Remakes and reboots have come thick and fast this year, and the trend seems set to continue well into 2010. Karate Kid is getting dusted off and thrown back into the dojo, some bright spark has decided that what the world needs is a new Highlander film, whilst those crazy Hollywood hacks are even putting out a new fangled take on Kevin Bacon cheese-a-thon Footloose. God help us all. But for me it is the current crop of horror film remakes that hold the most interest.

Great remakes like Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead and Alexandre Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes take the essence and spirit of the original films and drag them kicking and screaming into modernity. On the other hand, the very worst remakes defile their source material, crudely and incongruously incorporating crap CGI or crow-barring in pop culture references and a Linkin Park soundtrack.

The most striking example of this jumped out at me whilst watching the recent Friday the 13th reboot. Besides the fact that the 1980 original is hugely overrated and spawned a pretty dire and bloated franchise, one scene from the new film really knocked me sideways.

For anyone unfamiliar with the basic conceit of most slasher films, and the Friday the 13th series especially, it’s that a group of horny teenagers get carved up by a maniac in the woods. It’s pretty much that simple. But what really stood out for me in the 2009 flick was a scene at the beginning of the story in which one young lady took her top off to reveal a pair of extremely fake looking breasts. This is probably a trifling matter for some, but for me it totally invaded my suspension of disbelief and screamed, “You’re watching a horror movie remake – and a bad one at that!”. Now maybe I’m a bit provincial, a tad un-hip and not ‘down’ with the kids, but what sixteen or seventeen year old has gigantic breast implants? And even more so, what kid has parents either so irresponsible or high on hillbilly heroin that they think nothing of letting them fuck off to some remote woodland for a week accompanied by a bevy of potential date rapists, with only their questionable judgement and about twelve inches of silicone between them and a good old fashioned stabbing?

Don’t over analyse it, it’s only a horror film is the de rigueur response to such quibbles, but to paraphrase Chris Rock – don’t be such low expectation havin’ motherfuckers! Why when it comes to these kind of genre flicks is the bar placed so terribly low? Interchangeable youths, doggerel dialogue, predictable set ups and formulaic endings are blithely accepted as par for the course. And it is this cynicism and lack of imagination that seems sadly prevalent in the majority of remakes.

When I think back to the films of the 1970s and 80s, the golden age of horror, it is abundantly clear that originality was at a premium. Whether it was adapting existing books like The Shining and The Exorcist, presenting brand new and crazy ideas to the audience in movies like Scanners and Don’t Look Now, innovating with new twists on classic narratives such as in An American Werewolf in London and The Hitcher, or just bending people’s minds with mental shit like Dario Argento’s Suspiria, there is such as huge difference between the majority of modern horror films and their predecessors. There are obvious notable exceptions; the first Saw film, [REC], Cabin Fever, the original Japanese Ring, House of 1000 Corpses and Planet Terror are all enjoyable slices of the genre, although none of them quite rattle the nerves like something as sparse and perfectly formed as the BBC’s production of M.R. James’ Whistle and I’ll Come to You. And when it comes to remakes the disparity in quality between movies is often absurd. One pertinent example is the gaping chasm in calibre between Robert Wise’s slow burning The Haunting, and it’s 90s remake in which the menace and creepiness is replaced by ropey special effects and Catherine Zeta Jones arsing around in a dressing gown.

Rather worryingly there are several horror classics on the slate for reboots at the time of writing. The most intriguing has to be a re-imagining of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, although the people in charge of adapting this left field masterpiece have a real task ahead of them in attempting to capture the demented brilliance of the original.

For now I’ll be keeping an open mind and hoping that the new Nightmare on Elm Street and Piranha movies kick much batty, and fingers crossed they don’t let McG or Michael Bay anywhere near my beloved Teenwolf.