5. The Vanishing (George Sluizer)
This one makes no sense to me. The 1988 Franco-Dutch horror film The Vanishing is one of the most terrifying films ever made; it depicts a man obsessed with finding his girlfriend who vanished without a trace years earlier. The man responsible defies pretty much every psychopathic stereotype; he has a family and seems perfectly reasonable, and no clear reason is ever given for his actions beyond curiosity. This is the scariest thing of all, that the film shows us the villain in plain sight from the beginning, or it's at least the scariest thing until the absolutely gut-wrenching climax, which results in one of the best and bleakest twist endings in movie history. Incredulously, Sluizer remade the film himself 5 years later, starring Kiefer Sutherland as the boyfriend, Sandra Bullock as his missing girlfriend, and Jeff Bridges as the abductor. However, Sluizer's Hollywood take is a lame concession, delivering a tacked-on happy ending, and it's clear throughout that he was totally railroaded by the studio, who probably threw a healthy stash of money his way for him to just phone the job in. The joke's on the studio in the end, though; the American version didn't even make 2/3 of its budget back.