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Growing up as an immigrant in a non-English-speaking household, subtitled movies were pretty standard for me. In fact, I still have the bad habit of turning on subtitles whenever they’re available, regardless of language. As a young man, it never occurred to me that this wasn’t the norm, and that’s why I always thought it was strange that American studios would remake foreign films in English instead of simply distributing them normally.
Obviously, there are a myriad of cultural and economic reasons explaining why this isn’t the case, but it’s also worth noting that not all remakes are created equal. I may have spent a large chunk of my life lamenting every time an American remake of a foreign horror flick was announced, but even I have to admit that some filmmakers are actually capable of successfully translating the elements that made scary stories effective in their countries of origin and making them more palatable for new audiences.
In fact, my view on the matter has shifted quite a bit over the years. While I’ll always defend the original execution of an idea as its definitive version (that’s why I think A New Hope is superior to The Empire Strikes Back despite being a decidedly less polished experience), I’d like to take this opportunity to make a case for how American remakes of foreign horror can in fact result in some pretty entertaining films.
During the early days of cinema, localization was as simple as translating silent film cards and splicing them into existing footage. From Haxan to Nosferatu, this meant that early cinemagoers actually had the opportunity to enjoy stories from around the world with little to no changes to the source material and presentation. That all changed with the advent of sound, which made it harder to sell non-English films abroad and kickstarted the creation of new ways of conveying dialogue to viewers.
“Let me tell you about the time I visited Japan and got attacked by a radioactive dinosaur.”
While most countries contented themselves with subtitles and even dubbing (which would become a staple of cheap late-night entertainment in the US), the hegemony of Hollywood storytelling meant that language wasn’t the only obstacle for American audiences, so it was often worth investing in completely new versions of movies in order to assure wider acceptance. Initially, this meant re-editing and sometimes shooting completely new footage, like in the case of Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, where Raymond Burr was inserted into the remixed movie as an American reporter covering the atomic dinosaur’s rampage.
Later on, we’d start to see full-on remakes of popular international movies, with studios alternating between celebrating their “new and improved” versions of these stories and refusing to acknowledge that these productions were in fact based on pre-existing films. When it comes to horror, remakes became a tentative issue during the J-horror boom of the early 2000s. Partially motivated by Scream’s critique of tropey genre flicks, Hollywood began looking for inspiration elsewhere, funding a slew of Americanized retellings of foreign horror stories.
While a handful of these remakes were incredibly successful, like Gore Verbinski’s iconic The Ring, some producers confused Americanization with genericization, creating bland and utterly soulless renditions of what had once been great ideas. Films like 2006’s Pulse, which removed the complexity and apocalyptic dread of Kurosawa’s original and replaced it with subpar scares, established a dangerous precedent by refusing to acknowledge the context which spawned these stories in the first place.
Even when these movies weren’t bad, it’s hard to justify relocating a story if you’re not going to address how that relocation would change characters and situations. I mean, 2008’s Quarantine is technically just as good as REC, recreating most of the film shot-for-shot with a talented cast and crew in a rare example of a Found Footage localization. That being said, the remake’s refusal to commit to its new context makes it feel just as redundant as Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Psycho (itself a veiled critique of unnecessary remakes).
An interesting middle ground can be found in 2007’s Funny Games, as the English language remake is still helmed by Michael Haneke, who shielded it from outside interference. However, the updated movie was only produced because the director wanted his original vision to reach a larger audience and knew that a remake was the only way to gain a foothold in American cinemas, making this film a mere alternate version of something that already exists rather than a unique piece of artwork in and of itself.
Same scares, different story.
Fortunately, the world of horror remakes isn’t solely comprised of soulless cash-grabs. There are more than a few interesting films derived from foreign scares, though they often take an unorthodox approach when retelling their respective stories. While it wasn’t as well received as The Ring, I’d argue that a great example of this is 2004’s The Grudge, as Sony brought in Takashi Shimizu to direct the American re-imagining and allowed him to tie the story into his existing mythology through an alternate timeline that still took place in Japan. Shimizu has even gone on record saying that he saw this as an opportunity to address the flaws of the original (kind of like how Sam Raimi viewed the Evil Dead sequels), which is why he continued expanding the franchise with the 2006 sequel.
There are other interesting cases as well, such as Matt Reeves’ Let Me In which embraced the story’s relocation by placing it in Reagan-era America, but I’m usually partial to remakes that work as companion pieces to the original. For example, Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria has no intention of replacing Argento’s film, sharing the same basic premise as the 1977 original but almost nothing else as it transforms a technicolor Giallo into a somber reflection on collective trauma.
When remakes of foreign films don’t work, it’s often because the industrial pipeline nature of Hollywood productions result in the original idea being stripped of its unique qualities – but when they do, it’s usually because the right filmmaker knew how to identify the heart of the narrative and when to embrace cultural differences. Much in the same way that foreign remakes of American properties are fascinating even when they’re not necessarily good (like Sssshhh…, the Bollywood version of Scream), the question that producers should be asking isn’t “how do we sell this idea again?”, but rather “what if this story happened in another time/place?”.
While I’d still prefer a world where remakes were obsolete and horror hounds didn’t mind subtitles when looking for new scares, I think we’ve come a long way from the haphazard Americanizations of yesteryear. That’s why I don’t mind admitting that I’m rather excited for upcoming remakes like The Last Train to New York (based on Train to Busan), so long as studios continue to produce original new ideas alongside them.