Call it the Psycho dilemma: The danger that, when closely remaking a given film, you will miss some animating ka that gave the earlier film life. Gus Van Sant's Psycho is almost (though not quite) a frame for frame recreation of Hitchcock's film, but there's some spark of life that's missing. It's a film that sits dead on the screen. It's a bit like the kid in Pet Semetary. He looks like the living kid, but he's dead inside, and worse. He's possessed of something rancid and awful. Another such film is last year's Come Out and Play (2012, directed by Makinov), an ill-advised remake of Who Can Kill a Child? In both it's broad outlines and in its particulars, this is the same damned movie. Like Vince Vaughn's Norman Bates and the kid in Pet Semetary, something has been lost and replaced by something...wrong.
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