Abstract
This chapter explores audience, fan, and critical responses to horror film remakes, and argues that these reception contexts can be seen as a counterpoint to industry acclaim or awards recognition when considering the cultural value of both this maligned adaptive form and the denigrated horror genre. Using examples from online discussions and reviews of horror remakes, and drawing on a number of examples of these contemporary adaptations, the chapter illustrates how viewers play a key role in framing the reception of film remakes and considers issues of fidelity, genre and fandom to demonstrate how this particular mode of horror production and its resulting texts are especially vulnerable to criticism as a result of preconceived notions of cultural value.
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Notes
- 1.
Among these, collections edited by Martin Barker and Ernest Mathijs (Watching the Lord of the Rings: Tolkien’s World Audiences, 2008), Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse (Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series, 2012) and Anne Morey (Genre, Reception, and Adaptation in the “Twilight” Series, 2012) feature work which touches on these broader concerns, while studies by fandom scholars including Matt Hills (2005, 2006, 2012) also highlight the importance of fidelity to these debates.
- 2.
The collections edited by Forrest and Koos (2002) and Horton and McDougal (1998) introduced these more productive approaches to remaking, while more recent work in Lukas and Marmysz (2009) looks at genre remakes, and Klein and Palmer’s Multiplicities in Film and Television (2016) rightfully addresses remaking as one exemplar of the contemporary transmedia landscape. While a number of full length works on remaking and on genre remakes specifically have been published since the films became prominent, Constantine Verevis’s 2006 Film Remakes remains the most authoritative title on the topic.
- 3.
While remakes have always featured in horror, this post-millennial boom can be traced to the success of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Nispel, 2003), the first film produced by Hollywood mogul Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes, a company set up for low-budget genre films that went on to finance multiple horror remakes. Massacre made $107 million worldwide, more than 10 times its reported budget (boxofficemojo.com).
- 4.
The Golden Raspberries, or “Razzies”, are the satirical antithesis of the Hollywood awards season, annually recognizing the “worst” examples of directing, acting, writing and so on in mainstream releases. James F. English discusses them as the anti-Oscars in relation to prestige (2005, 100–102). Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton have also observed how such “mock awards” have become entwined with the status of cult films (2011, 36–39). While most horror remakes do not fall within the category of cult, Mathijs and Sexton’s model offers a useful framework for locating prestige outside of the mainstream.
- 5.
Mark Jancovich observes that the multiple Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991) was marketed outside of horror fandom as “offer[ing] the thrills of a horror movie without middle-class audiences either having to feel guilty or questioning their sense of their own distinction from that monstrous other, the troubling and disturbing figure of the slasher movie viewer” (2001, 40), a strategy that further supported the cultural sidelining of the genre.
- 6.
See https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1179254-halloween/ Accessed December 21, 2015.
- 7.
‘MovieMaven’. 2011. “Top 10 Pointless Horror Movies.” Horror Movies. Accessed October 17, 2011. http://www.horror-movies.ca/horror_11240.html MovieMaven, no doubt, would have eventually been among the more critical reviewers of the TV miniseries remake of Rosemary’s Baby (NBC 2014).
- 8.
See Verevis 2006, 58–76 for detailed discussion.
- 9.
- 10.
“George Lucas raped my childhood,” a meme used by some Star Wars fans to express their disapproval of both the second trilogy and Lucas’s own re-editing of the earlier films, has since been appropriated in discussion of other media multiplicities. See for example http://www.facebook.com/michaelbaysux, http://www.voiceofcrazy.com/entertainment/robocop-the-latest-effort-of-hollywood-to-rape-my-childhood-again/, http://coyoterose.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/open-letter-stop-raping-my-childhood.html
- 11.
‘DeathBed’. 2010. “My Bloody Valentine (Remake).” Bloody Disgusting. Accessed January 28, 2010. http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18424
- 12.
‘Freak123’. 2010. “What’s the Best Modern Remake You’ve Ever Seen?” Bloody Disgusting. Accessed January 28, 2010. http://www.bloodydisgusting.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49109
- 13.
‘thedudeabides’. 2010. “OK, Remakes – What the FUCK?!?! Horror Is *Dead*.” Dread Central. Accessed January 28, 2010. http://www.dreadcentral.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7163
- 14.
‘hardhousehead’. 2010. “What’s the Best Modern Remake You’ve Ever Seen?” Bloody Disgusting. Accessed January 28, 2010. http://www.bloodydisgusting.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49109
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Mee, L. (2017). The Hollywood Remake Massacre: Adaptation, Reception, and Value. In: Kennedy-Karpat, C., Sandberg, E. (eds) Adaptation, Awards Culture, and the Value of Prestige. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52854-0_11
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