Often, Asian cinema comes up with some groundbreaking horror ideas that Hollywood just can’t ignore. The result is that Western cinema can’t help but remake these ideas but for the typical American audience, so they can share with the world what Asian horror is all about. Still, these remakes can’t always match the spirit and essence of the original films.
Hence, plenty of these Asian horror and thriller remakes end up falling flat. They either don’t work in the setting they were adapted into or the changes were too big and formulaic. Even the best of them tend to be unappealing to film critics. Still, some rough gems have proven to be box office successes, despite the difficulty that went into remaking them. Some are certainly watchable, while others just ruined the original.
10 Best: The Ring
The Ring has always been one of Japan’s most memorable horror franchises. It popularized long-haired ghouls in dirty white gowns and proved that they can be more horrific than regular ghosts. Hollywood, for that matter, didn’t have much difficulty in exporting Sadako and turning her into Samara.
It might not sit well with the film critics, but The Ring from the U.S. is still a pretty close experience. It also brought the Sadako/Samara movie monster into the American spotlight, which is what mostly matters when Asian horror films get remade by Hollywood. It’s also one of the highest-grossing Hollywood Asian horror remakes.
9 Worst: Dark Water (2005)
Dark Water’s American filmmakers tried to pull another The Ring since the original’s source material was written by the same author as Sadako’s debut. Sadly, Dark Water was mostly overlooked and didn’t receive the same commercial or popular acclaim as its bigger sister.
The consensus was that it didn’t really have much in the way of a poster-monster and ended up feeling more like a family drama with some jump-scares. The differences between the effects and the filmmaking techniques of the original and the American version paint the former in a more favorable light. The Hollywood remake was literally and needlessly too dark.
8 Best: The Grudge (2004)
The Grudge is tough to adapt to a U.S. version since the fear-factor for the ghosts is that they’re crazed and dead-eyed Japanese ghouls. Thankfully, the creators did the most sensible thing, instead of reinventing the ghosts in The Grudge, they kept most of them intact, even Toshio is present in some of the films.
The rest of the cast isn’t particularly stellar, nor do they have the same impact as the original’s stars, but they do their job well — as being fodder for the monsters. The fact that the American The Grudge films have spawned sequels is also a testament to how well it pulled off the remake process.
7 Worst: The Eye (2008)
The original, The Eye was one of the most unique Asian horror movies ever, as it took on a premise that’s never before seen in its genre. The protagonist received a corneal transplant that fixed her blindness, but at the cost of seeing spirits and disturbing premonitions.
However, of all the people they could have cast as a humble-looking main character, they chose Jessica Alba. While she is an A-lister, the general reception for her acting was not warm and doesn’t do the original justice, according to the film’s critics.
6 Best: Mirrors (2008)
Much like The Eye, Mirrors toys with an everyday object and puts its own horror twist in it. In this case, the object is in the title. Mirrors follows the story of an ex-cop who now works as a security guard until he stumbles upon one weird establishment in his line of work– a place where everything is dirty, except the mirrors.
Pretty soon, these mirrors, as well as every other reflective surface, start becoming a one-way door to somewhere unpleasant. This remake properly honors the 2003 South Korean original titled Into the Mirror, but with the added bonus of a gun-toting Kiefer Sutherland.
5 Worst: Pulse (2006)
Pulse is a perfect example of an American remake veering too far away from the concept of the original. The original is a Japanese film called Kairo (Pulse) and makes a horror story out of the emerging popularity of the internet. The film does this by introducing the spirit of a person who committed suicide to the internet and thus turning the online space into a festering pool of malevolent spirits.
Kairo then connected three separate stories with the internet as the converging point. Sadly, Pulse, the remake, discards the key complex notions in the Japanese original, opting instead to go with the death epidemic formula similar to movies like Final Destination.
4 Best: The Uninvited (2009)
The Uninvited is like Parent Trap but instead, the sisters are up against a killer or what they both thought is a killer. The film is full of twists and turns that would have made M. Night Shyamalan proud.
The two sisters living with their dad and his new girlfriend. One of them was recently released from a mental institution and friction in the family begins when their dad’s new girlfriend starts acting “evil.” The remake is based on a South Korean gem called A Tale of Two Sisters. Both films are worth watching, though viewers might want to try the original first.
3 Worst: One Missed Call (2008)
One Missed Call was another breakout horror hit back in 2003 when the Japanese original, called Chakushin Ari, introduced one of the creepiest ringtones ever. The film was also made in response to the growing emergence of mobile phones and their impact on society.
So what did Hollywood do with this concept and the iconic movie sound? They turned it into predictable horror tropes, including haunted mansions, cars nearly killing people, and many others, which were acceptable in the original but cliched in the remake, five years later. Moreover, the over-expressive Hollywood acting is a little too much.
2 Best: Shutter (2008)
Speaking of subtle expressions, Shutter would have benefitted from borrowing the original’s more muted acting. In fact, many felt that the two main characters’ acting was wooden in the emotional scenes and over-acted in the scary ones.
Oddly enough, Hollywood’s version of Shutter is set in Japan instead of Thailand (original), though the two protagonists are still very much American. The plot and story are also the same, as well as plenty of the scare-sequences. Apart from the two main stars in the movie, Shutter remains faithful to its Thai original.
1 Worst: Death Note (Netflix)
Death Note doesn’t necessarily even deserve a mention since it’s supposedly just a psychological thriller. However, many felt that what Netflix did with the American version of Death Note straight-up turned it into a Final Destination-esque horror/crime flick.
What was once a clever crime story in manga and anime devolved into a gory coming-of-age story with an overly angsty protagonist who is also the antagonist, making it a shock-value sequence of macabre deaths — a bad pitfall for a horror movie, which is already saying something.
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