Were you aware that of the total films categorised as horror made in the last ten years, over 85% of them were remakes or re-imaginings of some kind? No? Well that may be because I just completely made that statistic up. It doesn’t sound that unbelievable though does it? And that’s kind of the point I am making here.

Nobody could dispute the profligacy of the remake these days and horror genre films seem to be the main offenders. Of course everybody complains about this and everybody continues to question both why it happens and whether it is a completely pointless practice or whether it has some worth. Perhaps a more pertinent question however is why is it this way? Why do the producers keep sending us these confused regurgitations to stumble their way across our cinema screens? Why do we have to keep witnessing these frail and pitiful attempts at capturing the un-capturable? that ephemeral magic that the greatest movies have such an abundance of and that their remakes are almost always utterly devoid of?

The real issue here is why these films are such a money-spinner for the studios. Again, the reason is simple – it’s because people keep going to see them. Sure they moan about it afterwards and log on to message boards and bitch and complain and talk about how they’ll never get that 90 minutes of their life back again but ultimately they keep buying the same shit and don’t buy the good stuff.
Look at what happened to Grindhouse, Tarantino and Rodriguez’s bravura experiment in retro cinema trash. Nobody went. They didn’t get it, they didn’t want it and they didn’t buy it. Rob Zombies execrable Halloween remake came out at the same time and people filled the cinemas. That is directly why we now have a remake of Friday the 13th looming on the horizon (February 2009) and it has got to be only a matter of time before a certain Mr. Krueger slices his tired way back into our dreams and onto our screens.

So while people keep going to see them the studios will keep making them. Is this really such a bad thing though? Are remakes really  that bad? Well, yes they are that bad really. It’s absolutely true that there a few shining examples of remakes that have far surpassed their source material – The Fly for example, or The Thing or erm… well Dawn of the Dead was pretty good I suppose but the vast, enormous majority range from pointless to painfully bad. The worst offenders unfortunately are usually the most high profile films – The Wicker Man springs immediately to mind. This is of course not surprising, why a director would choose to make a film that has already been made is surprising enough but when that film is an undisputed classic of its genre with an army of loyal and rabidly possessive fans it seems like pure insanity. This is of course my opinion as a filmmaker who has never been given a multi-million dollar budget to make a film that just happens to have been made before. I’d like to think I’d have the integrity to turn it down but I’d also like to think I’d have the good sense not to. Being a fan of Rob Zombie, I would like to think that this is the impossible choice he had to make when he accepted the Halloween gig.

So we have established that remakes are not bad per se even if it is only a very small handful that are any good. What is it then, that makes some ok and others the object of such hate? After much deliberation and drafting up several sets of rules – stuff like "No Film Must be Remade that is Younger than 20 Years Old" or "No Film Must be Remade of a Subtitled Film" I realised that really it all comes down to one question – Is there any point? In most cases the answer is a resounding no and that is why the resultant films are as empty and pointless as the initial concept. What constitutes ‘point’ though? Well I think that is up to the individual director. There are so many variables and factors that go on in the decision making process but any director, if freed from the constraints imposed by financing will not be content to simply do a cover version of their favourite films and will not be happy to do some Americanised version of a foreign gem (yes Quarantine I’m looking at you). There is just no point. If you really need to make a Friday the 13th Film why not make a sequel? At least there is some point in that – Hell, you could even make it a prequel – just not a remake please!!! One of the greatest thrills in horror cinema is the unknown - what is happening? What is trying to kill these people? Why? Where did it come from? How do you beat it? Will anybody survive (and indeed what will be left of them?)? Once these questions are removed, as they invariably are, we are left with a hollow and soulless trek through well travelled territory with absolutely no excitement and danger in a style which most closely resembles the formulaic appeal of only the limpest of romantic comedies.

Perhaps all this discussion is academic however, horror is after all a constantly changing genre which constantly changes its face in a rather interesting way - if sociological reflections of the public consciousness in popular culture are your thing that is. The trend for making remakes is surely running out of steam – after all how many more classic films are there to plunder? Ironically, it is only once the worst films are being re-made that the quality of the remakes will improve. Like the slasher films of the ‘80’s or the ironic post modernism of the ‘90’s the 00’s have this. They are a passing phenomenon however which, along with torture porn, have typified this era of horror filmmaking. The most interesting question is what is coming next?