8 Horror Movie Remakes That Are Better Than The Originals

4. The Fly (1986)

Jeff Goldblum The Fly
20th Century Studios

A lot of people don’t know that David Cronenberg’s gross horror-thriller is actually a remake, but this only speaks to the film's high quality and cultural impact; it completely overshadows the film on which it's based.

It's not hard to see why, either. The original The Fly has become something of a laughing stock over time; it aimed to be a straight-faced, philosophical discussion, but it's hard to take it seriously when there are moments like this peppered throughout.

As a result, the original is a flat, ridiculous B-movie, but David Cronenberg's 1986 remake was a sharp, bloody, tormented work, featuring a career-best Jeff Goldblum and sublime practical effects.

Both versions tell the twisted story of a scientist accidentally merging his body with a fly, but in the remake, there are a lot of changes that make a lot of sense.

For example, in the original, protagonist André Delambre doesn't really 'merge' with the fly... he simply acquires its head and one of its arms, and this change happens more-or-less instantly. But in the remake, you see the slow, painful transformation that Seth Brundle is put through, his form resembling that of a diseased, mutilated human, and not of an actual fly.

This ups the horror of the situation immensely, and as a result, the remake is a lot more scary and a lot more effective at conveying its message; don't mess with the unknown. Try eating your dinner while watching this. Dare you.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!