5. Superior Spoofs
Shaun of the Dead was a great movie. A perfect send-up of the tropes of zombie movies that turned into a somewhat touching tale of a mans efforts to avoid growing up. Zombieland too riffed off of zombie movies rules, but also the faux secondary literature surrounding zombie attacks. And Tucker & Dale vs. Evil managed to make a disgusting amount of blood hilarious in its take on teens-in-the-woods slasher films. So what is my beef with these films? It is not the fact that spoofs of horror films exist. We will always have lame attempts at spoofing serious films. I am upset by the relative qualityin addition to the prevalenceof these films. Spoofs should be overshadowed by the movies they spoof. Hot Shots was great, but it didnt replace Top Gun in popular consciousness. You may enjoy the spoofs, but you dont prefer them to the original. It is hard to think of a contemporary zombie or slasher film that comes close to their spoofs, however. The closest I can think of is the Dawn of the Dead remake, but see my entry on remakes (and see below for the obvious counter-example, 28 Days Later). When the spoofs are better than the already-hard-to-believe originals, something is wrong.