10 Horror Movie Remakes That Pissed Off Audiences

One of the crowning jewels of the New French Extremity, Martyrs is a fan-favourite the world over for those who like their horror with that extra grim edge. Pascal Laugier's film follows two girls who were abused and tortured as a child who attempt to take revenge and accidentally stumble into a whole new world of suffering with an underground cult who use torture to try and access the afterlife. 

Not an obvious pick for an American remake, and yet seven years after the original, Kevin and Michael Goetz deemed it ripe for a more mainstream audience. In the process, however, the film was gutted. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the violence of the original Martyrs was one of the things that prevented it reaching a wider audience (subtitles not withstanding), and so to wrangle into a shape the massive US market could even begin to consider, the filmmakers had to sacrifice pretty much everything that made it interesting. 

Gone is the main character switcheroo, the moral ambiguity and perhaps the grimmest, darkest ending in the horror canon. Instead we have a much more clear cut tale of good and evil, in which the heroines of the piece win, the police are called and something like a happy ending arrives before the credits roll. This thoroughly pissed off its audience, including Laugier himself, who couldn't stand more than 20 minutes of it, and described it as "like watching [his] mother being raped."