The Grudge and the 10 best foreign horror movie remakes

8. Mirrors (2008)

Remake of Into the Mirror (2003) – South Korea

So far, the previous two entries were mostly faithful remakes of their foreign counterparts, adding in dashes of American and Japanese culture to differentiate themselves enough. With Alexandre Aja’s interpretation for the remake of the South Korean film, Into the Mirror, accuracy was suddenly not a big priority.

When Aja nabbed the directing job for the remake, he was apparently dissatisfied with the story of the original, which involves a mall cop investigating a series of mysterious suicides – all involving mirrors in some way.

Aja took inspiration from the film, but crafted a mostly new story surrounding a security guard investigating the mirrors at the luxury department store he guards, all while his family begins to slowly succumb to the horrors behind their mirrors. The inspiration is there, but Aja’s take is both somewhat original to the horror movie remake boom and arguably one of the most underrated remakes in the bunch.

Mirrors plays on the idea of spirits in the mirrors haunting people at every turn simply by appearing in the reflection. It’s a simple idea, but the remake still manages to craft some seriously disturbing sequences, with the bathtub scene still living on as one of the most frightening scenes to come out of the remake boom of the 2000s.

Yes, the American trope of needless exposition and bland main characters is there in all its unwanted glory, but Aja takes his French horror style and injects it into an already-unnerving supernatural horror to give the film a graphic edge not often seen in these remakes.