This May brings a remake of early 80s all-timer, Poltergeist, the latest in a long (long) line of cinematic reboots, retreads and more. By now, the ubiquity of reimaginings has rendered their existence less of a transgression than ever, with Poltergeist barely getting anyone up in arms. At the same time, the concept of remakes is an ever-hot point of contention among genre fans. Refusing to indulge in broad dismissaland maybe in a bit of cautious optimismwell spend this May looking at, and defending, some of the better redos in horror cinema.
Hollywood doesnt like risks. Hollywood likes winners, films that will make money, spawn sequels and ensure that everyone currently in charge gets to keep their jobs. Horror has often been a lucrative business, generally inexpensive to produce and, if successful, offering big returns and possible franchises. In the early 2000s, Hollywood had just about finished beating the dead horse of the Scream (1996) carcass, eliciting final money grabs such as Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000) and Valentine (2001). In 1999, the independently produced Blair Witch Project (1999) captured the minds and wallets of audiences all over the world and went on to become one of the most profitable films ever made. Was it possible that all the teens that fell in love with Scream had grown up? Was the witch hiding in the woods of Maryland more terrifying than elaborate gore and special effects? Hollywood was primed to try something new.
Roy Lee was the man with the plan for the next wave of Hollywood horror. While working at a talent management agency, he set a deal with Dreamworks Studios to remake Hideo Nakatas Ring (aka Ringu) which itself was already a remake of a television miniseries. Lee would convince Asian filmmakers and producers that their films would never sell big in the lucrative American market. They were better off letting him represent them and sell the remake rights. Once in the door with the studios, Lee would present the original films as a successful blueprint that, with a few savvy upgrades, would be a box office hit.
Remakes of Asian films have had their place in the North American market for decades. From Fistful of Dollars to Godzilla to The Departed to Oldboy, Asian films have been adapted to varying degrees of critical and financial success. In the early 2000s, Asian horror would no longer be a secret that genre fans hoarded. It was getting made for the masses.
Looking at the Asian Horror remake boom as a whole, it seems like the ultimate cursed object is film itself. What starts as an original idea gets churned through multiple machines until a semi-recognizable or cohesive idea comes out the other end, a mangled shell of its former self. We ache for films that will provide thrills and chills, and Hollywood will keep giving them to us as long as there’s an audience willing to pay. The Asian Horror boom gave way to found footage, which is itself now giving away to something new after oversaturating the market. The overall positive of these films is that they gave the originals a larger audience, and a reference point for genre fans who want to seek out their twisted lineage.
Remakes, whether good or bad, provide a view into another world, another possibility or darkest timeline. While the American remakes of successful and influential Asian films have hit with various skill and success, they showed audiences another world of horror where ghosts, demons and trauma are just below the surface, looking for a way to get out.
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Alexandra West is a freelance horror journalist who lives, works, and survives in Toronto. Her work has appeared in the Toronto Star, Rue Morgue, Post City Magazine and Offscreen Film Journal. In December 2012, West co-founded the Faculty of Horror podcast with fellow writer Andrea Subissati, which explores the analytical side of horror films and the darkest recesses of academia.
Asian Horror Remakes
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Asian Horror Remakes #1
The Ring (2002)
The first remake out of the gate—which helped popularize the term J-Horror—was Gore Verbinski’s The Ring, which stands as an acceptable remake or, to some, a superior film to the original. Both films feature a demonic girl in a well and a video tape that kills you seven days after you’ve seen it. The Hollywood version, set in Seattle, stripped away the original’s sea, brine and goblins talk which figures heavily into the mythology of Ring. Nakata’s original was adapted from Koji Suzuki’s 1991 novel Ring which was adapted into a television movie in 1995.
The Americanized version of The Ring not only lost any distinctly Japanese spirituality, but also upped the jump scares and washed the film in a slight blue-ish tinge, a trend that would haunt Hollywood horror for some time. The Ring felt like a breath of fresh air to horror fans, equal parts terrifying yet restrained, the film a high-concept unrelenting nightmare which played into our emerging fears of technology and intimacy.
Nakata’s Ring cost $1.2 million to produce and grossed $6.6 million in Japan, making it a success that spawned several of its own elaborate sequels. The remake cost around $40 million and made almost $250 million worldwide. This allowed Lee and other veterans of horror to secure the rights to any popular Asian horror films they could.
