Horror movies have been around since almost the start of cinema, and some of the best old-school monsters have been reinvented over the years into something unique. This has happened again in 2026, as the classic Universal Horror Monsters movie The Bride of Frankenstein has been brought back with a brand-new look.

This is nothing new. Ever since the original Universal Monsters era ended, filmmakers have attempted to remake classic monsters. Hammer Films was the first, as they took Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster in strikingly new directions. In the 1980s and 1990s, filmmakers took even bigger chances, with incredible revivals of classic monsters.

Creature From The Black Lagoon – The Shape Of Water

Guillermo del Toro has recreated classic horror monsters more than once. In 2017, he took the Universal Horror Monster from The Creature from the Black Lagoon and reimagined the creature in his dark fantasy movie The Shape of Water. As in the original movie, this was also a twisted love story.

In The Shape of Water, the humanoid amphibian was captured by the U.S. government from its home in a South American river. Kept enslaved in a tube in the laboratory, the government runs experiments on the creature, but soon a woman who works there falls in love with the monster and helps it escape.

This was a polarizing movie for many fans, but it was widely acclaimed and earned 14 Oscar nominations, winning for Best Picture and Best Director. The Shape of Water took the idea of the classic Gill-Man monster and masterfully placed him in a gothic romance.

The Wolf Man – An American Werewolf In London

The Wolf-Man was one of the best Universal Horror movies ever made, rivaling even the Frankenstein movies and Dracula. However, unlike those other two iconic horror monsters, there haven’t been many good werewolf movies over the years, a monster that remains hard to adapt properly.

However, the best of the best was when a filmmaker reimagined the werewolf as a tragic character in a dark comedy movie. In An American Werewolf in London, John Landis had two American backpackers in Europe attacked by a werewolf. One dies, and the other becomes a werewolf himself.

The movie was brilliantly done, darkly comic at points, and with one of the best werewolf transformation scenes ever filmed. This reimagination of a classic monster was so good that it rivals even the original Universal masterpiece as the best werewolf movie ever made.

Frankenstein – Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein

There have been several Frankenstein movies made over the years. The Hammer Films reimagined the character in interesting ways, and there was even a Robert De Niro movie where the actor played a fascinating Monster. However, it was Guillermo del Toro who made the best modern-day movie about the Monster.

In Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, it was the Creature who was the most interesting part of the movie, and Dr. Frankenstein was as much a villain as anything. Jacob Elordi was magnificent as the Creature, as he was contemplative, intelligent, and just wanted revenge for his creator abandoning him.

As with all of Del Toro’s movies, he has a soft spot for monsters, and his Creature in this movie was the best depiction of Frankenstein’s creation in any adaptation of the story.

The Invisible Man – The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man was one of Universal Horror’s first monsters, debuting after Dracula and Frankenstein, and around the same time as the first Mummy. However, unlike those creatures, who were either tragic or gothic romances gone wrong, The Invisible Man was a genuine monster, a mad killer.

The Invisible Man killed more people in one movie than almost any other horror monster in history. This made it a little harder to carry over into sequels and spinoffs, but the best of the best came in 2020 with The Invisible Man by Leigh Whannell. This made him more than just a mad killer and made him an abusive stalker.

What was best about this reimagination of a horror monster is that the killer here was a brilliant scientific genius who was over-controlling of his girlfriend and then used an invisibility formula to torment her after she escaped him. It added the mad scientist aspect with the MeToo movement for a compelling reboot.

The Mummy – The Mummy

The Mummy was an interesting Universal Horror movie because it took on the classic idea of an entombed mummy returning to life to see out the reincarnation of his great love. The movie was a horror film with the mummy as a violent creature hunting down humans who strove to keep him at bay.

However, what happened in 1999 was the idea of turning this scary horror movie into a grand adventure film. If anything, Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy was what happens when someone blends the original Universal Horror monster with a high dose of Indiana Jones adventure. It was great fun.

