capile2: I'm not sure someone brought up this one before (after just 5 pages, I can't remember anymore...) but I think the remake of
Evil Dead is very good.
I like very much the original but let's tell the truth, it was horror+comedy.
The remake? Not so much. It makes the original look like
My Little Pony.
Breja: I hated it. And not because it's a remake, I liked some remakes and reboots as much or better than the originals, I'm mostly open minded about that. I hated it because it was neither funny nor scary. It was just disgusting. Plenty of gore, really hard to watch for me, I'm not into that, but that is not scary to me. I like horror in the more classic sense, something like Nosferatu (I've seen Herzog's version, not the orignal yet), Carpenter's Prince of Darkness or Del Toro's The Devil's Spine, and all of those I heartily recommend.
I like Coppola's Dracula a lot, but I don't think it captured what was best about the novel, the scary part when Dracula is out of the picture, we only follow characters oblivious to his existence witness the effects of actions, the signs of his presence. It was that shadow of his, falling on everything when he himself is not seen that makes him so scary and the book still so good.
To me "terrifying" is all about the atmosphere, about what you DON'T show, or at least what you only show rarely, and most of the time just suggest, only show enough of to let the presence of whatever horror lurks in the dark known. It's the difference between looking at a bucket of blood, and having to spend a night alone in an old house on the moore knowing a killer escaped from a nearby prison yesterday.
and that is why alien is a horror movie and not just a scifi movie
its a gothic cathederal and ahaunted house movie rolled in to one with some disturbing giger imagery
1963's haunting is also ina similair less violent vein
and you do really need to see the 1922 nosferatu its in the public domain these days and is all over youtube and its a tour de force of atmosphere and imgery
it still works despite being 92 years old
and herzog's versions isnt really so much a remake as an off spring it takes the same idea and then runs with it in a different direction
the orlok in the 78 movie is pitiable and tragic
the orlok in the 22 movie is a creepy monster who is still terrifying