Horror Remakes Show Too Much!

Today I am talking about the remakes of American Horror films and how they have ruined the killers by showing too much.

Even though I know not to expect much from remakes I still go and see them, I guess I’m a gluten for punishment.  When I see remade horror films, the one thing I've noticed is that they go into too much unnecessary details about the creatures or entity disturbing the victims.

One of the reasons I can't stand the shot for shot remake of PSYCHO, other then Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates, is the unnecessary sound effects added to the film; for example the seen where Norman spies on Marion, a sound effect of Norman playing with himself was added, what this did was make the audience laugh and the film was no longer able to scare anyone when I saw it.  Hitchcock did not require this sound effect and anybody who watched the original understands what he was thinking when he spied on her plus the mother part of his personality made it quite clear too so why add the sound effect.

Some of the more recent Horror remakes by Platinum Dunes have chosen to look more closely at the killers or monsters which has ruined them.  I grew up with Mike Myers as a terrifying figure who would not die and just kept coming, sadly the remake decided to focus on his character and find a reason he was like that, which made him just another serial killer; the same is true of the remakes and prequels of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th.

I do appreciate that the film makers were trying to re-imagine the original source material, but unfortunately, by exploring the killer/monster's motivation just destroyed what made them scary in the first place. 

I am still scared of Robert Englund's Freddy and the first movie, I find it hard to watch it without taking breaks to calm down from the scares.  However, when I saw the remake I liked that it looked at Freddy's birth as the monster we know but they then went over the top with the Paedophile back ground, we knew that character was a paedophile and we did not need to ever see him make the victims dress in kids cloths and feel them up this again just made him laughable which was more reminiscent of the later Nightmare on Elm Street movies which were more black comedies then horror films. 

I must admit that there are some horror remakes that I have enjoyed, such as My Bloody Valentine & Amityville Horror which have in my opinion done a good job of re-imagining the original premise and making it work for a new generation.  I could go into so much depth about each horror remake that shows too much about the villains but it would be a very long blog, I may come back to this issue again in the future.

Thanks for reading from your Movie and TV Mistress