Horror sequels

Am I the only who doesn't watch horror sequels? Let me explain. My two favorite horror movies are A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween. We can all agree that they are classics. However, I refuse to watch the sequels. I find that the more sequels there are, the less scary they are, and the more we learn about the backstory of the monster or killer the mystery is gone. Not to mention at some the point the storylines for each installment becomes ridiculous. I feel I can watch the original film and be satisfied without watching anything else in the franchise.

So that's my deal with horror sequels. I know everyone doesn't feel like this, but I still want everyone's opinion.

I'm an absolute sucker for horror sequels. Even to the movies that would be diminished by them. I grew up on the horror series from the '30s to the '90s. I started the thread for the subgenre that probably spawned the most horror sequels. To me, they don't really do harm that rewatching the original in a terrible mood wouldn't do.

That being said, for me, being the kid I was, I was less into the hapless heroes and more the villainous monsters. So, that probably altered my view of sequels significantly.

Edited by Prowler on Sep 27th 2018 at 7:39:59 AM

Offhand I can't think of a single horror sequel that's any good. All the Halloween movies...nope. All the Nightmare on Elm Street movies...nope.

Psycho II was surprisingly decent if you could get past the ridiculousness of Norman Bates ever getting released.

Edited by jamespolk on Sep 27th 2018 at 8:41:49 AM

I think Wes Craven's New Nightmare is outstanding. Dream Warriors is pretty solid, too.

Then you have Halloween 4, reasonably well-liked. People were into Halloween: H20 around the time it came out.

Edited by Prowler on Sep 27th 2018 at 11:29:23 AM

I can enjoy them on their own merits, good or bad, though that isn't to say that there aren't some films that I feel should have been left as standalones, like Basket Case or Cube.

Most of the horror sequels that I can think that were better than the originals are obscurities like Bloody Murder 2: Closing Camp, Psycho Cop Returns, Ouija: Origin of Evil, etc. where I guess you could say that the bar wasn't set very high to begin with.

One could probably make a case for the later "Chucky" movies as being better than the original Child's Play, but that's because they started leaning into camp and satire rather than being straight horror like the original.

Hellraiser II is pretty good.

I personally found it really weird that Sleepaway Camp got so many sequels AND a spinoff.

Where do you even go from such a WTF Ending?

Angela fully transitioned while institutionalized, was released when she became an adult, and assumed a new identity. Unfortunately, she was still homicidal and began infiltrating summer camps, killing any staff or campers who were assholes or who offended her sensibilities.

Like the Child's Play sequels, they decided to go the dark comedy route. II and III were fun (the latter slightly less so) while Return was awful (the only good thing that I can say about it is that it was shot at an actual camp that was in full swing, with kids and everything, like the original). I haven't seen IV, but I hear that it's made up almost entirely of stock footage.

I'd cite the Friday the 13th sequels as evidence of bad horror sequels, but let's be candid, the original was also terrible.

Three words: Bride. Of. Frankenstein.

Also, while this is more controversial, I think that Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is a highly underrated movie.

Edited by RavenWilder on Sep 29th 2018 at 1:43:58 AM

Horror movies in general are the best, be they effectively atmospheric or simply junk food.

Lemme give a shoutout to Sorority House Massacre II. Sure it's got the budget and classiness (or lack thereof) of a 1980's David DeCoteau movie (if you don't know what that means, that's okay), but any horror sequel that uses footage from a completely different movie series for story flashbacks (The original Slumber Party Massacre, in this case) and introduces a character as comedically brilliant as Orville Ketchum◊ is fine by me.

A few of the Universal horror sequels were decent. Though the climate and sensibilities around sequels was a bit different them (also the kind of stories they were was a bit different).

You wouldn’t get something like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and have it kinda sorta be canon in a horror franchise nowadays.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 29th 2018 at 5:31:22 AM

Oooh, Bride of Frankenstein, yes. Possibly the Karloff Mummy sequels as well. I think this rule may not hold up nearly as well when one is talking about classic Universal Horror movies.

