Horror remakes are bad, but still profitable

Every time we hear the word "Remake" or "Reboot," We get a bad taste in our mouth. The word doesn't settle well with us. The fact of the matter is, most of these remakes just kill the true meaning of the original films. Hollywood takes a movie that we love and endear as a child, remakes it so they can get a different generation of younger audience to get the same scare as we did. Most of the time it backfires. The younger people don't respect the originals, the people who grew up on the originals feel like they just had their childhood memories crushed.

For instances take horror Icons like Michael Myers (known as the shape) was frightening because throughout the whole series his mission was to kill his sister, Lorie. He stalked her throughout the entire franchise and always attempted to kill her on many different occasions and never succeeded (until the very end of course). He had that eerie white mask, (William Shatner's face) he walked very slowly and creepy killing anyone who got in his way. Lastly, he never spoke one words in any of his films. He was just a walking dead, silent, stone cold killer. The remake of Halloween by director Rob Zombie portrayed Michael Myers as a seven feet, hulking size giant that talks, grunts, and breaths hard when he executes his kills very sloppy. That didn't set well with me and believe it didn't set well with others.

Freddy Krueger was frightening due to his nickname, "master of the dreamworld." In the original, Freddy was a child molester who got burned to death and his soul was in limbo. As you slept, he would show up in your dreams and make them a living hell. He was in control of your mind, you were volunerable and weak and he capitalize on it into you were dead. Not only was he powerful in the dreamworld, he wasn't very pleasant to deal with in the real world. He was famous for his corny one liners, fedora, and Christmas sweater. More importantly his leather glove with his nail/scissor like knives and burnt face made the franchise so popular. What I love about the movies was the cheap, low tech, special effects for the dream sequences and the fake blood. This Freddy would embarrass his victims so bad when he was killing them, they would just rather die instead of going through the suffering. The remake of Nightmare on Elm St portrayed Freddy as a dark, sinister, boogeyman, type killer. He did some one liners, but not many. He did have the leather glove with the knives, but the glove itself, was much bigger than the character playing Freddy. I could tell on some of his scenes he was struggling to lift the glove to use it on his victims. His kills were simple and straight to the point. He did have a burnt face, but of course they made it out of that CGI crap. The same stuff they used on Harvey Dent on the Dark Knight Rises. The blood was CGI, The dream sequences were CGI, even the dog that got killed on there was CGI (I made that up). Most of the movie was just unnecessary special effects. It was an entertaining film to say the least, but nothing like the original.

The million dollar question is why do horror fans continue to watch the "remakes" or "reboots" if we despise them so much? If you look at the box office gross, the remakes continue to make money. There is something Hollywood is doing to reel us in to watch these horrible films? Personally, the marketing of a movie is the reason why I get lured in to see these remakes. Teasers, TV spots, leaked information on the internet, newspaper ads, and billboards, posters, internet ads, action figures, etc. All the above will easily convince me to buy a ten dollar ticket out of my hard earn money to go see a movie that might be 90 minutes of disappointment or boredom. I feel that the marketing suckered me into watching some of these remakes kind of like how I was suckered into taking those God awful surveys in the theater lobby from third parties. (You know who you are!).

I feel another reason why we see these types of movies is how special effects have come a long way in our time. We get curious on how today's technology can improve a film that we grew up on. I will save you the time on your curiosity. It doesn't improve the original. It decrease the quality of the movie. Unfortunately, most of the film's budget goes towards all their flashy lights, high definition equipment, and fancy props. When it should go towards better script writers or to people who can actually make a move for an audience to like.

I am not against remakes. I am 100% behind these movies if they are worth making. If they aren't please don't touch them. Movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Dawn of the Dead, The Crazies, Halloween, and Bloody Valentine I felt were worth making and they were pretty damn good, top of the line movies. The most anticipated movies for me to watch were Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm St, Wolfman, and The Amityville Horror movie. These movies produced good box office results, but weren't the best of movies because the wrong people had to approach the project. I am looking forward to watching the remake of Child's play and Hellraiser. I will not be watching them with high hopes. Hopefully, one day these films will be like Ang Lee's Hulk, wipe out as if they never happened and rebooted to something awesome like Louis Leterrier's Hulk movie (maybe Edward Norton will star in one of them just for shits and giggles).

below, I listed the top grossing remake film of all time. I also listed my top five favorite horror movies of all time and their rank and other films I also found quite entertaining and their ranks. The internet source is from Box office Mojo ( http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=horrorremake.htm). Your comments are greatly appreciated.


The all time top horror remake