When a movie does well at the box office and gains positive reviews from critics and viewers alike, it's likely that a remake will follow eventually. Even more so if the original movie isn't in English. Hollywood's studios like to create remakes of successful foreign movies of all genres, and the horror genre is no exception.

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Japan is a prominent creator of excellent horror movies, many of which have been remade in the USA. And while remakes don't usually have a good reputation, not all of them are bad. There are several good American horror movies based on even better Japanese films that are worth watching for all fans of the genre.

4 The Ring (2002)

A screenshot of the movie The Ring (2002), featuring a grainy video feed of a girl with an obscured face walking towards the camera in front of a well.

Even though it premiered over 20 years ago, The Ring remains one of the best horror movies of the 21st century. The story is notoriously known - whenever someone watches a mysterious scary tape, they'll die in seven days. The movie offers multiple surprising plot twists and creates a strong atmosphere. At least it's surprising for those who haven't seen the Japanese original Ring from 1998.

The good news is that even though the basic plot remains the same, the American version changed some things, for example, the main character's gender or the ending, so it's not like watching two 100 percent identical movies. The 2002 movie won the Saturn Award for the best horror and scored a positive rating of 7.1 on IMDb, similar to the original with a rating of 7.2. The movies also helped popularize the concept of a scary girl with long dark hair covering her face, a trope that has since appeared in multiple stories. It led to many sequels, but the original two movies remain the best, judging by their ratings.

3 The Grudge (2004)

Sarah Michelle Gellar with a ghost behind her in The Grudge

While there's been a handful of American remakes of Japanese movies, one of the rules of their success is to bring the two cultures together in the form of a movie co-production. Both The Ring and The Grudge are the results of the cooperation between the two countries, so even the American remakes contain a part of their predecessor's charm and spirit. In this movie, Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as Karen, a student who arrives in Tokyo and finds a job in a house that hides a terrible, deadly secret.

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The movie offers a fair number of jump scares and is one of the scariest Japan-inspired, American horror movies. It helps that Karen is like a fish out of water in the strange new world of Tokyo. Sarah Michelle Gellar sells her part, and the rest of the cast doesn't disappoint either. The Grudge proved the formula that low-budget horror movies often become hits. It cost 10 million dollars to make and earned over 110 million dollars in the USA alone. Both the American version and the Japanese original spawned multiple sequels. Unlike The Ring, there's a bigger difference in the rating of the American movie (5.9) and the Japanese version (6.7) but both movies are enjoyable.

2 Premonition (2007)

Sandra Bullock looking confused outside in Premonition Featured Image

American versions of Japanese horror movies often have the advantage of starring actors better known to the American audience. Such is the case of Premonition starring Sandra Bullock. Despite that, Premonition isn't as known as other movies of this genre. It focuses on Linda, a woman who gets caught in a cycle of fear as her husband Jim dies. Except for the fact that Jim is only dead on certain days, and in another version of the events, he lives on.

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The original 2004 Japanese movie Premonition also predicts a character's death but chooses a different approach. Whichever movie the viewers decide to watch first, they're in for a memorable experience full of twists and intense moments. Some people claim that the American premonition isn't in fact a remake of the Japanese movie but the same title and the similarities in the story are enough to contradict this theory.

1 Godzilla (2014)

Screenshot from Godzilla (2014)

The general rule of making American remakes of foreign movies is that they come a relatively short time after the original. It usually takes Hollywood studios only a few years to create a remake of a successful Japanese movie. Godzilla is one of the few exceptions to this rule. The movie came out in 2014 and the original Japanese Godzilla premiered sixty years ago, in 1954. Of course, there have been other American movies about Godzilla before, such as the critically panned 1998 Roland Emmerich movie.

But it wasn't until the 2014 movie that Godzilla got an American, well-rated movie. The movie returns to Godzilla's origin story and in a way, functions partially as a sequel as well as a remake. What's more, even though it has a Godzilla in its title, it takes a while for Godzilla to first appear on the scene, just like in the Japanese version. Neither of the movies is pure horror, they combine scary moments with science fiction and action and also have the power to make the audience think. After watching the movies, it's easy to understand why Godzilla remains one of the most popular monsters on the silver screen!

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