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Asian Horror Remakes #2
The Grudge (2004)
Sam Rami isn’t known for the subtlety of his films, particularly his horror. Blood, guts and one-liners fill the screen in the Evil Dead series and his return to form, Drag Me to Hell. His production company Ghost House Pictures has produced many mainstream horror films, as well, and after the success of The Ring they, along with Sony Pictures, were eager to get in on the action. Lee showed them Takashi Shimizu’s 2002 film Ju-on: The Grudge. Terrified, but elated, the remake swiftly went into production. They brought Takashi Shimizu on to direct the adapatation, set it in Japan and featured a cast of Americans as characters who were strangers in a strange land, so to speak. The film maintains a semblance of the disjointed narrative of the original and features a girl/woman with black hair covering her face as the main threat.
The Grudge made good on the promise of The Ring. It held on to the threadbare plot in favor of ratcheting up the potential scares. Released in October 2004, it offered the perfect fare for an audience who were primed for something spooky. The film spawned two sequels, one which made it to theaters and the third, which went direct to DVD.
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Asian Horror Remakes #3
Dark Water (2005)
After turning down the role that eventually went to Naomi Watts in The Ring, Jennifer Connelly joined the J-Horror remake boom with Dark Water. The Connelly connection is not the only tie to Verbinski’s 2002 picture. The original Dark Water (aka Honogurai mizu no soko kara) is based on a short story, “Floating Water,” by Ring scribe Koji Suzuki and the film was directed by original Ring helmer Hideo Nakata. That Japanese original was released in 2002 and made a small impact in the European and North American markets after touring several film festivals. Released the same year as the American remake of The Ring, the original Dark Water quickly became another hot property to be snatched up.
Both versions of Dark Water center on a mother who, in the midst of a custody battle, moves with her daughter to a dilapidated apartment. A persistent leak appears and there’s a little girl who favors the Cousin It hairstyle. While the original maintains a creepy, menacing tone, the remake plays heavily on Connelly’s star power. The film centers on the custody battle and uses the ghost as an indication that Connelly’s character might very well be losing her grip on reality. This causes the film to veer into the realm of emotional drama rather than an austere fright-fest.
Dark Water opened in 2005 to middling reviews and box office receipts. The film didn’t capture the imagination of horror fans and was too forgettable as an adult drama for mainstream audiences to seek out. By attempting to merge a ghost story with a Kramer vs Kramer-esque storyline, the film was neither one thing nor the other, which may have led to the next wave of Asian horror remakes to embrace the more overtly horrific elements of their stories.
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Asian Horror Remakes #4
Pulse (2006)
The redo of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s horror masterpiece Kairo aka Pulse (2001) is possibly the most reviled film of the J-Horror remake trend, simply because the original is so beloved. In Kurosawa’s film, the malice is so omnipresent, it’s as if the Overlook Hotel were able to extend itself and reach everyone and anyone. It’s a disjointed, unsettling and highly effective film. The American remake was the first foray in the J-Horror game by the Weinstein Company and attempts to streamline the story in order to give more context to the origins of ghosts in the internet (apparently feardotcom didn’t do a crazy enough job). After a communications project goes horribly awry, the spirits of the malevolent dead roam the internet, sucking out the will to live of all those they encounter and leading to a string of suicides. Co-written by Wes Craven, the film attempts stitch together a plot, but continually loses its way.
Pulse was scheduled to be unleashed on American audiences in March of 2006, but was delayed until August of that year. On top of trying to make sense of the plot, the producers and director amped up the film by exploiting every known horror cliché including bathing every shot in a The Ring-esque blue-ish tinge. The film wasn’t exactly a hit, but spawned two equally head-scratching straight to DVD sequels distributed by Dimension Extreme, proving that the only thing stronger than evil spirits in the internet is the will power of the Weinsteins.
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Asian Horror Remakes #5
The Eye (2008)
The notable thing about this remake of the Pang Brothers’ film, The Eye, a Hong Kong/Singaporean production, is that it brought the concept of A-Horror (Asian Horror) rather than J-Horror into the mainstream. Other than that, the fil, takes the central concept of a blind classical musician receiving a cornea transplant to restore her sight only to find out, she got haunted corneas. Upon its release in 2008 The Eye was derided for having none of the personality and atmosphere of the original. Though the plots are quiet similar, the American film chose to make itself a star vehicle for Jessica Alba. The J/A-Horror trend has offered several prominent, interesting roles for actresses in their 30s and 40s, so it would make sense to try and create a vehicle for an actress who has gained popularity but never carried a successful film. Unfortunately for Alba, she was labelled one of the biggest problems of the film and was even nominated for a Razzie for her work.
The Eye was a resounding disappointment for everyone involved, but major studios still had properties and were determined to make hits out of all of them.
