The Remake Industry: Creating Global Homology or Damaging Cultural Integrity?

Ever since Hollywood conceptualized the idea of cinema as an experience, each corner of the world has had a take on the medium. Each culture has had its own myriad of cinematic triumphs and failures, telling the stories of their countries greatest moments or the dark secrets of the criminal underworld. Every film is different, and encapsulates the underlying emotion of the directors and producers bringing forth the ideas. These films are mostly readily available to be watched in every language, either through subtitling or audio dubbing, so why does Hollywood feel the need to monopolise this process of cultural devotion by remaking films from other parts of the world?

For a long time the remake industry has been going from strength to strength but recently it has reached a prevalence which has raised questions about its effectiveness and more importantly, the damage which it inflicts. For argument’s sake one could say that there is no real damage that can be cataloged, but the effects are still existent even if they are not obvious. The real question is whether these English language remakes are helping to bind the cinematic world together in a globalized melting pot of ideas, or are they damaging the original stories through plagiarism?

Recently, a few very well received European films were snatched up by Hollywood for their remake process. The confusing thing about these few enterprises is that unlike a lot of remakes there was no huge creative differences in the final products. Rather it was like Jackson Pollock had remade a Van Gogh masterpiece; nobody could deny that it was full of artistic merit, yet it failed to deliver the emotional punch that the original lived and breathed. One such film which received a large amount of press coverage during the original European release was Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In (2008). A romantic horror revolving around the lives of two children – one of whom is very much unlike other young girls, this film encapsulates the difficulties of dealing with youth in a very unique way. Aside from the revamping of the vampire film genre, the film received acclaim for its cinematography and acting quality. This begs the question, one which Alfredson expressed, why remake a good film? Surely such treatment is reserved for something which could be bettered, or told in a different manner.

Which makes it even more confusing that the American version, Matt Reeves’ Let Me In (2010), is essentially a shot-for-shot remake of Let The Right One In. Given a chance to completely reinvent a brilliantly represented idea in a society where films are placed on pedestals frequently, Reeves decided that his best plan was to in no way overhaul the original, and thus mimicked it to the letter. He might as well have spent upwards of £10million on an extremely well made audio dub.

This Swedish horror was by no means the only example of this. A few years prior to Let Me In another film was ported to English speaking audiences through a questionable remake. Jaume Balagueró’s REC (2007) received the same treatment but with a very interesting difference. Balagueró’s horror spectacular is a a found footage piece. John Erick Dowdle’s English language follow-up Quarantine (2008) also delivers hard hitting handheld moments. Balagueró incorporates innocent civilian disputes and emotional conflict with the overarching terror felt by the victims. Dowdle also adds flavour to his piece with chilling moments of real emotion and passion felt by those trapped in a nightmare. However, one glaring difference divides the films. Whilst REC is a bone-chilling matter of demonic possession, stemming from a biological virus existing within a young girl who was gang-raped by priests, Quarantine makes no attempt to involve religion and goes straight down the pathogen route, using rabies as the antagonistic threat. To iterate clearly I take no issue with the changing of some parts of the film, but I see no reason to make a shot-for-shot remake of something whilst changing the issues at hand.

This brings around the point of cultural differences. Spain as a nation is heavily Catholic according to Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, which place the ratio of Catholic Spanish at 68%. Whilst this does explain more prominent religious fervour within the cinematic enterprise, it does little to explain why Dowdle had reason to completely eradicate religious factors from the American version. The USA statistically has a higher percentage of Christians than Spain, with the latest polls counting it at 73%. Not only this, but a large portion of American horror films revolve around demonic possession with such original titles as The Exorcist (1973), The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and The Last Exorcism (2011). Why then the sudden religious backpedaling? It seems more potent to keep the religious themes, thusly incorporating a shared fear within two cultures, rather than flipping it around to reflect a difference in ideas. Especially as the United States is one of the last pseudo-theocratic nations, citing religion as a part of a lot of their major decisions. Nevertheless the decision was made to wipe out the religious themes entirely and just focus on a different angle.

Why remake a film only to bastardise it? Did Dowdle ever intend to gain any artistic merit or was this entire project just a cash cow intended only to reap the monetary rewards of someone else’s ideas? It’s hard to speak definitively on the matter but it seems likely that it was a financial venture.