The Remake Recession

What bothers me most about remakes is not that the originals are sacrosanct and shouldn't be sullied, but rather that remakes are produced in the stead of new movies based on original ideas. This is especially true of the horror genre, where it seems like for every new idea that makes it to the big screen, half a dozen old ones come out reimagined and repackaged for contemporary audiences.

The good news is that looking back over the last year, it appears that horror remakes have stopped heating up the box office. The Hills Have Eyes and When a Stranger Calls, at $42 million and $48 million respectively, are considered box-office hits. Yet their grosses are modest when compared to horror remakes of previous years, such as The Ring and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Last summer's Pulse and The Wicker Man each grossed more than $20 million -- but only barely. More recently, neither Black Christmas nor The Hitcher has made it out of the teens, which means that bothering to open them in theaters at all was a waste of time and money.

Sequels to horror remakes haven't been doing well either. Compare The Grudge 2's $39 million gross to the first movie's $110 million, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning's $39.5 million to its predecessor's $80.6 million.

You almost get the idea that audiences figured out they were being had.