7 Horror Movie Remakes That Are Scarier Than The Original Films

The knee-jerk reaction to any remake is that it won't be as good as the original. The knee-jerk reaction to any horror movie remake is that it won't be as scary as the original. But rules were meant to be broken, and every so often a horror remake does just that. Here are the remakes that are more spine-tingling than the original.

'Maniac' (2012)

1980's "Maniac" was a grungy midnight movie with just enough visceral pop to be disturbing. (It has the "Citizen Kane" of shotgun death sequences, too.) But with the remake, largely engineered by the French filmmaking team of Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur (they'll pop up again on our list), they placed viewers inside the mind of the notorious killer (played here by Elijah Wood). They accomplish this with the narrative, portraying the murderous creep in a surprisingly sympathetic light and also through the camerawork, which gives off the impression that you're literally looking through the killer's eyes. This first person aesthetic creates one of the more unsettling experiences in recent memory and doesn't feel like the schlocky gimmick it easily could have been. Sadly, there's no shotgun sequence to rival the original.

'Let Me In' (2010)

This English-language remake of the Swedish original (released just two years prior) should have failed spectacularly. The story was localized (going from Sweden to New Mexico), many of the more sexual aspects of the storyline were dropped, and the camerawork, stark and still in the original, became active and imaginatively whirligig in the remake. And yet, ultimately, "Let Me In" is also the better, scarier film. It streamlined the narrative, dropped a very silly sequence with computer-generated cats (the antithesis of scary), and upped the intensity. This remake is just as contemplative and mournful, but also considerably spookier.

'Last House on the Left' (2009)

The original "Last House on the Left" (1972) is notable for being an early collaboration between Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham, filmmakers who would transform the horror movie landscape in the 1980's. But as a movie, it's pretty crummy. It's crudely produced and feels more like an underground snuff film than something you'd pay to watch in a movie theater. The "Last House on the Left" remake retains much of that rawness, but makes the violence more palpable. It turns the whole affair into a relentlessly terrifying black comedy. (Stephen King loved this new version.) Macabre and menacing, "Last House" all but erases the memory of the original.

'Evil Dead II' (1987)

Yes, this is a sequel to the 1981 original. But it's also a remake, reworking elements of that film and reconfiguring them for the purposes of this new enterprise. Writer/director Sam Raimi, instead of making a straightforward reconstruction, opted to fold in elements of slapstick comedy. The resulting film was unlike anything people had seen before and remains one of the greatest horror films of all time. 

'The Ring' (2002)

While it's true that few things rivaled the power of watching the little ghost girl crawl out of the television in the 1998 Japanese original, Gore Verbinski's Americanized remake is still the more terrifying experience. While the original film was punctuated with moments of extreme scariness, Verbinski's film created a palpable and sustained atmosphere of dread. It wasn't just the fact that the little girl came out of the TV, but it was everything else, as well -- from the rainy Seattle setting to stories about serial killers, dead horses, cursed videotapes and unexplained murders. True, this version of "The Ring" is a more procedural (and "western") take on the material, but it's also more effective and bone chilling.

'The Hills Have Eyes' (2006)

For some reason, the original "The Hills Have Eyes," directed by Wes Craven in 1977, is viewed as a classic -- even though it is very boring and gross. The remake was pretty gross, too, but it wasn't boring, instead replacing the dusty meandering with nasty, go-for-broke horror. The filmmaking team of Gregory Levasseur and Alexandre Aja's take on the material was that the inbred hill folk of the original were actually a family of mutants, horribly disfigured by government-sanctioned nuclear bomb tests. Made at the height of the Iraq War quagmire, there's something unrelenting and politically charged about the new "Hills Have Eyes," which ups the gore of the original but also heightens the suspense. This one will have you on the edge of your seat before you reach for the barf bag.

'It' (2017)

The horror movie sensation of all time (yes!) is endlessly more terrifying than the lame made-for-television movie version of "It" that nostalgia has somehow turned into some lost classic. Tim Curry's Pennywise is goofy and nonthreatening, like a college boyfriend you're trying to avoid, and the performances of the kids are leagues better in the remake, lending the fantastical elements a sense of immediacy and realism. In the end, the two-part "It" saga will also be just as long as the TV miniseries, so the idea that the length of the original somehow added to its creepiness is just not true.