10 Most Disappointing Horror Movie Remakes

"Sometimes, original is better."

Carrie Remake
MGM/Screen Gems

Horror as a whole really has a thing for hurling out remakes of classic movies at the moment. Whether its big name brands like Halloween or cult offerings like Pet Sematary, the industry has got a boner for digging up our past and slapping a shiny new cover on it, even if the source material stands up perfectly well on its own.

No matter how much you liked the original, nothing is safe from the relentless remaking. And often, they turn out to be half-arsed phone-ins for making bank off of famous names rather than from any place of passion for the movie, leaving even the most lenient of fans disappointed in the process. There's the rare excellent remake like The Thing or The Fly, but those are few and far between.

Taking a look at the horror remakes that put the flat into flatlining then, these are the movies that had the potential to really be something special - the films that could offer up a modern reimagining of a great idea, or be an original hot take we'd never seen before.

Instead, they were just a bit sh*t.

10. Pet Sematary (2019)

Carrie Remake
Paramount Pictures

Many will argue that this movie doesn't quite fit as seamlessly as the other entries on this list, and they'd be right - since the latest bash at Pet Sematary really isn't all that bad from a technical standpoint. What it undoubtedly is however, is disappointing, since the film fails to justify why it's around as a pretty like-for-like remake of the original. And that's without taking into account just how effectively it ruined its own twists with a ridiculously spoilerific marketing campaign.

Whilst it functions aptly as your standard hollywood horror, the point is that the original Pet Sematary should have stayed dead and buried after its first campy film outing in 1989. Adding in cell phones and fancy four by fours doesn't do anything to make this plot feel fresh and exciting, making the old saying particularly resonant: sometimes original really is better.

In this post: 
Carrie
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Horror film junkie, burrito connoisseur, and serial cat stroker. WhatCulture's least favourite ginger.