Editorials
[Editorial] Are Horror Remakes Dead?
I don’t automatically hate remakes. Most of you know that I love the 2009 Friday The 13th (probably because it feels more like an organic extension of the franchise made by people who love it rather than a head-to-toe studio revamping). I also really liked a lot about Evil Dead last year. While it certainly “felt” more like a remake tun F13, the makeup and gore were outstanding and its 2nd and 3rd acts did the trick for me, especially when watching it with an audience.
Incidentally, it looks like it turned a profit. At the very least I don’t think it lost money with a worldwide gross of almost $100M on a $17M budget (with a promotional campaign that probably cost about the same). Going back a decade the American version of The Ring, the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the 2004 Dawn Of The Dead all generated handsome profits and helped kick off a remake boom whose aftershocks are still being felt today. But, like aftershocks, the rumblings have been growing softer and softer to the point where now they seem downright faint.
That’s not to say that studios (and indies, to be fair) aren’t generating remakes at the same steady clip they’ve been maintaining over the past 10 years, but audiences sure do seem to be growing weary of them. Carrie did *okay*, but certainly wasn’t the hit it needed to be. The latest version of The Thing was a money loser. Fright Night managed to overcome its impressive roster of talent in a plunge to the bottom of the box office. Granted, the fact that those movies range from “not great” to “terrible” surely has something to do with it, but audiences are more ready than ever to reject these films.
One of the issues is that the properties currently being remade (or that have yet to be re-approached) fall into sort of an undesirable valley. The originals are either untouchably good (Carrie, OldBoy and the upcoming Poltergeist) or obscure enough (also OldBoy) to undercut the brand recognition that fuels the studios’ fondness for these endeavors. Which has me wondering, what’s the point of it all now?
The film industry is one giant game of “let’s not get fired.” Risk isn’t encouraged. Ambitious decisions that end in failure are obviously punished, but so are ambitious decisions that end in success. There are more than a few execs that lost their jobs somewhere between saying “yes” to a project and that project becoming an unexpected success. The business has always been like this but increasing vertical integration and a crumbling home video market have exacerbated it. That’s one of the reasons remakes are so prevalent, the fact that there’s a brand being exploited exists as a shield. It seems like the right thing to do. Even when things don’t work out there’s less finger pointing because it was the “right call at the time.”*
But is that still the case? Evil Dead aside I can’t think of a recent studio horror remake that’s been an unmitigated success. At this point most of them seem to lose money theatrically with little hope of recouping later on given the dwindling nature of physical media and the modest royalty rates of streaming platforms. Artistically many of them are completely bankrupt, teetering between safe decisions in the name of brand maintenance and milquetoast updating for modern audiences, so there’s no real incentive for anyone to “discover” them after that opening weekend window has passed.
I’m sure we’re all lucky that I don’t actually run a studio. There are many aspects of the business that I’m sure I’m completely ignorant of (evidence of this may be apparent in this very article). But if I did run a studio I would think twice before seeking these kinds of properties out right about now. I’m not sure they make the safe shields they used to, and we may just be at the end of an era. Which, all things considered, may not be such a bad thing.
*If you’ve ever played Blackjack you know how truly annoying this phrase is.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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