5 Best & 5 Worst Asian Horror Movie Remakes Ever Made

5 Best...

5. Dark Water

Walter Salles’ remake of Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water is a bit of a difficult one. While it’s by no means a brilliant film, compared to some of the stinkers coming up it’s more than passable but only really gets a place amongst the best remakes by definition of not being as bad as the worst remakes.

With that rather underwhelming disclaimer out of the way, there are some good parts to the Dark Water remake. The plot doesn’t deviate too much from Nakata’s original film and Salles brings his flair for dark visuals to the table crafting a convincingly brooding atmosphere. Likewise, lead Jennifer Connelly gives a sympathetic performance as a single mother dealing with not only a bitter custody battle but a spooky ghost child too and is bolstered by a solid supporting cast featuring Tim Roth, John C. Reilly and Pete Postlethwaite.

Sadly, a focus on familial drama sacrifices many of the scares that Nakata’s movie featured and substituting the original bleak ending for a wishy-washy resolution dents its impact further. Problems aside though, it’s still an above average J-Horror remake and a solid psychological horror-drama even if much of the fright factor is lost in translation.