[Trash City]

I like remakes where the subject was a film where there is room for improvement in some way or other. There's no point remaking a movie if you can't improve on the original [I'm talking to you, Gus Van Sant!] This is where The Thing is, to my mind, the best horror remake of them all, because Carpenter realized the FX in the original... Well, "sucked" is probably being kind. Rob Bottin amped those up to 11 and the results are still great almost thirty years later.

The same goes for Cat People: the original was brimming with sexual tension, but because of the times, it had to be entirely repressed. Schrader's remake - helped immeasurably by Nastassja Kinski's feral intensity - brought all that out from the shadows and made it, rightfully, the focus of the movie.

Of the others you list, I enjoyed The Fly and Dawn of the Dead in particular. But far too many remakes don't bother to bring anything new or worthwhile to the party. If you're not going to bother, what's the point?