Whats your favourite remake

[ilnino]

In recent years with there actually being a few decent remakes and a few old classic remakes.. I think at times its fair to say remakes aren't a bad thing.. Elm st aside

I loved the Maniac remake and its one I will watch as a double bill with the original some night.. Ive a few others worth mentioning but I'll see if this conversation goes anywhere first

[Stuart]

I was disappointed with Maniac and prefer the original. I kept thinking “Peep Show Peep Show” which put an inappropriate grin on my face throughout.

There have been a few remakes I enjoyed to greater or lesser degrees:

Piranha (fun and gory as hell)
Evil Dead (OK but took itself too seriously)
Hills Have Eyes (but not the sequel)
Dawn of the Dead (better than the original? Discuss)
Night of the Living Dead (not the 3D one)

While it could have been better, I quite liked the del Toro/Hopkins Wolf Man. So I guess that rips away any remaining shred of credibility I may have had...

[ilnino]

Strange that I never thought of Peep show while watching it, now that I think about it its so obvious. I prefer the original but really liked what the did with the remake.
Piranha (I agree)
Evil dead (haven't seen yet)
hills have eyes (was good)
Dawn of the dead (interesting, ive just filled in a few holes in my Romero collection so am planning a rewatch of the series. I'll get back to you)
Night of the living dead (forgot to add that into my rewatch with the others, will do now)

While im here
Fright Night (I didn't like it at all, didn't have the fun of the original)
Fri 13th (its fine, I don't mind it.. first 20mins or so was strong if I remember right)
chainsaw massacre (first time round.. originally hated it but over time its grown on me as one of the better remakes imo.. the more recent remake/sequel thing I was kinda into it at the cinema,though id had a few drinks. Ive not watched it since but feel like I wont enjoy it as much)
Elm st (we all know how bad this is.. theres some nice ideas in there but its ultimately horrible)

[Zeus]

SPOILERS

Maniac was great, but I've never seen the original, so I can't really comment on its accuracy or, you know, reverence for the original. But I thought it was this weirdly fresh take on what is, on the page, a traditional serial killer story. The whole thing was presentation, and man, did it ever work.

I think one of the main problems with reboots is when they get *too* reverential. Nightmare on Elm St. brought maybe two ideas to the table (mini-naps and Freddy's possible innocence), and did pretty much nothing with either cool concept, because it was so busy trying to *be* an Elm St. movie. Of course, that's not something it ever COULD have been. So it might as well have aimed for the stars and risked something new.

Fright Night is actually one of my favorites. I grew up loving the original, so I wasn't exactly looking forward to their take on the "tense dinner sequence." Imagine my surprise when the kid's able to convince his mom, hey, don't let that guy in, and the movie veers off in this whole weird area seemingly inspired by Children of Man. I thought it was pretty fantastic.

Evil Dead works for me because of several sly alterations to the plot. SPOILERS ahoy!

The movie seemed to be about backwoods demons, rather than Candarian demons, and for me, that excuses all the "inaccuracies" (the Deadites are more interested in hurting *themselves* than others, for instance.) To me, Evil Dead was a case of similar incidents happening at another cabin. This was a different book, a different breed of demon, so it made sense that nothing was the same. If they had tried to make a 1:1 recreation of Evil Dead, it would have been a total failure, for the same reasons Gus Van Sant's Psycho failed. No one needs a *recreation* anymore than we need a colorized Citizen Kane. It's better that they made a movie which complements Evil Dead, rather than tries to replace or recreate it.

I also liked The Thing, though I think it's pretty much a prequel. Yeah, a lot of the same stuff happened. But a lot of the same stuff happened in every Halloween movie, they weren't "remakes" until Rob Zombie came in.

[ilnino]

Maybe I need to give the Fright Night remake another look

[bhorrormovie]

I have never seen the original Maniac but I really liked the remake.
Here are some remakes I have enjoyed
The Women in Black (sort of a remake)
Nosferatu the Vampyre
The Blob
The Fly
The worst remake in my mind is Night of the Demons.
Movies that could use a remake in my mind: Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, Ghost Story and Critters.
Maybe The Beyond?

[ilnino]

Speaking of Fright Night, I watched about half of Fright Night 2... the remake of the remake??
I was really took out of it by the fact its in name a sequel to the 2011 movie yet has no connection to the other one in story or actors. Yet it used all the same character names. So again we had Charlie Brewster, Evil Ed, Amy and a woman who you find out is indeed Gerri Dandridge.
For the most part its just a rehash of what the other two first movies did only they do it all in Romania on a school trip..
Ive not finished it so couldn't give a fair summary but I will say its been fine so far, nothing special and as mentioned already using the same character name in a similar situation again was distracting for me.

[vamphunterdlover]

I liked the mummy movie, thought the second one was ok but not as good as the first, but HATED the third mummy movie. (even though Jet li is an awesome mummy villain, that was the only good thing of the third one to me). Anybody else think there should be a reboot of Creature of the black lagoon or the invisible man? (hollow man doesn't count to me as a reboot in my opinion.)

[ilnino]

with the talk of bringing back the Hammer classic monsters id say all these will show up at some point if that works out.

I finally got round to Evil Dead (2013).. enjoyed it quite a bit, pretty solid remake that can stand on its own, plenty of nods to the original, even a few that could place it as a sequel.. plenty of good gore effects and a shit load of blood.
I will say however and I don't see this as a spoiler due to where and what it is but I was slightly disappointed with the cameo, as id heard it happened at the end of movie and I had maybe in my head expected something more.. still id fun with it and will definitely give it a rewatch at some point.

[hallowholic]

You know what? A lot of people didn't enjoy it, but for me...I thought the Black Christmas remake was incredible. Incredible as a separate entity from the original.

I also really enjoyed the House on Haunted Hill remake. (Fun fact, William Castle's daughter was a producer on this one, as well as 13 Ghosts.)