The Worst Movie Remakes Of All Time

Remaking a classic film is never easy. You have to appeal to fans of the original while impressing a new generation of critics and attracting new fans at the same

time

. It's a difficult balancing act...and it's easy to get it wrong. In the 1971 British crime film Get Carter, London gangster Jack Carter returns to his hometown after the death of his brother. When he suspects a crime, he decides to dig deeper and find out who was really responsible. As he delves deeper into the city's organized crime world, tensions rise and violent conflict ensues. The 2000 remake of Get Carter, starring Sylvester Stallone, wasn't exactly a bright spot in the actor's career.

This

time

, the story took place in the United States, with Carter, a bully living in Las Vegas, who returns to his home in Seattle after the death of his brother. But it wasn't the change of setting that disappointed critics, but the fact that the plot was formulaic and contrived compared to the original, even though it was supposed to be a suspenseful mystery. Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman wrote: "Carter, heading to Seattle to hunt down his brother's killer, may have entered a labyrinth of evil, but his response is as hollow as it is monolithic." 1990's Total Recall follows Douglas Quaid, a construction worker who begins to have disturbing dreams about life on Mars.

In the end he is implanted with a memory chip that gives him a virtual reality experience working as a secret agent on the planet. But as the film progresses, the line between reality and fiction becomes blurred, and Quaid struggles to discover who he really is and what he has really done on Mars. "If it's not me, who the hell am I?" This is where the 2012 remake went completely wrong: It's not even set on Mars. Instead, it takes place in a future, dystopian Earth. And sure, that concept might have worked well anyway, but this version of Total Recall also failed in almost every other way. "If it's not me, who the hell am I?" According to some critics, the action sequences were the only positive point of the film.

Joseph Walsh of CineVue wrote: "While the action has grandiose scope and certainly high production values, it somehow lacks any tangible sense of tension or drama." In John Carpenter's 1980 cult classic The Fog, a mysterious fog covers a California town, bringing with it the ghosts of dead sailors who quickly take to terrorizing the residents. The concept might have been cheesy, but the film's slow build toward its scariest moments kept audiences hooked. It seemed like a

movie

that could have also benefited from a remake with updated special effects. Unfortunately, the 2005 remake managed to completely ruin it. Although Carpenter produced the remake himself, it simply didn't strike a chord with critics.

The scares weren't scary and the ghosts didn't seem threatening or intimidating in any way. And if a horror

movie

isn't really scary, it usually ends up boring and confusing, which is exactly what happened here. Writing for ScreenCrush, critic Matt Singer suggested that it might be one of the

worst

films ever made. He wrote: "This movie isn't even that foggy! The clouds for two-thirds of this movie are so sparse they wouldn't even warrant a push notification from the weather app on your phone." The Stepfather is a 1987 slasher about a murderer who kills his family, changes his identity, and then marries another family so he can repeat the process.

His new stepdaughter soon becomes suspicious of him and sets out to prove his identity and save his family. The film is situated halfway between horror, police thriller and black comedy, and the plot is interesting enough to bring the audience to a truly satisfying conclusion. But the 2009 remake of The Stepfather failed to do the same. The palpable tension of the original just isn't there, the plot holes are distracting, and the film's climax ties everything together too neatly with a predictable series of events leading up to the final moments. For the AV Club, Scott Tobias wrote, "Even by the standards of horror

remakes

, The Stepfather sets the bar for pointlessness." Originally released in 1956, Around the World in 80 Days is an epic adventure based on Jules Verne's novel of the same name that went on to win five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

The plot is quite simple: Phileas Fogg bets that he can circumnavigate the world in just eighty days, and then sets off on a race around the world. A story like this may seem timeless, but the 2004 remake didn't take audiences on the same journey as the original. Instead, it barely followed the plot of Verne's novel, and ended up being nominated for

worst

remake at the Razzies. It also won Most Nasty Remake at The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards. Marty Mapes summed it up for Movie Habit when he wrote: "Around the World in 80 Days is the kind of movie you should see if you're looking for an excuse to sit in an air-conditioned theater for two hours, and I've seen all the good movies. " Nicolas Cage has a strong track record of starring in films that are a bit disappointing to critics, and Bangkok Dangerous definitely falls into that category.

The original Bangkok Dangerous is a Thai crime thriller about Kong, a gunman who can't hear or speak. He works as a hitman, struggles to find the true meaning of life, and ultimately meets a tragic end. It is an intense film, full of action and emotion. Cage's version, however, could not be compared to the original even though it was made by the same directors. In the 2008 remake of Bangkok Dangerous, several key details are changed. Cage plays the protagonist, Joe, who is neither deaf nor mute. The cinematography is visually confusing at times, and the idea of ​​a hitman eventually regaining consciousness seems a bit cliché.

