Remakes - Has the horror genre reached a dead end?
 

With the amount of classic horror remakes being released this year I was wondering if the horror genre has reached a dead end?

I am a big fan of the classic horror films and feel the latest selection of 'shock' horror like Hostel is just tainting a great genre with its purpose more aimed towards shocking the audience than actually trying to scare them.

With the likes of The Fog, Dawn of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes as well as a number of great Asian horrors already remade and the Wicker Man, When a Stranger Calls and Night of the Living Dead 3D on the horizon has the genre reached a lull even though there is a vast amount of horror films out?

How do you guys feel about the amount of classic remakes on their way? Will the remakes taint your love for the originals?

Remakes suck....

Now, now. :D Not all remakes suck.

The Thing is a good remake. :)

I didn't like the original or the new one, so I can't really say that it was good or bad.

All of the remakes I've seen, sucked.

this is not a hard and fast rule, but it's how I generally feel about remakes--there are exceptions, in other words--

If a movie is good in the first place, don't remake it. If you do, it's generally not for any good reason ( hey! let's make it in color, add cell phones to it so younger audiences will watch it, update the effects, etc.). King Kong, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Cape Fear, Psycho, and other good movies fall into this category. Remakes were unnecessary I feel.

If a movie is bad to start out with (GAMMERA THE INVINCIBLE), then hells yes, remake it, and do a good job at it. Make it everything the original film wasn't.

I wouldn't say it has reached a dead end, there is just more shit to wade through.

You could say there has always been dross in this genre (in every genre), but the remakes are particularly offensive to purists and if you add the post-modernist movement on top of that...

:eek:

Do your research and dig deep, and there's still plenty of great shockers to be found from all corners of the globe.

:cool:

Remakes do appear to serve a purpose for quite a few people. With me being over 30 I generally like the originals of Texas Chainsaw, Dawn of the Dead and Hills Have Eyes but several people I know who are teenagers or in their early 20's think these films are a bit dated and naff and really like the remakes.
I can see their point in a way but personally disagree. When I first watched most of these films it was on a tenth genearation copy, bad sound and sometimes nearly impossible to see. Nowadays this seems riduculous with advances with such things as DVD, but at the time it was the only way to see a lot of these films as they were banned over here in the UK, but apart from knowing you were watching something that wasn't generally available you could tell there was something damn good about the films. Now you can pick them up in the high street and have surround sound, audio comentries and all the other extras they feel are necessary to put on any old film nowadays. ( I feel I am slightly straying away from the point here and rambling:confused: , so I'll try to get back to my point.)
Yes some of the old films do not have the best special effects or any actors that made it big but that have a unique quality to them. Most of the classic old films were made on a shoestring budget(compared to their mainsteam counterparts) but were made by people who were passinate about what they were doing and I feel this comes across in the final film.
There is also a genration of people now who have not seen the original film and with the remakes coming out it does get some of them to find the original andf watch them too.
So I feel remakes do have a place but at the moment it does appear that is the only thing major films companies are interested in at the moment and don't what to make something new. I'm sure the trend will pass, horror will step back from the mainstream again and hopefully some good films will start to appear again.

Oh no doubt about that, there is indeed future classics to be found away from the obvious cinema releases, it's just a shame they don't get seen by mainstream audiences as they may not find an audience. I am waiting for FEAST to hit the cinemas, by far the best thing to come out of Project Greenlight.

Do the crap remakes just make the originals better? Or taint them? The Jaws sequels have not tainted the original, yet the likes of Halloween seem to have. Obviously remakes and sequels are different but you take my meaning hopefully.

I am getting sick and tired of remakes, but I can't complain too much becasue there have been some extremely good remakes. Examples: Hills Have Eyes, The Thing, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, NOTLD, Dawn of the Dead, and House on Hounted Hill were very good remakes and exceeded my expectations. I would still like to see some original ideas shortly though. And yes, I know that Slither is an original idea. Well, for this year, that is.

there's a movie coming out, coming out this year in fact, that will no doubt save the horror genre. It will carry this genre on its back, kicking and screaming, from slump of mediocrity that it's found its self in for the past few years (few notable exceptions notwithstanding). That movie?



Snakes on a Plane