10 Horror Movie Remakes That Are Better Than the Originals

The original is great, but this remake of The Thing From Another World drags the plot out from the crusty black-and-white science fiction era of the '50s and under director John Carpenter's masterful control, turns it into not only a grisly creature feature, but also a paranoid thriller whose shape-shifting alien is one of the all-time great cinematic monsters.

Like The Thing, The Fly tackles an excellent original about a scientist fusing genetically with a fly, but director David Cronenberg tops it by adding a graphic modern edge (Regurgitating hand melt anyone?) to a film whose "Help me!" climax has become campy fodder for parody.

It's technically a sequel, but you need only watch it once to realize that it's a remake of The Evil Dead with a bigger budget and a bigger sense of humor. And who better to retell the tale of the iconic demon-fighting hero Ash (Bruce Campbell) than the original's director, Sam Raimi?

Thirty years after the first film, this remake wonderfully renews the sense of popcorn fun, bumping up the action from the occasionally plodding original -- thanks to a more aggressive alien blob -- and adding both gory effects and more believable "teenagers" than Steve McQueen.

Another indication than most of the good remakes need a 25- to 30-year buffer from the original, House on Haunted Hill takes the tale of a challenge to spend the night in a haunted house and infuses edgy direction and special effects that make the original's skeleton on a string seem all the more silly.

Easily the best American remake of an Asian horror movie (and arguably the only one worth the effort), The Ring beautifully captures the original's ghost-story creepiness with atmospheric direction from Gore Verbinski and fantastic performances from the cast. It's close, but the American version perhaps has a touch more polish than the Japanese film, Ringu.

Renowned horror director Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist) takes sleazy, uneven '70s exploitation about a tool-wielding serial killer and turns it from trashy to genuinely scary, adding a supernatural twist that makes no less sense than the head-scratching original.

I know, I know, it's heresy to say, but the 2004 remake tops the George Romero original in almost every way except originality. Romero set the groundwork; Zack Snyder hit it out of the park, more effectively capturing the scope and feel of a zombie apocalypse. Sure, ratcheting up the action with -- egads -- "fast zombies" and plot manipulation seems so "Hollywood," but in this case, it works...except for the zombie baby.

This remake refreshingly refuses to dampen the uncompromising nature of the Wes Craven original, adding the modern exploitation flair of the French new wave of horror, courtesy of High Tension director Alexandre Aja. Close, but I'd give the edge to the remake for overall entertainment value.

Who says all remakes have to be American? This Korean remake of the 1999 Japanese film The Black House (technically, an adaptation of the same book) about an insurance investigator who uncovers a deadly insurance scam eliminates the original's goofy comedic streak in favor of straightforward, unnerving thrills.