Editorials
William Bibbiani Revisits the 11 Best Horror Remakes of the 2010s
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the decade coverage here*
At some point, remakes developed a bad reputation, even though quite a few of the best movies ever made were just new versions of a story already made into a movie before. And quite a few of those classic remakes are horror films, like David Cronenberg’s The Fly, John Carpenter’s The Thing and Gore Verbinski’s The Ring.
So it’s no surprise that some of the best horror movies of the last decade were also remakes. A great horror story ties into something universal and timeless, but sometimes the trappings of the filmmaking could benefit from a little updating. The best horror remakes have to choose what’s important to keep, what’s important to change, and most importantly how to make the newest rendition a valuable addition to the tradition.
These are the films that, more than many others (some of them also very good!), succeeded in making a familiar story seem new, exciting, and powerful.
11. The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)
Some movies defy conventional categorization, and Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s intelligent and stylish The Town That Dreaded Sundown is one of them. The film takes place in a world where the original influential horror classic is a real film, but based on a true story, and in which a serial killer has started remaking the horrors of The Town That Dreaded Sundown in “real” life. Spiritually a remake, arguably a sequel, and despite the dense meta-narrative that the filmmaker is weaving, it’s not an exercise in irony. It’s one of the very best slashers of the decade.
10. Fright Night (2011)
Craig Gillespie’s remake of the self-aware horror classic Fright Night abandons most of the horror in-jokes, streamlining the story of a teenager who thinks his sexy new neighbor is a bloodsucking vampire into a suspenseful and threatening horror yarn. The late, great Anton Yelchin carries the movie beautifully, and David Tennant steals scenes as the Las Vegas magician who’s forced to fight the forces of darkness in real life; but the film belongs to Colin Farrell. The actor plays up his sensual appeal, only barely hiding a streak of macho intimidation, and easily earns a spot as one of the scariest modern vampires.
9. Piranha 3D (2010)
Joe Dante’s original Piranha was an inventive, low-budget Jaws riff with a great sense of humor, and far superior to the majority of the Corman films of the era. But Alexandre Aja wasn’t interested in making a quirky flick for eccentric horror fans. His remake is an ultraviolent, ultrasleazy, completely unapologetic splatstick extravaganza, in which a species of prehistoric man-eating fish are unleashed on spring break and eviscerate the flesh of every human foolish enough to get into the water. Piranha 3D isn’t trying to make its 3D gimmick immersive, it’s using the technique to call attention to just how crazy a movie can get, highlighted by a scene involving a severed sex organ that’s so completely tasteless you almost have no choice but to respect it.
8. The Crazies (2010)
George Romero was one of the greatest and most influential horror filmmakers in history, but it’s fair to say that his low-budget 1973 virus thriller The Crazies wasn’t his very best work. So there was a lot of room to expand on the basic premise of an epidemic that drives people murderously insane, and Breck Eisner’s remake does just that. The Crazies features a great cast of actors – Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell and Danielle Panabaker among them – whose characters find themselves in one impossibly deadly confrontation after another with former friends who can’t help but try to commit heinous acts of murder. Wildly entertaining and effective.
7. We Are What We Are (2013)
Jim Mickle’s impressive remake of Jorge Michel Grau’s horrifying drama transports the action to a small American town, where a father has to depend on his conflicted daughters to continue their obscene traditions when their matriarch dies unexpectedly. Bill Sage is terrifying in We Are What We Are before we even understand the nature of the frightening family, and Amber Childers and Julia Garner give nuanced and sympathetic performances as young women suddenly dealing with unthinkable responsibilities. We Are What We Are is a fantastic horror movie, stylish and freaky, in large part because at its core it’s potent allegory for familial abuse and cult-like mania.