Though if I were Universal, and trying to make this Dark Universe a thing, I'd be sorely tempted to greenlight Key & Peele Meet Frankenstein.

I wonder if horror sequels are different than The Sequel in general. We all know about The Godfather Part II but most sequels aren't as good.

Haven't seen it in years, but I'll bring up Dr. Phibes Rises Again just for the sake of it not being part of a 1980's franchise. Not nearly as great as The Abominable Dr. Phibes but still an enjoyable Vincent Price movie.

With horror sequels I find the third Elm Street and New Nightmare to be quite solid. The fourth and sixth Friday the 13th films I find enjoyably cheesy in a good way and better than the original while Jason X I find So Bad, It's Good. I think Hellraiser 2 was also decent and Child’s Play 2 the best of those films. With Halloween, I find the second film to be decent and the fourth and H20 to be serviceable. Season of the Witch I’ll argue is underrated and I actually like it for how weird it is. Haven’t seen any of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Scream films besides the first two, but I find the second Scream on par with the first and the second Massacre quite fun, albeit not to everyone’s taste. I honestly don’t really mind the abundance of sequels and if anything, the sheer quantity of them and how far fetched they can get makes me more willing to watch them than most film sequels.

I quite like Texas Chainsaw Massacre II on that subject, but it's gloriously and unbashadly camp, complete with a chainsaw duel. It's some wild shit.

Admittedly, my bafflement at hearing Dennis Hopper does that in the film was precisely what made me want to watch it when a friend casually mentioned it. I figured that would only be one thing in a sea of camp.

Dennis Hopper is definitely the best thing in it, though not the only good thing on it. Because out of all the actors, he's taking the story 100% seriously, so he's the straight man to this cosmic level of camp. When he arrives to fight the Sawyers and says "I AM THE LORD OF THE HARVEST!" completely straight-faced you know Hopper is doing his damn all.

Also, do horror anthologies count? Because John Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy (The Thing, Prince of Darkness, At the Mouth of Madness) are all pretty solid, though the Thing is definitely the best between them. Likewise, Argento's three mothers trilogy has Suspiria and Inferno, which are both solid (though I prefer Suspiria).

I thought the second Nightmare on Elm Street movie is actually pretty good, though the climax was stupid.

The most recent Chucky movies are also pretty good, if only because they became serious again and the director made some huge progress in filmmaking.

Halloween 3: The Myersless One is the best of all that franchise's sequels, if it counts as a sequel at all.

Oh, The Conjuring 2 was very good too, that scene with the nun's portrait is one of the best in recent years.

And for a rare example of a sequel better than the original there's Amityville II: The Possession, which is actually decently filmed and genuinely creepy compared to the first one once you go past the fact that it's essentially exploiting a real life tragedy.

If you'd want to talk about actual Anthology Films in the horror genre that do have direct sequels (i.e. Creepshow -> Creepshow 2 -> Creepshow 3; V/H/S -> V/H/S 2 -> V/H/S: Viral), that would be one thing, but no one could rightfully call In the Mouth of Madness a follow-up on The Thing.

As per John Carpenter himself, it's a Thematic Series, his "Apocalypse Trilogy" all three being connected by the same themes. All three show an evolution of an apocalyptic scenario as well: in the first mankind barely manages a victory, in the second its a draw, in the third mankind loses and the world ends.

Not the same thing as a direct trilogy, but I thought it might be worth discussing.

Edited by Gaon on Oct 12th 2018 at 10:58:35 AM

Haven’t seen In the Mouth of Madness, but I liked Prince of Darkness, even if it’s one of Carpenter’s weaker films. I’ve also warmed to the second Nightmare film, but it’s not my favorite of those sequels. I also found the last two Child’s Play films surprisingly decent and I’ve been impressed by how it, along with Saw, are the only horror franchises to have attempted a long running continuity, especially given how most of the franchises have a very tenuous connection between films while some (Leprechaun, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween) just love to reboot their timelines.

On a related note, there’s also an interesting tendency for some horror sequels to replace the killer, like Jason to Pamela and Halloween 3’s anthology approach. What are the worst attempts and any (if existent) successes?