The Grudge and the 10 best foreign horror movie remakes

Remakes often get a bad reputation, but there are those rare gems out there  which break tradition. From The Grudge to The Ring and everything between, we’re taking a look at the greatest foreign horror movie remakes!

Horror movie remakes, as they stand, are not inherently soulless as a sub-genre to the art of films. The idea of remaking a film for a modern audience makes sense for both cultural and financial means. But there’s usually an outcry of criticism over the purpose of remaking an older film for a modern audience and one of the main factors in this attitude is the perceived lack of cultural context to make the remakes work.

Hence why films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas, and countless other classics receive remakes that get slammed by critics and sometimes even audiences. The remakes are either so far removed from the original context that they comes across as watered-down versions lacking in any meaning or they’re so similar that the context just won’t resonate with a modern audience.

While several American horror classics have received this unfair treatment, nowhere is this more apparent than in the countless remakes of foreign horror movie gems. Horror has thrived in the area of world cinema thanks to the genre’s versatility in telling terrifying stories unique to the world’s vast amounts of cultures in each country. But if it’s successful in a foreign land, there’s a chance that American studios will try to capitalize on the success, often with mixed results.

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Taking another horror movie’s foreign context and transforming it into an American product often removes the horror that resonated with foreign audiences, leading to tepid American horror movie remakes that are either too confusing or too sanitized to resonate with American audiences. You can’t simply pluck a horror movie from a different country and expect the same level of success.

But alas, there are some rare gems in this mostly maligned group of films.

Sometimes, the filmmakers just manage to get it (mostly) right with a remake that pays respect to the original while adding its own quirks to set it apart. Whether it be a solid take on arguably the best vampire movie of all time or an American sensation based on a Japanese horror classic, these movies stand out as remakes that not only “don’t suck,”,but actually traverse the realm of quality filmmaking. These movies serve as an example of American horror movie remakes that manage to get it right on some level.