Happy New Year, horror fans! As 2009 dawns and 2008 lies moldering in its grave with the corpses of THE EYE and PROM NIGHT, now is the perfect time to look ahead to the new year, a time when everything feels fresh and rejuvenated. When everything old is new again.

Now there's an adage Hollywood certainly knows how to live by, particularly when we're talking about horror movies. In Hollywood, the name of the game has long been Ride the Bandwagon -- keep making movies just like the ones that made money before until they stop making money -- and too often for us fans of the creepy and the kooky, that bandwagon's license plate spells "remake." Admittedly, the remake is hardly a recent concept. They've been around since the dawn of movies themselves, and in some rare cases they're even better than the originals (John Carpenter's remake of 1951's THE THING springs immediately to mind). But when we're talking about horror movies, it seems like more and more remakes are getting greenlighted each year. Taking a look at the months ahead, for instance, we see 2009 offers no fewer than eleven horror remakes. Just for reference, that's roughly twice as many as were released in 2008.

January gives us a starting push down the slippery remake slope with Patrick Lussier's MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D. Now, the 1981 original may not be the greatest horror movie ever made, but I would argue it's one of the better slice-and-dicers from the slash-happy 1980s (to this day I can still remember the sound that severed head made banging around in the drier). It was also one of the few slashfests to have a compelling explanation for why the bad guy is killing everyone who celebrates Valentine's Day in the small coal mining town of Valentine Bluffs, Nova Scotia. For the remake, there are two major changes: the name of the town has been changed to Harmony and now the miner's pick-axe will actually come out of the screen and kill you. Or at least it'll look that way, courtesy of the 3D effects -- which, in my opinion, may be the only reason to fork over your hard-earned ticket money. January also brings David Ondaatje's remake of Alfred Hitchcock's silent serial killer thriller THE LODGER. I haven't heard much buzz on this one, but at the very least the cast looks killer: Alfred Molina, Hope Davis and Philip Baker Hall. Let's hope this one doesn't get Hitch rolling in his grave the way Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake of PSYCHO surely did. And just in case you were worried there wouldn't be any pointless Asian-horror remakes, get ready for Thomas and Charles Guard's THE UNINVITED, a redo of Kim-Jee Woon's 2003 Korean horror film CHANGHWA HONGRYON, to be stuffed down our already constricted throats.

That's three remakes already, and we've only covered January! I haven't even mentioned Marcus Nispel's FRIDAY THE 13TH "re-imagining" in February! I'm so against this idea on principle that I'm already spinning deep into a shame spiral to admit I'm dying to see it. Call me crazy, but the trailer I saw online made me all tingly with nostalgia. But then again, I happen to love FREDDY VS. JASON too. Obviously there's something wrong with me.

Skipping ahead to June, we have the Will Ferrell vehicle LAND OF THE LOST, Brad Silberling's slapstick comedy remake of the trippy, science fiction- and horror-tinged 1970s Saturday morning TV show from Sid & Marty Krofft. I get more tingles of nostalgia about this one, only not in a good way. Come July, it's sink or swim for Alexandre Aja's PIRANHA 3D, a remake of Joe Dante's 1978 original about genetically mutated, man-eating fish. As with the MY BLOODY VALENTINE remake, I suspect the 3D effects will be the only interesting thing about it.

But the remakes aren't over yet! In September, lose your shit with Breck Eisner's remake of George A. Romero's THE CRAZIES. Or in October, feel free to get plastered at the homecoming kegger and go see Stewart Hendler's SORORITY ROW, a remake of 1983's THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW (I guess they thought modern audiences don't have the patience for three extra words in the title). Or how about a remake of THE STEPFATHER, also coming in October? The original from 1987 isn't bad, actually. Maybe you should rent that instead. And don't even get me started on Rob Zombie's H2, his remake of HALLOWEEN 2, which wasn't that great even back in 1981.

Hopefully November will get the awful taste of October's remakes out of our mouths with one that has the potential to be good for a change: Joe Johnston's THE WOLF MAN. The 1941 Universal classic is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, and I think the remake could be of high quality, especially with Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins on board. Of course, I say that now, but I've had my heart broken before.

As of this writing, those are all the horror remakes on the movie schedule, but I wouldn't be surprised if a few more slipped in there. After all, Hollywood has already announced forthcoming remakes of THEY LIVE, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, THE THING (that's right, a remake of a remake!), THE BIRDS, HELLRAISER, POLTERGEIST, CHILD'S PLAY, ANGEL HEART and THE HOST. Remakes of NEAR DARK and ROSEMARY'S BABY were also announced but then put on hold, thank goodness!

See, when I said everything old is new again, I wasn't joking around. So happy New Year, horror fans, and may I suggest a special New Year's resolution: Vote with your wallets. Save your money for the good, original horror movies we deserve. Because remember, folks, Hollywood only cranks out the crappy remakes because they make money. If remakes stop making money while the high quality, truly creative horror movies start raking it in, maybe Hollywood will finally jump on a different bandwagon. One with a license plate that spells "respect."

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When he's not griping about the current state of Hollywood horror, Nicholas Kaufmann is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, reviewer and interviewer. For more regular doses of Kaufmannia, visit his blog at http://nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com or his website at http://www.nicholaskaufmann.com.