10 Horror Movie Characters Who Died (But Survived The Remake)

Those horror remakes that flipped the script and chose to save rather than slaughter.

Martyrs Lucie
Wild Bunch/Anchor Bay

Of all the various genres of film, none can come close to horror when it comes to serving up remakes, reboots, reimaginings, recalibrations or whatever buzz word is being thrown around for revisiting a tried and tested property.

These do-overs have clearly varied massively in quality over the decades, with there being way more duds than there have been great redos. Still, the likes of John Carpenter's The Thing and Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead show that remakes don't have to totally suck - even if the vast majority of them sadly do.

For some such remakes, the exact same formula and plot is followed as their predecessors. Gus Van Sant's Psycho is infamous for how it simply did a shot-to-shot retelling of Alfred Hitchcock's iconic 1960 movie, and the end result was awful and totally pointless.

On the other side of the fence, there are those remakes that thankfully at least try to do something different to what we've seen before. For some horror characters, that means that they may end up actually surviving in situations where they've previously been killed off.

It's on those characters that the spotlight is on here, as it's time to put the focus on horror figures who remakes chose to save rather than slaughter.

10. Annie Brackett - Halloween

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Universal/Dimension Films

While Laurie Strode clearly gets the spotlight in John Carpenter's iconic Halloween, one could argue that Annie Brackett (Nancy Loomis) is the most enjoyable character in that picture.

Complete with a dry sense of sarcasm to whatever she's doing, Annie brings an energy to proceedings whenever she's on screen. Like her pal Lynda, though, poor Brackett is one of those friends of Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie who ends up offed by Michael Myers on the night he came home.

That demise sees Annie attacked in her car by the Shape, as Myers strangles her and slices her throat. And with that, audiences get their first glimpse of the present-day Michael fully in action.

By the time Rob Zombie's Halloween remake came around in 2007, Zombie very much decided to make this movie his own. Whether you like that redo or not, one cannot argue that Rob, for better or worse, made something different to Carpenter's '78 film rather than simply retelling the same note-for-note tale.

Where the Annie Brackett character is concerned, one difference in Rob Zombie's picture is that, while she's attacked by Michael, Danielle Harris' Annie just about survives that assault.

Unfortunately for Annie, she would still have her life brought to an end courtesy of Myers, with him returning to brutally finish the job in Zombie's Halloween II.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.