the time with the murderous themes in the movie, and with the pacing and twists within the narrative. And it’s influence on horror and thriller films is evident throughout virtually every scene.

When slashers became popular in the eighties, Psycho was revisited with sequels which returned to further tell tale of antagonist Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), the disturbed killer with the ultimate mother complex. In 1998, visionary director Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy) was tasked with remaking the original and controversially delivered a film which virtually mirrors Hitchcock’s classic scene-for-scene and line-by-line. He recreated one of the finest thriller movies of all time with an intriguing new generation of actors, in a film, which this time presented in colour, that would appeal to a newer nineties audience.

Faithfully adapting Psycho in this way and paying testament to a near perfect film is a move that either makes total sense or seems like a big waste of time, depending on how you look at it. But when you are recreating exactly one of the greatest movies ever made, you undoubtedly are only going to end up with another fine movie. Which in this case, stylistically honours the original perfectly.