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Asian Horror Remakes #6
One Missed Call (2008)
Released the first weekend of the year to a public still coming down from the Holiday season, One Missed Call was almost a blip on the radar until people saw it. Continuing the trend of evil technology, One Missed Call centers on the premise that the characters will receive a voicemail from their future selves, a recording of their death. The film is mainly notable for its infamous status of being one of the few films to achieve a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
While the American remake lifts heavily from the original’s plot and tone, taking some scenes directly, director Eric Valette is no Takashi Miike. The original One Missed Call was poorly reviewed in its home country and abroad for cannibalizing its own tropes and themes essentially becoming a parody of itself. It’s only saving grace was the inherent dread and oddity that Miike imbued the film with, but Valette failed to capture. The film limps along meekly, ticking off every trope the previous A-Horror films established. With the rights first purchased in 2005, the film officially greenlit in 2006 and shooting completed in 2007, One Missed Call is an interesting case study in the decay of a fad.
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Asian Horror Remakes #7
Shutter (2008)
Hollywood turned their eye to Thailand with the remake of Shutter. Interestingly enough, the film is set in Japan. There, newlyweds Ben (Joshua Jackson) and Jane (Rachel Taylor) head for a working honeymoon and after almost running a woman off the road, Jane begins having strange visions of her. She also seems to be haunting her husband’s photos. As the visions of the woman get closer to Ben and Jane, they race to uncover the mysterious secret of why she would be haunting them. While the two plots of the film are near identical, the main difference is in the original Thai film: the couple are local inhabitants, while Ben and Jane are visitors with Jane bearing the brunt of the culture shock. Mimicking the similar switch in The Grudge, Shutter utilizes Ben and Jane’s status as tourists to bank on the A-Horror aesthetic, while still have semi-recognizable actors fronting the film.
The film was widely derided for utilizing overwrought tropes of the genre. The theme of technology leaching on to and haunting us was becoming its own cliché with the emergence of found footage horror and films like [REC] (2007) and later, Paranormal Activity, beginning to take up the mantle in a more vital and immediate way. Shutter did actually wind up making its money back on an $8 million budget and grossing just under $48 million, but failed to make any kind of meaningful cultural impact. Unless you’re a Dawson’s Creek fan.
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Asian Horror Remakes #8
Mirrors (2008)
Possibly the most exciting remake in the series after its initial boom, Mirrors breaks away from many of the tropes and traps of the previous film with its own interpretation of the original’s story. Adapted from the South Korean film Into the Mirror (2003), Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox were in pre-production when High Tension (2003) director Alexandre Aja came on board. High Tension was a revelation in the early 2000s and helped popularize the emerging subgenre of New French Extremity. Having already helmed The Hills Have Eyes (2006) remake, Aja was intent on making Mirrors his own, bringing on film editor Baxter and childhood friend and frequent collaborator Grégory Levasseur. The team retained the basic premise of haunted mirrors in a department store leading to grizzly deaths, but changed the overall plot to focus on disgraced police detective Ben (Kiefer Sutherland) trying to win back his family by taking on a menial job.
While Mirrors made back its money and did well overseas, it was still a critical failure receiving only a few positive reviews. Viewed now in the lens of the A-Horror boom, Mirrors feels like a win simply because it breaks away from so many trappings of the originals and attempted to stand on its own. Mirrors succeeds by utilizing Aja’s strengths of extreme gore and creepy aesthetics, and is saved by Baxter’s editing, which makes the film a tightly paced horror/adventure while maintaining the threads of multiple plots at the same time.
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Asian Horror Remakes #9
The Uninvited (2009)
Endings and beginnings can often look suspiciously similar. The South Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters is a much beloved horror movie that doesn’t fit in with the formula of The Ring or The Grudge, but does rely heavily on ghosts and folklore. After the success of The Ring in America, Roy Lee brought A Tale of Two Sisters to Dreamworks, who greenlit the remake in 2006. The film was released in January 2009, the same sleepy time of year that marked the release of One Missed Call. Retitled The Uninvited, the film didn’t show any of the visual markings of its predecessors but focussed on the gloomy landscape and isolated house.
The Uninvited tells the story of two sisters coming to terms with their father’s new wife, who may or may not be a sinister force to be reckoned with. Like many of the previous films in this series, the remake failed to inject any life into the story. It was always going to live in the shadow of its much beloved source, and so The Uninvited struggles to come up with much, falling back on atmosphere, plot twists and jump-scares. The Uninvited faired decently at the box office, recouping its costs but ultimately failed to make any lasting impression
