Horror movies are ripe for sequels; the final girl of a slasher movie can return to be hunted by the same killer a couple of years later, or a new family can move into a haunted house whose ghosts previously tormented another family. When a horror filmmaker creates a memorable monster, the studio will milk that monster for every last penny they can get.
As a result, every year, multiplexes are flooded with horror sequels. Some of them have been great, but a lot of them have been terrible. So, here are the five of the best—and five of the worst—sequels in the history of horror cinema.
10 Best: Dawn Of The Dead
George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead isn’t much more than a spiritual sequel to Night of the Living Dead, as it doesn’t feature any of its characters or continue any of its plot threads, but it is set in the same universe.
What made the original great was its use of horror to convey social commentary, and Romero didn’t lose sight of that when he made the sequel. Whereas Night of the Living Dead commented on racism, Dawn of the Dead tackled consumerism with the story of a band of survivors being chased to a shopping mall by hordes of the undead.
9 Worst: Halloween: Resurrection
After Halloween H20: 20 Years Later gave Laurie Strode more development than she’d had in years, Halloween: Resurrection undid it all within moments.
It killed the Halloween franchise—which had, at that point, weathered a lot of low-quality entries until Rob Zombie revived it with a remake, then killed it again—and David Gordon Green revived it with a sequel that was finally good.
8 Best: Evil Dead II
When Sam Raimi’s super low-budget supernatural horror thriller The Evil Dead turned out to be a surprise hit, a sequel was in order. Stephen King was such a huge fan of the original that he asked producer Dino De Laurentiis to finance its follow-up as a random act of kindness.
Raimi’s penchant for pitch-black humor came through in glimmers in the original, but, in Evil Dead II, the writer-director practically switched genres and made it a full-on horror-comedy as Ash Williams grabbed his “boomstick,” attached a chainsaw to his arm, and took on the cabin’s demons.
7 Worst: Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
The original Blair Witch Project may have innovated the “found footage” subgenre, but, honestly, it’s not the horror masterpiece it’s made out to be. Still, it looks like Citizen Kane compared to its sequel, Book of Shadows.
Following the success of the original Blair Witch movie, the sequel got an immediate green light, but the executives should’ve taken a look at the script to make sure it had any merit before giving the okay.
6 Best: Scream 2
It would’ve been easy for Wes Craven to phone in a sequel to Scream and do a straight slasher movie, but what made the original feel like such a breath of fresh air was its self-awareness. It was a slasher in which the characters were familiar with the tropes of slashers.
So, it was fun to see Scream 2 take on sequels in the same satirical manner. In the opening scene, a couple of characters attend the premiere of an in-universe movie based on the events of the first film.
5 Worst: Jason X
When a franchise has run out of steam, send it to space. Fast & Furious fans have been joking that that’s Dom Toretto’s next frontier for years, and, when screenwriter Todd Farmer was tasked with coming up with an idea for the tenth Friday the 13th movie, that’s the only concept he came up with—and that’s the concept that made it to the silver screen.
In the year 2455, a cryogenically frozen Jason—nicknamed “Uber Jason,” for some reason—thaws out and starts killing the crew of a spaceship. Jason X wants to be Alien with Jason Voorhees instead of a xenomorph, but the result is far less fun and inspired than that sounds.
4 Best: Ouija: Origin Of Evil
This is a rare case where the sequel was actually a vast improvement over the original. The first Ouija movie, release in 2014, was shamefully derivative, generic, and inconsistent. Origin of Evil was technically a prequel, which put it in an even less enviable position, but, thanks to director Mike Flanagan’s unprecedented vision, it turned out a lot scarier and more inspired than the original.
Flanagan has been proving himself to be one of horror cinema’s finest new directors recently, with a string of hits including Hush, Gerald’s Game, and Doctor Sleep.
3 Worst: Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
As the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise went on, Freddy Krueger became less and less threatening and more of a comedic character. The filmmakers ran out of ways for Freddy to kill people, and so the kills became increasingly absurd.
Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, purportedly the last film in the series (although not really), seriously took the cake in this department. It was the movie that turned Freddy from a villain who haunted adults’ nightmares to a novelty item whose antics could be enjoyed by children.
2 Best: Aliens
James Cameron initially took the sequel to Alien as a writing assignment while he waited for Arnold Schwarzenegger to become available to star in The Terminator. However, what he ended up making was one of the greatest sequels in cinema history. Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie was a suspenseful masterwork in which a single xenomorph picks off a space crew.
Cameron’s sequel replaced the single xenomorph with hundreds of them, as Ripley and a team of Colonial Marines go to a colonized planet whose residents have been slaughtered by an alien swarm. As Ripley finds the sole survivor, Newt, and feels a maternal connection to her, Aliens becomes a touching mother-daughter story.
1 Worst: Jaws: The Revenge
Jaws is a rare franchise that has one installment that’s hailed as one of the greatest movies ever made and another installment that’s derided as one of the worst movies ever made. Jaws 2 was serviceable, and Jaws 3D’s reliance on its three-dimensional gimmick places it in the so-bad-it’s-good category. But Jaws: The Revenge is bad.
Despite the best efforts of the great Michael Caine, who was somehow roped into starring, its ridiculous-looking shark and even more ridiculous plot—a shark with a vendetta that can swim across the world in a matter of hours!?—make it practically unwatchable.
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