The Soap Box: In Defense of Horror Remakes

If the first sunset gave birth to our first fear of darkness, certainly a few hundred millennia of midnights has done little to set our minds at ease. There are no fewer dangers in the shadows of the 21^st century than there were in the lightless landscapes of a pre-historic world - real or imaginary, natural or supernatural - and for all its sameness, for all its persistent inevitability, we tremble in the daily dark, awaiting the axe, anticipating the touch.

In some sense, each new evening is a remake of the one before, proof that repetition, taken by itself, is hardly a deterrent to horror...That any given fear, experienced over and over, doesn't dilute its potential to terrify...

That what scares us, scares us forever...

Horror, as a genre, has always been most successful when addressing either new, emerging concerns or older, more deeply rooted beliefs.  If Bram Stoker's Dracula attempted to channel the fears of Plague-era readers, or if Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a metaphor for the dangers of 19^th century science, then any haunted house tale is merely a testament to our timeless fear of death, our universal uncertainty of the afterlife. However, any icon, once unleashed, has to evolve alongside our fears in order to remain relevant. Dracula must appear more modern, more lustful - even if the occasional consequence is Euro-trash douchebaggery - while Frankenstein must transform into something bigger, stronger, faster.

In a word, they must remake themselves.

So often, writers and critics will rail against the practice of horror remakes as if the tradition hasn't already been around for decades, if not centuries.  As if one vampire film weren't ostensibly a remake of another. As if there were, beyond the simple aesthetics, any significant difference between two masked serial killers. The individual fears being addressed are the same, yet it's the execution that allows Jason Voorhees to stand apart from Michael Meyers. The same then should be true of remakes - that the value (or offense) of a redux isn't in whether some notable horror property gets remade, but rather how...

I've no immediate objection to the business mandate set forth by Platinum Dunes or any Hollywood producer in the remake business. In fact, how many times, growing up as a rabid, ravenous fan of Jason and Freddy, of the wholly assembled Monster Squad, did I think to myself how fascinating it would be to have the opportunity to re-explore those worlds, paying homage to what made them great while providing a significantly different perspective on their creation?

In theory, there is a version of the Nightmare on Elm St. remake that is every bit as effective as the original film; there is a version of Rosemary's Baby that would please fans of Polanski's masterpiece; there is a version of The Birds that would thrill Hitchcock enthusiasts.

There is a perfect version of every possibility that takes no more effort and demands no greater cost so long as you apply filmmakers with gravitas and vision. The writer of a horror film should be someone with more than just a talent for scripting a good beheading, and the director should be concerned with more than just making it look good. Certainly, Gore Verbinski's interpretation of The Ring proved that a smartly conceived, well-executed remake can compliment, if not surpass, the original film, all of which proves that the argument to producers shouldn't be not to remake the films in the first place, but to stop being so f*@king careless with the characters we love.

While a title alone can sometimes be sufficient to draw audiences into theaters, to draw them back again...and again...and eventually to their local retail outlets...involves substance. Even a cursory look at the scripts to some of the more recent remakes shows a staggering lack of creativity, wafer-thin characters and either insufficient or over-abundant respect for the original material. The general rule should be: Give them the familiar, differently. That's what made Platinum Dunes' Friday the 13^th remake so incredibly effective even if the oft-criticized kills were somewhat lackluster - a new Jason, terrorizing new characters, in a familiar setting with a slightly twisted story.  Part remake, part mash-up, the movie worked for that it intended to be...

The problem with remakes is the problem with horror in general, a lack of commitment to the material itself - a belief that characters and story are secondary to a well-cut trailer and a moderately successful opening weekend. But a remake done well can be a great thing - a fun, nostalgic and terrifying experience - keeping our icons alive for new generations, offering fresh insights and perspectives, vivisecting old fears to find new scares growing in their guts. Good is good, after all, and no remake, however bad, can sneak into your house and remove the original from your DVD collection.

Unless, of course, it does so under the cover of darkness...