The concept of remaking a horror movie is an interesting challenge. In any remake you have to balance having it be close enough to the original to appeal to what made the movie good, but also add enough of a change to make it feel that it justifies excitement. Horror has to do this while also trying to keep the movie scary when they already know what the scare is. Even with these challenges horror still exists as one of the best genres to attempt making remakes with. What scares us as a society is always changing, and fears always come in and out of fashion. Remaking horror let us take old horror that has a strong concept and retool it to scare a modern audience. Culture can also have a big impact on what we find scary, so remaking can help us to tinker a story to be more effectively scary for different cultures. While there are a lot of benefits to remaking horror films, it can also easily fall into the trap all remakes can fall into. That being them being redundant rehashes of popular movies. Horror fell into this problem for a while, but I think horror remakes are on an up swing.
The thing is a classic and for a good reason. The thing is such an unnerving fleshy mess. It is creepy to imagine that thing slinking around, but the fact it can impermanence living beings heightens the tension even farther. The movie does a great job building tension on who is the monster and who's innocent. It is really fun to watch and try and figure out the mystery of who is and isn’t the monster. I think the thing also shows how the horror concept can be retooled for different generations. The Thing from outer space came out in the 1950’s, so during the McCarthy era and his red scare. When then get the remake in the 80’s when it's relevant to cold war tensions.
The ring to me is something that has become creeper with time. I think that fact that the curse is now concealed to this outdated format makes it scarier. It is now not something that can accidentally be discovered, but it is this old relic that should have been lost to time, but still around due to our morbid curiosity. It could also be that I still buy VHS tapes, so I’m still at risk. I Think the movie falls victim to over explaining the evil spirit. I would have preferred to never know who died or why, and to just have a vague idea of the event as our protagonist struggles to find a way to protect themselves. That being said, I really like the set up to the movie. Having a week to find a way out of the curse before an evil spirit comes to kill you builds great tension.
Let me in was a really good vampire movie. I really like how we see the movie from the perspective of a child who is struggling with this emotional turmoil over if his friend can be good or not as a vampire. It is interesting seeing him try to come to turn with the fact the world is grey, and not black and white. I think this is best shown in the scene where he calls his dad crying to ask him for insight. That scene did a good job highlighting that it was a kid in this situation.