20 Surprisingly Great Horror Movie Remakes

Few movie genres are as prone to remakes as horror, because it allows studios to cheaply re-do that which worked before, and many horror fans are open-minded to remakes that at least seem to be putting some effort in.

But it's also fair to say that many horror remakes are simply trying to cynically cash-in on a brand name without bringing anything new to the table, and these tend to fare less well with audiences.

Remakes can by their very nature invite a healthy amount of skepticism and doubt, which makes it all the more exciting and surprising when a remake defies low expectations to deliver something truly great.

Indeed, not all remakes are created equal - horror or otherwise - and these 20, perhaps more than all others, managed to satisfy both fans of the original and those totally new to the IP.

These remakes generally respected the original but managed to forge their own paths, and in exceptional cases perhaps even outdid that which came before.

The lesson here? While you might be tempted to roll your eyes at every new remake announcement, every so often they just might surprise us all...

One huge benefit of remaking a movie that wasn't great in the first place is that your odds of improving upon of it are considerably higher. 

And that was evidently the case with the recent reimagining of Silent Night, Deadly Night - the controversial 1984 yuletide slasher whose sequel spawned the infamous "Garbage day!" meme, and was remade once before in 2012.

This new take from Mike P. Nelson, who previously remade backwoods slasher Wrong Turn, sticks to the basic hook of a dude in a Santa suit killing people, though fleshes out the characterisation and dials back the more "problematic" aspects of the original while still serving up a slew of grisly kills.

While the new Silent Night, Deadly Night undeniably softens its tone to make most of the victims less sympathetic - including slicing up a room of literal Nazis at one point - it does ultimately make the deaths more satisfying to behold.

Considering that this remake was released with only minimal marketing, it was a genuine surprise that it turned out to be one of 2025's very best slashers and an easy improvement over the O.G.