As Scott Nash commented in a Three Movie Buffs review: "The burnt killer gimmick is old and tired." The 1959 historical drama Ben-Hur is an undisputed classic. Interestingly, this version of Ben-Hur was actually a remake, and definitely improved on the original 1925 silent film, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. On the one hand, it features the most iconic car race in Hollywood. It was hard to see how a remake could have surpassed the 1959 version, but that didn't stop Paramount from trying. What could have been a stunning historical epic turned out to be a box office failure. The aesthetics were degraded by messy editing and lackluster CGI, and aside from a few exciting action scenes, little about the film stood out.

Alison Rowat wrote in The Herald: "A thrill ride in parts, as long as you can forgive the silliness, the stiff dialogue and the long running time." 1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers may not seem as clever or pretty as today's horror movies, but it's still considered a classic. In this sci-fi horror film, alien spores grow into seed pods that can produce physical replacements for human beings without any hint of human emotions. A critically and commercially successful remake followed in 1978, and another version, titled Body Snatchers, was released in 1993. In 2007, another version of the story was released, this time titled The Invasion.

Instead of creating a direct remake, the writers attempted to take it in a different direction and make the story more contemporary and political. The result? A film that was widely criticized for an inconsistent narrative, whose deeper themes were subsequently lost in the shuffle. For Slate, Dana Stevens wrote: "It falls far short of an effective sci-fi thriller, not to mention the clever political allegory it is determined to be." 1953's House of Wax was a 3D horror hit in which a sculptor fills the museum with him killing people and covering their corpses in wax. It was actually a remake of an earlier film, The Wax Museum Mystery from 1933.

Audiences were mostly enthusiastic about this version and it did quite well at the box office. All in all, it's not a bad idea. In 2005, a modern House of Wax was released, but the plot was quite different, preferring to err more on the "raucous teenage killer" side. Now, there's nothing wrong with a cheesy slasher, but compared to the impact of the 1953 version, this retelling was shallow and overly reliant on cheap scares. Of course, this was probably obvious based on casting alone: ​​with Paris Hilton in a supporting role, she was never going to take home an Oscar. As Maitland McDonagh wrote for TV Guide: "It offers some wildly unpleasant gore, but there's no spark left in the run, scream, repeat formula." In the 1991 film Point Break, Keanu Reeves plays an undercover FBI agent who has to investigate and infiltrate a group of bank robbers who are also surfers.

But while Point Break's premise may have seemed clunky, it all managed to come together to make a frankly ridiculous but genuinely entertaining film. So how can you recapture the magic of a movie with an unexpected cult following? Well, if the 2015 movie remake is any indication... you can't. 2015's Point Break features some visually impressive action scenes, but other than that, it completely fails. In a review for Times of India, Reagan Gavin Rasquinha summed up the film's fatal flaw: "Point Break appears as a series of admittedly astonishing action sequences and sporting feats, with the rest of the film haphazardly built around them." .

The 1985 zombie film Day of the Dead follows a group of scientists and soldiers living in a bunker after a zombie invasion. Several zombies are kept captive for research purposes; an agreement that obviously goes very wrong. Soon, a conflict breaks out that threatens the very survival of the human race. Now, Day of the Dead is obviously a pretty gory movie, but as with all of George Romero's zombie movies, it balances its violence with a genuinely thoughtful critique of society. However, the 2008 remake abandons any attempt to bring a real message to the audience in favor of blood and guts.

There's no real commentary on the state of humanity, the special effects look cheap, and the zombies are so intelligent and agile that they operate less like zombies and more like evil humans with superpowers. In an article for the Pittsburgh City Paper, Jordan Snowden said, "Like quarantined infected zombie areas, I would put this movie in a box and leave it there forever." Adam Sandler's 2002 remake of Frank Capra's 1936 film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town isn't exactly among his best works. In the original, Longfellow Deeds makes a living juggling odd jobs during the Great Depression, until he suddenly inherits $20 million from his late uncle.

He soon falls in love with Louise "Babe" Bennett and an unexpected love story develops. The plot of 2002's Mr. Deeds is similar, but the jokes are irritating, the characters are bland and irritating, and the entire narrative is dumbed down to the point that it's practically insulting to the audience and Capra's memory. In a review for the Seattle Times, Moira Macdonald wrote: "Mr. Deeds is supposed to be a celebration of the goodness of ordinary people... but in reality it's nothing more than a cash cow for filmmakers and a star vehicle." meaningless for Sandler." "The Heartbreak Kid, from 1972, is a different kind of romantic comedy.

