15 Underrated Movie Remakes That Deserve Another Look

There's a consensus among film fans that certain films just shouldn't be remade, and a lot of the time this is correct. Many beloved classics have been remade and, surprise surprise, they're not nearly as good as the original, they bomb and they're dragged across the critical hot coals. But that doesn't necessarily mean they should be banished for good.

Some remakes do well from a bit of a time out, for everyone to get used to their existence and start seeing them as an entity in their own right, divorced from the films they're based on. Some are good, harmless fun; have something more relevant to say now; are artistically significant in their own right; actually improve on the originals in certain areas; and were unfairly and lazily dismissed in the first place.

Not all of them are exactly masterpieces, and none can be said to be outright better than the original, but they all pack a good reason to return to them and take another look. Thus, casting as wide a net as possible across genres and periods, here are 15 underrated movie remakes that are due a rewatch. 

Given Richard Donner’s beloved original Omen (1976) sparked a whole franchise and made Damien “the Devil’s Son” Thorn a household name, remaking it was always going to be a big task. Even with a stacked cast comprising Julia Stiles, Liev Schreiber, Michael Gambon, Mia Farrow, David Thewlis and Pete Postlethwaite, horror audiences were broadly opposed to John Moore’s version long before anyone has seen a cel of footage.

The film fared well at the box office, but did not go down well with critics, and given it’s a direct remake of Donner’s film all the unfavourable reviews wanted to talk about at the time was how it didn’t stack up.

With enough distance from its release (almost twenty years!), it is easier now to return to Moore’s Omen and see what makes it great. The plot is familiar, sure, but this version has a grim sense of danger to it and a cold palette to match, and the acting and staging similarly skews towards realism, eschewing the gothic formality of the original. The kills are brutal, the tension constant and Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick was perfectly cast as Damien, drawing on some mysterious well of haunted child energy (especially for an eight-year-old) and completely dodging the slightly cutesy, pinch-his-cheeks vibe Harvey Spencer Stephens brought to the part.