Sightlines · reception

How The Blob was received

1988 · Chuck Russell · The Blob on Sightlines

The arc

A box-office flop in 1988 that got buried in a crowded summer, it's since been rehabilitated as one of the great '80s horror remakes — now routinely mentioned in the same breath as The Thing and The Fly.

What’s debated

The perennial fan debate: does it deserve a seat at the table with Carpenter's The Thing and Cronenberg's The Fly as a remake that outdoes its original, or is it a tier below — 'criminally underrated' is the phrase that launches a thousand threads.

Its footprint

It's a fixture of every 'best horror remakes' and 'best practical effects' list, beloved for gleefully breaking the genre's unwritten rules about who's safe — and the decades of failed attempts to remake it again (Rob Zombie was once attached) only burnish its reputation.

Where it stands

A cult object and practical-effects-era darling — the 'actually, the remake is great' pick that horror Letterboxd loves to champion.

Did you know? It was co-written by a pre-Shawshank Frank Darabont, reuniting him with Chuck Russell right after the two wrote A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors together.