6. Let Me In (2010)
Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In is, rightly, now considered one of the best vampire movies ever made. But the remake, directed by Matt Reeves, is arguably just as good. Kodi Smit-McPhee plays a troubled adolescent who befriends a mysterious girl, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, with frightening secrets. The icy isolation of the original gives way to a more warm-blooded, violent and emotional remake, with excitingly filmed set pieces now punctuating this effectively creepy story about isolation and manipulation. It’s the same great story told with just a slightly different sense of taste, not quite pulpy but significantly more visceral.
5. Shin Godzilla (2016)
Ishirô Honda’s classic and groundbreaking Gojira wasn’t just a giant monster movie, it was a potent metaphor for a world struggling to cope with and combat destruction on a hitherto unimaginable scale. In 1954 that meant having difficult conversations that related directly to nuclear weapons, and in Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s riveting, loose remake Shin Godzilla it means navigating impenetrable bureaucracies to combat more modern global, existential threats. In the end, only the young and motivated can cut through the red tape and get anything accomplished. The new version of the title monster, a rapidly evolving and bizarre leviathan, is arguably the scariest version, and the renewed emphasis on Japan’s plausible reaction to such a gigantic disaster keeps Shin Godzilla refreshingly, effectively grounded.
4. Maniac (2012)
The original Maniac, directed by William Lustig and starring/written by Joe Spinell, is one of the most captivatingly brutal and ugly depictions of a serial killer ever filmed. Unromantic, unappealing, and emotionally raw. But the remake takes a very different approach, stylishly filming a killing spree from the first-person perspective of the murderer, putting the audience in the position of the predator as we stalk victims throughout Downtown Los Angeles. It’s an impressive gimmick, and director Frank Khalfoun and the film’s star Elijah Wood (who appears whenever the camera looks in a mirror) wisely avoid making their shocking killer too sympathetic. The remake of Maniac is a terrifying and absolutely distinctive trip behind the eyes of a monster.
3. Suspiria (2018)
How do you remake a film like Dario Argento’s Suspiria, in which the film’s defining characteristic is its absolute inscrutability? If you’re Luca Guadagnino, you fill the film with so much subtext it practically bursts open by the end. The story of a haunted ballet school in Germany has been reframed as a world in microcosm, in which a supernaturally matriarchal society has become so insular that it’s lost its way, and is susceptible to unexpected influences, not unlike the Cold War environment that serves as the movie’s backdrop. Undeniably of a piece with Argento’s film, but undeniably new and singular, the new Suspiria demands repeat viewings to unlock its intellectual and emotional depths.
2. It: Chapter One (2017)
There’s some debate over whether Andy Muschietti’s It is a new film or a remake of the classic 1990 tv mini-series directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. (The distinction is even the subject of a legal battle.) But at some point, we simply have to acknowledge that this story was already told, in two parts no less, and then it was told again, in two parts once more, so it’s at least spiritually in the “remake” category. And it’s certainly one of the best remakes of the decade, in any genre. The tale of a group of adolescent “Losers” who confront the demonic personification of their fears takes an epic, iconic quality in Muschietti’s interpretation, like a modern fable with a demon clown in place of a big bad wolf. The first half is a modern horror classic that stands completely on its own, and it’s a good thing too, because just like the original mini-series the second half of the new It falters.
1. Evil Dead (2013)
Some of the best remakes of the decade recaptured the magic of the original. Others forged a brand new path. Fede Alvarez’s remake of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead does both, recreating the dizzying camerawork and ultraviolence of the groundbreaking 1981 film, and seemingly following the original template until the film begins unexpectedly developing its own identity. Framing the horrors of being trapped in a room with violence and emotional manipulation with helping a loved one detox from serious addiction, and giving the story more real world resonance than ever before, Alvarez’s film explodes into gore and madness, and culminates in a new and extremely satisfying finale. Evil Dead is everything the original was and more. What more could you possibly want from a remake?
HONORABLE MENTIONS: All Cheerleaders Die, Black Christmas, Child’s Play, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Frankenweenie.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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