This wasn’t really a horror movie, although there were horror scenes with the monsters and creatures. However, what made it stand out was that it was nothing but an adventure movie with a monster at its base, and that made The Mummy more exciting than it had ever been before.

The Bride – The Bride!

The Bride! has proven to be polarizing for critics and fans, but it is a brilliant reimagination of the classic Bride of Frankenstein story. That classic horror movie was based on part of the Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein, but James Whale saved it for the sequel to his original Frankenstein movie.

What resulted was arguably the best horror movie of the entire Universal Horror era of the Golden Age. Maggie Gyllenhaal took the idea and created a movie that was full-on rage, with The Bride representing all the women who have been used and abused over the years without their abusers facing any punishment.

This was brilliant, as Shelley herself played a role, possessing a woman named Ida, who would be killed and then resurrected as The Bride. Here, The Bride and Frankenstein become an outlaw couple, and this movie shows her coming into her own and taking a stand for her own rights as a woman.

Dracula – Bram Stoker’s Dracula

In 1992, Francis Ford Coppola took the original Dracula movie and reimagined it a little closer to Bram Stoker’s novel, although in the end, it was wholly original. Coppola chose to show Dracula as the old vampire, as the original movie did, but then had him grow younger and healthier when feeding to create a gothic love story.

What Coppola does here is similar to what Guillermo del Toro did years later, taking the monsters and making them more human in a gothic romance setting. However, he also had a great Van Helsing in Anthony Hopkins, while Gary Oldman was masterful in his performance as Count Dracula.

There were some problems, such as Keanu Reeves never feeling right as Jonathan Harker, but when it comes to Dracula himself, no one has ever done it better than Gary Oldman since the heyday of Bela Lugosi.

The Fly – The Fly

Something incredible happened from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. There was a series of horror movie remakes that not only remain highly praised but are often seen as better than the original movies on which they were based. This started with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and moved on to The Thing, The Blob, and The Fly.

The latter of those saw one of the greatest reimaginations of any horror monster. There is no doubt that Vincent Price is a legend in horror, and his portrayal of The Fly was iconic in its day. However, when David Cronenberg began working on his body horror remake, it was terrifying on every level.

Jeff Goldblum was great in his performance as Seth Brundle, the scientist who turned into a human-fly hybrid after a mistake with his transportation device. Seeing his body start to fall apart as he morphed was disgusting, and it was better than anything horror movies could accomplish in the old days.

Godzilla – Godzilla Minus One

Godzilla was great when first introduced. Released in 1954, Godzilla was a Japanese movie that showed the fear of the fallout from the Atomic Bomb dropped on the country in World War II. The monster rose from the water and destroyed anything in its path. He soon changed into a reluctant hero in other monster movies.

When America remade the monster, it was a disaster in the 1990s before it became a commercial hit in the 2010s, although Godzilla had then morphed into a big-budget monster rather than the original scary walking disaster that he was meant to be. This led to Godzilla Minus One, back in Japanese filmmakers’ hands again.

This Godzilla was terrifying and was everything that the monster was meant to be. It was better in every way than the American movies and was even better than the original, thanks to the effects and the ability to show the human terror and casualties. This was the best Godzilla movie ever put to film.

Nosferatu – Nosferatu

Nosferatu was an interesting movie when it was released in 1922. Directed by F.W. Murnau, it was supposed to be an adaptation of Dracula, but since Bram Stoker’s estate wouldn’t allow it, the filmmakers changed the name and locations and released it anyway. It was supposed to be destroyed after a court order, but was luckily saved.

The movie was similar to Dracula, with Count Orlok preying on the wife of his estate agent, while bringing a plague to their town. The reimagination in 2024 by Robert Eggers kept a similar storyline, but it reimagined Orlok as a larger, more dominating man who could travel through shadows and was even more threatening.

The cinematography was breathtaking and owed a lot to the original silent film, but the remake reimagined the horror monster in a way that made him even more memorable, and updated Nosferatu to a new generation.