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Best Remake Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of remake cinema — measured across 9,874 indexed frames from 117 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Remake films over-index on blood — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    The Revenant (2015)

    Alejandro G. IñárrituDP Emmanuel LubezkiIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    While exploring uncharted wilderness in 1823, legendary frontiersman Hugh Glass sustains injuries from a brutal bear attack. When his hunting team leaves him for dead, Glass must utilize his survival skills to find a way back home while avoiding natives on their own hunt. Grief-stricken and fueled by vengeance, Glass treks through the wintry terrain to track down John Fitzgerald, the former confidant who betrayed and abandoned him.

  2. 2

    Evil Dead (2013)

    Fede ÁlvarezDP Aaron MortonIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Mia, a drug addict, is determined to kick the habit. To that end, she asks her brother, David, his girlfriend, Natalie and their friends Olivia and Eric to accompany her to their family's remote forest cabin to help her through withdrawal. Eric finds a mysterious Book of the Dead at the cabin and reads aloud from it, awakening an ancient demon. All hell breaks loose when the malevolent entity possesses Mia.

  3. 3

    The Fly (1986)

    David CronenbergDP Mark IrwinIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    An eccentric scientist changes the world with his teleportation technology: when his experiment seems to be going well, Dr. Seth Brundle tests his machine on himself and he gets fused with the worst kind of pest on Planet Earth; The Fly. What is the price of a man playing God? Only Seth knows.

  4. 4

    Carrie (2013)

    Kimberly PeirceDP Steve YedlinIMDb 5.8TMDB 6.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    The outcast teenager Carrie White is bullied by her classmates at high school. Her mother, Margaret White, is a pious and paranoid woman that sees sin everywhere and the need of self-inflicting punishment. When Carrie has her first period, she does not understand what is happening to her and her classmates humiliate her in the changing room. The spiteful Chris Hargensen videotapes Carrie with her cellphone and posts it on the Internet. Their teacher Ms. Desjardin punishes the students, but when Chris challenges her, she is suspended and consequently is banned from the prom. Meanwhile, Carrie discovers that she has telekinesis and learns how to control her ability. Sue Snell, one of the girls that tormented Carrie, feels bad and asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross to invite Carrie to go with him to the prom to make up for what she did to Carrie. But Chris and her boyfriend Billy Nolan plot an evil prank with her friends to get back at Carrie.

  5. 5

    Fistful Of Dollars (1964)

    Sergio LeoneDP Massimo DallamanoIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    With nothing but profit on his mind, a taciturn American with a lightning-fast right hand rides into San Miguel, a sun-bleached border town where everyone is either rich or dead. As the amoral man with no name discovers that the sleepy town provides the perfect opportunity to make a quick buck, the mysterious stranger soon finds himself caught in the middle of a destructive, long-standing feud. After all, the corrupt Baxters and the murderous Rojos, two feuding families fighting for control, won't let a nameless nobody get a slice of the cake. But the dusty, poncho-clad newcomer has already set his sights on the grand prize--the only way to get it is to play the gangs off against each other in a deadly battle of wits. Of course, no one has pulled such a reckless stunt and lived to tell the tale. How far is a man willing to go for a fistful of dollars?

  6. 6

    Dawn of the Dead (2004)

    Zack SnyderDP Matthew F. LeonettiIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Ana goes home to her peaceful suburban residence, but she is unpleasantly surprised the morning that follows when her husband is brutally attacked by her zombified neighbor. In the chaos of her once picturesque neighborhood, Ana flees and stumbles upon a police officer named Kenneth, along with more survivors who decide that their best chances of survival would be found in the deserted Crossroads Shopping Mall. When supplies begin running low and other trapped survivors need help, the group comes to the realization that they cannot stay put forever at the Shopping Mall and devise a plan to escape.

  7. 7

    Cape Fear (1991)

    Martin ScorseseDP Freddie FrancisIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.

  8. 8

    The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

    Alexandre AjaDP Maxime AlexandreIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    While celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, a couple are traveling through the desert with their 3 children, son in law and their baby granddaughter. While the rest of the family agrees there are plenty of better and more appropriate things to do to celebrate an anniversary, they make do with what they have, but things take a turn after a sketchy gas station attendant informs them about a "short cut" that will take them in between a series of hills in the desert. It doesn't take too long before they realize they're not alone and the hills indeed do have eyes.

  9. 9

    House of Wax (2005)

    Jaume Collet-SerraDP Stephen F. WindonIMDb 5.5TMDB 6.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Six friends are on their way to a football game. They decide to camp out for the night and continue driving the next day. The next day the friends find that they're having car troubles, so two of the friends accept a stranger's ride into a small town named Ambrose. The main attraction in Ambrose is the House of Wax. Except something is not right in this town, the wax figures are so realistic and the whole town is deserted - except for two murderous twin brothers. The six friends must fight to survive and escape from being the next exhibits in the House of Wax.

  10. 10

    The Last House on the Left (2009)

    Dennis IliadisDP Sharone MeirIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    After kidnapping and torturing two innocent teen girls, a group of people seek refuge in the home of the parents of one of the victimized girls. When the parents find out what happened to their daughter, they plot and carry out revenge on those that hurt her.

What remake films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a remake frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — blood is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • blood1.9×

How remake films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate remake from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 47%low keyvs 39% baseline

What breaks the pattern

About Fate (2022) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 9,874 frames from 117 films carrying the remake label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/remake

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