The 10 Worst Horror Remakes in Film History

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures Published Aug 27, 2026, 7:21 AM EDT A New York native, Joe graduated from an avant-garde theater school upstate, where he was obsessed with sketch comedy. There, he and his lunatic friends founded The Sketchies — which still lives on at Skidmore College today. Living in New York City, a screenwriter friend of his then taught him how to write for film. This awakened a new passion in Joe. Since then his scripts have garnered over 200 festival selections, nominations, and wins all over the globe (including the BlueCat Best Feature award). Several of his screenplays have been made into feature films — some of them not that bad! Overall, he loves to create unique, hilarious, touching, and bizarre stories. Sign in to your Collider account Ah yes, the oft-maligned horror remake. What better way to make a boat-load of cash than with the “reimagining” of a classic. Well, apparently there are a few superlative ways to spend money than by tarnishing the good name of an iconic film with a sub-par (at best) remake. Alas, the non-hits keep coming and coming, further sullying the art of horror cinema with one trash-fest after the next. Here are the absolute worst horror remakes in the grand history of film. Some of these terrible train wrecks seek to emulate the originals in a mostly pathetic manner, like Cabin Fever, whereas others in this collection attempt to put an innovative spin on the material (and flagrantly failed), such as War of the Worlds. No matter how they were conceived, these unwatchable films should’ve ended up on the cutting/slashing room floor. Now, lower the lights and your expectations even further, here are the worst, least scary horror remakes ever re-born. 10 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' (2010) Image via Warner Bros. Obviously, any A Nightmare on Elm Street film without Robert Englund in the role that he originated, Freddy Krueger, is already at a huge disadvantage. Englund’s signature mixture of snark and terror is truly any filmmaker’s dream (or in this case, nightmare). So, when the 2010 update of Nightmare was announced, even with skilled actor Jackie Earle Haley as the Freddy character, everyone was certain the film would stink to low hell. Unfortunately, everyone was right. The story is basically the same as in the original; Freddy is dealt a horrible death by the maligned parents of Springwood, and so he comes back to haunt their kids’ dreams (and slice ‘em up). The main issue here is that, despite Haley’s best efforts, Freddy just isn’t funny/scary (and the supporting cast of teens is mostly made up of pretty faces without a ton of substance). Heather Langenkamp, the first Nancy Thompson, had a much better arc, from sweet innocent to cunning manipulator (in the best way) — as opposed to Rooney Mara’s bored, brooding Nancy. Also, the choice to make Freddy a sex pervert who preyed on and molested children was completely unnecessary and very distasteful. Overall, this movie is a nightmare…but for all the wrong reasons. 9 'Black Christmas' (2006) Image via Dimension Films While it’s a bit of a stretch to call the original Black Christmas a true horror “classic,” it’s still a very fun film (featuring one of the first “final girls” in movie history, Olivia Hussey as Jess Bradford), that helped define the slasher genre in general. Now, Glen Morgan’s insipid remake, which attempts to follow roughly the same plot, is such a boring, flat, piece of coal of a film, that it makes one long for Arbor or Flag Day. One of the main problems with this movie is that it saps out all the dark humor of the first film, wasting the comedic talents of Lacey Chabert (still trying to make “fetch” happen) as Dana, and Michelle Trachtenberg (hello, EuroTrip, anyone?) as Melissa. The other issue is that the suspense and methodical pacing of the original is traded in for excessively loud jump scares and scenes of gratuitous torture and grisly (and poorly executed) gore. The story is about a group of sorority girls who are stalked on Christmas by a madman in a Santa outfit. Seems hard to get this one wrong, but, by all frosty accounts, this film should be kept on the shelf for a hearty regifting. 8 'Day of the Dead' (2008) Image via Millennium Films George Romero’s quintessential zombie flicks have been remade and reimagined in a variety of ways. Some, like the 2022 film Dawn of the Dead, hit the mark, adding a new perspective to the groundbreaking source material. Most, however, miss the target entirely. None of the re-dos, though, are as inane and cinematically inept as Steve Miner’s Day of the Dead. Opting for a macro scale, and zombies that move quickly (thanks 28 Days Later, for providing filmmakers with this motif, ripped off here in brazenly awful fashion), this movie conveys just about everything that Romero’s work didn’t. The brainless tale begins with a viral (zombie) outbreak in a small Colorado town. Mena Suvari leads the charge to defeat the infected as Corporal Sarah Bowman, with another military man, Ving Rhames as Captain Rhodes, helping out with the speedy zombie smashing. Pervasive progenitor Nick Cannon plays Private Salazar, for some “comic” relief. The original Day featured the main crew holed up in a bunker, which created a claustrophobic, anxiety-laced atmosphere (also one that was, y’know, scary). The mostly wide open, shoot-‘em-up setting of the Day remake offers little in the way of tension. The messaging, of course, was completely lost in the remake as well; Romero illustrated how class affects people and how humans can destroy themselves with deep-seated prejudices. Here, Miner simply shows that people are violent and selfish — and that sometimes, zombies still have a heart. Not that insightful, and not that good. 7 'One Missed Call' (2008) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures Director Eric Valette was not alone in the desperate quest of the early 2000s to cash in on the J-horror remake cash cow. With the widespread success of The Ring and The Grudge reverberating throughout Hollywood, many ambitious producers set out to acquire the rights of creepy and very well-made Japanese tech-horror films. This, of course, resulted in quite a few misses, with none as glaring as One Missed Call. Yes, actors in this film, you all would’ve been better off just letting this one go to voicemail. The tale unfolds with a bunch of people getting calls on their (pre-smartphone) cells, from their own number. They…get ready…don’t answer the calls. Welp, doesn’t matter. They’re now cursed to die, with details left in the messages of exactly how they will perish. College student Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon) receives just such a call, but she’s not going down without a fight. With the help of detective Jack Andrews (Edward Burns — what in the name of god are you doing in this movie?), Beth is determined to finally contact her service provider and put an end to this madness. Basically everything that could go wrong here does. Wooden acting, Temu-grade jump scares, cartoonish CGI, and a mishmash of a story all combine for a film with a PG-13 rating and 0% on RT. 6 'The Wicker Man' (2006) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures “No, not the bees! Not the bees!” Okay, yes, director Neil LaBute’s remake of the classic international horror film The Wicker Man did provide the world with one of the most quotable lines in Nicolas Cage’s already robust collection of unforgettable zingers — but aside from that….yeesh, this movie’s about as interesting as a wicker basket filled with prunes. As in the original story (which was filmed in Scotland), a sheriff is sent to a small coastal community to investigate the disappearance of a little girl. This is Edward Malus, played by the illustrious Cage. When he arrives there, he finds a close-knit community filled with somewhat bizarre acolytes of a strange pagan religion (cult). Ultimately, they need a human sacrifice each year to keep the gods of the hearth happy (they love a good immolation). Luckily, Edward is there to fulfill this need. Aside from the aforementioned quote, there isn’t really a single redeemable thing about this movie (for further evidence, there is a scene where Edward suddenly punches a woman directly in the face). All in all, this movie doesn’t hold a wicker candle to the premiere film, as it briefly flickers, then leaves behind a pile of steaming…ash. Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you're not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one. 🏕️Jason 🔪Michael 💤Freddy 🎈Pennywise 🪆Chucky TEST YOUR SURVIVAL → 01 Something feels wrong. You can't explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty. ALeave immediately. I don't need to understand a threat to respect it. BStay quiet and observe. If I can see it, I can understand it. If I can understand it, I can avoid it. CStay awake. Whatever this is, I am not going to sleep until I feel safe again. DConfront it directly. Fear grows in the dark — I'd rather know what I'm dealing with. ECheck everything, trust nothing. The threat might be closer than I think — and smaller. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply. ASomewhere remote — a cabin, a campsite, off the grid and away from people. BA quiet suburban neighbourhood where nothing ever happens. Except tonight. CIn my own head — the most dangerous place of all, depending on what's already in there. DWherever children are — because something about this place attracts the worst things. ESomewhere ordinary — a house, a toy store, a place where the last thing you'd expect is a threat. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn't account for. What's yours? APhysical fitness — I can run, I can swim, I can outlast something that relies on brute persistence. BSpatial awareness — I always know the exits, the hiding spots, the fastest route out. CPsychological resilience — I've faced my worst fears before. They don't have the same power over me. DEmotional steadiness — I don't panic. Panic is what gets you caught. EScepticism — I don't underestimate threats because of how they look. Size is irrelevant. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it. AThe unstoppable — something that will not stop, cannot be reasoned with, and is always getting closer. BThe invisible — a threat I can feel but can't locate, watching from somewhere I can't see. CThe psychological — something that uses my own mind and memories against me. DThe unknowable — something ancient, shapeless, that feeds on the fear itself. EThe mundane — a threat so ordinary-looking that no one will believe me until it's too late. NEXT QUESTION → 05 You're with a group when things start going wrong. What's your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn't. AThe one who says "we need to leave" first — and means it, even when no one listens. BThe one who stays quiet, watches the others, and figures out the pattern before anyone else does. CThe one who holds the group together when panic sets in — because someone has to. DThe one who asks the questions nobody wants to ask — because ignoring them gets people killed. EThe one who takes the threat seriously when everyone else is laughing it off. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What's the horror movie mistake you're most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not. AGoing back for someone — I know I shouldn't, but I can't leave them behind. BAssuming I'm safe once I've found a hiding spot. That's when it finds me. CFalling asleep when I absolutely cannot afford to. Exhaustion is its own enemy. DLetting my curiosity override my instincts — I always need to understand what I'm dealing with. EDismissing the threat because of how it looks. That's exactly what it wants. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What's your best weapon against something that can't be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it. AThe environment itself — I use the terrain, the water, the geography against it. BPatience — I wait, I watch, and I strike at the one moment it doesn't expect. CLucidity — if I can stay in control of my own mind, it loses its primary weapon. DCourage — facing it directly, refusing to run, taking away the fear it feeds on. EImprovisation — I use whatever's at hand, however unconventional. Creativity over brute force. NEXT QUESTION → 08 It's the final scene. You're the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What's yours? AI kept moving. I never stopped, never hid for too long, never let it corner me. BI figured out the pattern before anyone else did — and I used it against the thing following it. CI stayed awake, stayed lucid, and refused to give it the one thing it needed most. DI stopped being afraid of it. And the moment I did, everything changed. EI took it seriously from the start — and I never once made the mistake of underestimating it. REVEAL MY VILLAIN → Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck. Jason VoorheesJason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit. He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn't strategise, doesn't adapt, doesn't outsmart. He simply pursues. Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge. The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance. You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected. Michael MyersMichael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it's too late for anyone who isn't paying close enough attention. But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound. Michael's power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is. Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had. You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it. Freddy KruegerFreddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised. You are harder to destabilise than most. You've faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven't looked away. The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it. Freddy's greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on. Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here. PennywisePennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it. The Losers Club didn't survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly. You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away. That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise's worst nightmare. It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all. ChuckyChucky's greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it's already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is. You don't have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance. Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone. Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing. Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 5 'Children of the Corn' (2009) Image Via Fox 21 Television Studios How do you take a terrifying classic and make it corny? Just ask director Donald P. Borchers, as his 0% RT rendition of the Stephen King story The Children of the Corn is one of the absolute clunkiest remakes in cinematic history. The first film (and yes, there have been a plenitude of variations on this farm-to-table tale) yielded some of the creepiest children to ever grace the screen. This take on the kernel kids produced a crop of tykes that are far more annoying than they are frightening. The story follows Burt (David Anders) and Vicky (Kandyse McClure) as they take a detour on their countrified road trip and end up stranded in the town of Gatlin, Nebraska. Side note, these characters were played in the original by Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton. Anyway, once they see what’s really going on in this village, where there is nary an adult in sight and the lil’ shuckers worship an omnipotent pastoral presence deemed He Who Walks Behind the Rows, it’s a little too late for them. It seems near impossible to make characters that are named Malachai (Daniel Newman) and Preacher Boy (Robert Gerdisch) unscary, but Borchers somehow managed this daringly dull feat. Some posit that the 2023 version of this story is worse than this movie, but that at least is a prequel, so some creativity went into crafting it (and it's got one scary kid, Eden Edwards, played by Kate Moyer). Better to be He Who Walks out of the Movie Theater Rows on this one. 4 'The Fog' (2005) Image via Sony Pictures Releasing While John Carpenter’s The Fog is widely recognized as an 80s horror classic, it has its fair share of critics who basically tore it apart. Ergo, it seemed that maybe, just maybe, a remake could improve on the source material. Sadly, that was not the case, as director Rupert Wainwright’s rendition is a foggy, soggy mess. The original character of Nick Castle (played by horror legend Tom Atkins) is now pretty boy Tom Welling, and Stevie Wayne (another horror icon, Adrienne Barbeau) is replaced by the comely Selma Blair, to give you an idea of the widespread superficial downgrades. Antonio Bay is an island off the coast of Oregon (not California, as in the original, for some reason…), where on the 100th year anniversary of a watery tragedy, a viscous fog rolls in from the sea and envelopes the shore. Within said fog is a collection of dead sailors who seek revenge against the townsfolk who murked them many years ago and stole their booty. In the first film, the maritime specters are eerie and mostly concealed. In this ridiculous remake, they look flashy and cheesy as Gouda, and their motivation for coming ashore is as convoluted and murky as the floor of the Pacific. The worst offense may be the fog itself, as it’s CGI. In the original, Carpenter used, y’know, fog (there’s even a thing called a “fog machine” you can buy at Spirit Halloween…). 3 'War of the Worlds' (2025) Image via Universal Pictures Ice Cube has been the protagonist of numerous successful films, namely Friday and Boyz N the Hood. Rich Lee’s take on the H.G. Wells classic story War of the Worlds is unfortunately not one of them. While Mr. Cube’s lackluster (and laughable) performance is hardly anything to write home about, the movie as a whole is a tremendous flop, with barely a hint of suspense, mystery, or even entertainment value. The story has been updated from the first iteration, where space creatures descend on earth in lethal spacecrafts with the goal of annihilating humans and taking over the planet, to a more modern slant where the aliens are also hungry for…data (how very Silicon Valley of them). This is the kind of film that absolutely no one asked for. It then has the audacity to be so offensively mediocre in its execution that fans of the classic original (or even the somewhat tepid Tom Cruise version of 2005) are left irked — and the young folk who never heard of this story now associate it with this derivative drivel. The only war here is the attack on the audience’s intelligence. 2 'Cabin Fever' (2016) Image via IFC Midnight Torture-porn innovator Eli Roth’s breakout film, the first Cabin Fever, was a success in every sense. It was gory, gritty, hilarious, and entertaining throughout. The 2016 remake was going to have to do something different in terms of tone, visuals, and message if it was going to even be considered decent. It. Did. Not. Travis Zariwny’s virulent Cabin Fever is a right old mess (0% critic score on RT, 13% among fans). It copies everything from the original, but the copy feels like the fiftieth iteration of a Xerox. It’s grainy, unclear, and lame. The kids, this time led by Samuel Davis as Paul (the Rider Strong role), head to the cabin for some promiscuous frivolity, and then become infected with the flesh-eating virus… Quarantining never felt so dull. Without any of the bite of the original, the only infectious thing this movie instills is actual cabin fever: boredom. 1 'Psycho' (1998) Image via Universal Pictures This abomination is a remake in the literal sense of the term: almost every shot is an exact copy of the Alfred Hitchcock takes, kooky angles and all. Except…bad. Very, very bad. Provocateur auteur filmmaker Gus Van Sant has made a nice crop of groundbreaking (if sometimes quite controversial) movies…so what exactly was he thinking when he decided to shoot this dollar store knock-off of one the greatest films of all time? This head-scratcher replaces every nuanced take with a carbon copy, except in blazing color and bold awfulness. One almost feels bad for poor, wildly miscast Vince Vaughn in the legendary Anthony Perkins role of Norman Bates — and even Anne Heche in the Janet Leigh part of Marion Crane. Both actors give it their all…it’s just that, in these particular, iconic parts, they are a mere shadow of their predecessors. Here Norman Bates is lacking charm, sensitivity, and the skin-crawling creepiness that helped to make the original one of cinema’s finest additions (and possibly, the greatest horror movie ever produced). Destined to fail, this weird experiment would have been better suited as an exercise in film school: “Here is how you make a classic” — not, take a classic and copy it and then release it internationally and hope to make money…um, wait, not money, “art.” Overall, everyone involved with this confounding rubbish is certifiably psychotic. So there’s that, at least. Psycho Release Date December 4, 1998 Runtime 105 Minutes