It's Deja Vu All Over Again

It's no secret that horror remakes (or any remakes at all) rarely deliver the goods. Fan outrage, CGI weariness, and confusing retconning have ruined more than one classic slasher flick, to say nothing of all the lovably cheesy haunted house films of the 50s and 60s. We could blame the studio system for this, but in reality, the reason these remakes get made lies with us. Maybe not the core horror community, but certainly the movie-going public at large.

There are three solid reasons why horror remakes don't live up to the original. The first is that it's near-impossible to make the hardcore fans happy. Even if the new film was good, it would get torn apart because the director who created the story wasn't involved. We all know that the Star Wars prequels were gigantic wastes of celluloid, but prior to the release of The Phantom Menace, anticipation was huge. Do you think the fanboys would have been anywhere close to that excited if Lucas wasn't at the helm? A good remake is a rare and wonderful thing, but there will always be enough nerds around to convince us that it's not as good as the first one. And they're almost always right.