The self-absorbed Lenny is married to the clingy Lila and, on their honeymoon, abandons her to pursue a manipulative college girl named Kelly. He impulsively divorces Lila. and proposes to Kelly, but it becomes clear that her only reason for marrying him is to rebel against her father. At their wedding, Lenny ends up being ignored by almost everyone, including the bride, and this dark comedy ends on a rather depressing note. The 2007 remake of The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller, did little to push the boundaries of the genre. The characters are unlikeable to the point of being practically irredeemable, and all of this fails to differentiate itself from any other film in the genre.

In fact, Rolling Stone called it the worst remake of the year. In a review for eFilmCritic, Peter Sobczynski said, "an ugly, obnoxious, and deeply boring hack" to remake a truly classic horror film is no easy task. the 1998 remake of Psycho made this very clear. It certainly didn't help that the original 1960 Psycho was downright chilling and nearly perfect, so fans weren't begging for a repeat either. "We all get a little angry sometimes." The remake didn't require much artistic license and opted for a shot-for-shot copy of the original. Honestly, it's hard not to wonder why the movie was worth making in the first place if the filmmakers refusedto deviate from the original material.

Everything from the dialogue to the score is almost a carbon copy of the original. Yet somehow they still got it wrong. The film was nominated for a total of three Golden Raspberry Awards and won for worst remake and worst director. Sean Axmaker of Nitrate Online Review wrote: "Even with Hitchcock's shot list... Van Sant can't come up with anything more than a pale tribute to the master, proving that it takes more than a good storyboard to make a movie works." In 2006, the Japanese horror film Kairo was remade for American audiences as Pulse. In Kairo, evil spirits manage to find their way into our world through the Internet, causing a series of strange and horrible events to occur.

The film presents two parallel narratives that show characters dealing with the consequences of this paranormal invasion. In the new version, the single dual narrative approach was removed. The premise was similar enough, but everything that made the original a cult favorite in Japan was missing. The film relies on grotesque images to get its points across, but those cheap thrills aren't enough for a film that fails to delve deeper into any meaningful topic. Writing for the Austin Chronicle, critic Mark Savlov said, "Curiously dull Americanization of one of the best examples of subtle, moody J-horror out there." The 1980 film Fame follows a group of high school students after they are accepted into the prestigious High School of Performing Arts in New York City.

As they study their respective crafts, they face difficult obstacles in the classroom, on stage, and in their personal lives. There are moments that veer toward melodrama, but overall, the characters are relatable and sympathetic, and the musical numbers were a hit. But the 2009 remake of Fame just doesn't create the same atmosphere. It's too clever and polished, as if it were meant to be an after-school special rather than a movie about authentic, complex, ambitious characters. It also lacks the gritty edge of the original, and instead seems to take cues from High School Musical and Glee. Critic Roger Ebert gave the film two stars and wrote: "The new Fame is a sad reflection of the new Hollywood, where the material is sanitized and simplified for a hypothetical teen market that is too sophisticated for it." The 1973 British horror film The Wicker Man follows devout Christian police sergeant Neil Howie as he investigates an isolated island cult.

He travels to the island of Summerisle to find a missing young woman, Rowan Morrison, who believes she has been brought to the island based on the contents of an anonymous letter. Howie worries that he is intended to be a human sacrifice for the cult, but what they have planned for Howie is even more terrifying. The 2006 remake of The Wicker Man directed by Nicolas Cage couldn't help but fail to live up to the creepy expectations set by the original. Moments that were intended to be heartbreaking are instead so absurd that they seem genuinely hilarious, and the haunting atmosphere of the original film is completely missing. “Not the bees.

Not the bees ah. my eyes, my eyes! When a horror film feels more like a poorly conceived comedy, it's hard to walk away without feeling like everyone involved was phoning it in. The 2008 American remake of the Japanese film One Missed Call has the distinction of being one of the few films to score a whopping zero percent on the Tomatometer. The original One Missed Call wasn't exactly a classic, but this only meant that there was a real opportunity for the remake to eclipse the original. And yet it failed completely. One Missed Call simply wasn't scary enough for critics, but that lack of fear factor isn't the film's real problem.

No, the real problem is that it's unforgivably boring. As Common Sense Media wrote in its review: "One Missed Call suffers from predictable characters, overused horror genre conventions, and a plot that never makes sense." The 1939 comedy film The Women featured an all-female cast, and while one of the film's main themes is the characters' relationships with men, no men are seen throughout the film. With the current push for greater female representation in movies, you'd think that remaking The Women would present a huge opportunity for Hollywood. Unfortunately, the 2008 remake left a lot to be desired. It wasn't as witty or charming as the original, and the cast's talent was largely wasted.

Comparing the film to the 1939 version, critic Linda Barnard wrote for The Star: "What was then snappy dialogue of meowing ladies now wavers limply, lost in translation from the old world to the new." Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, more Looper videos about your favorite movies will be coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and press the bell so you don't miss a single one.