Horror movie sequels have become an expected part of the genre. You can’t have a slasher killer without them turning up again and again down the track. We’ve even gotten to the point where it’s assumed that the sequels will suck, but we go along with them anyway (even when they’re in 3D) and that’s part of the fun. Some of them are so awful – such as Troll 2 - that they make for good comedy.
These aren’t so bad that they’re good…they’re just bad. Very, very bad.
#10 – Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning
By the time you’ve gotten to the fifth entry in a franchise you can assume that you’re doing something that pleases your audience. So you don’t need to mix things up, and you really don’t need to exclude your central character. For the most part the audience thinks that Jason is up to his old tricks but is later revealed to be a copycat killer. Way to take a completely mediocre experience and ruin the one good thing about it.
#9 – Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows
So some studio execs had the rights to a surprisingly successful indie horror and an itch for money. Ignoring the very things that made the first one stand out – the ‘found footage’ motif and the marketing – they quickly slapped the title onto the first shitty horror script they pulled out the garbage. What’s the book of shadows? It never gets a mention. Why the opening scene of the main character in an asylum? Did they actually kill people or was the footage doctored? Did no-one in the movie have any acting ability whatsoever? Confused, stupid and pointless.
#8 – Saw 2
Saw sequels always managed to pull in enough of a following the keep the franchise going, which is surprising given the second one. What made the first film work was the restricted one room setting that kept the tension tight and allowed the two main characters to develop. Going in the complete opposite direction this sequel put eight underwritten characters in a large house. The first Saw was a great stand alone thriller and although it did find it’s feet as a larger story this was a mis-step.
#7 – Rob Zombie’s Halloween
Here’s what made Halloween scary – he was pure evil. Michael Myers’ motivation and his need to kill is a mystery and that’s what made him scary. Even his mask being a blank face was chosen to reflect this. Apparently self proclaimed ‘horror movie expert’ Rob Zombie needed this explained to him because his prequel focused on giving Myers a motivation and taking every tiny little bit of mystery away from the story. Turns out he’s unstoppably evil because he had a shitty redneck family. Going out his way to explain where Myers got his boiler suit redefines pointlessness. Even if you ignore all this, the movie is shot like a drunk possum was operating the camera and violent, crashing fights can go unheard by people in the next room.
#6 – I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
Sometimes a horror movies feels custom designed for a number of sequels, like A Nightmare on Elm Street. This is not one of these movies. I Know What You Did Last Summer should have been a stand alone story. Restocking the cast with such talent as Freddie Prince Jr and Brandy plus an uncredited Jack Black as the background stoner (above), they get ‘tricked’ into going to the Bahamas where they get taunted by a karaoke machine before the fisherman guy turns up with a re-written backstory.
#5 – Hellraiser 4: Bloodlines
One of the strengths of the Hellraiser franchise is that the setting can be changed without mucking up the canon. Sadly they rarely take full advantage of this concept and just turn out crap, more interested in dreaming up weirder looking Cenobites. Bloodlines is exceptionally crummy…so much so that the director disowned it. To be fair the most recent ‘found footage’ entry into the series looks awful, but I didn’t watch it because reasons.
#4 – Halloween 3: Season of the Witch
John Carpenter did float the idea that the Halloween franchise could function as a cinematic Twilight Zone – different stories with a similar motif, in this case Halloween. It may have worked if the first attempt wasn’t this weird shit. The new bestselling Halloween masks required all wearers to watch TV at a certain time for some reason. At the end everyone wearing the mask turns into bugs. For some reason.
#3 – From Dusk ‘Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money
When the Robert Rodriquez helmed vampire horror starring George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis and featuring effects by Tom Savini became a hit the studio quickly put out two sequels. The first of these was the same plot as the first done on a tiny fraction of the original budget. The only returning actor is Danny Trejo, playing a different bartender who for reasons unknown looks identical to the other one. The director has a weird fetish for awkward POV shots that include attaching a character’s stetson to the top of the lens and rotating the camera to reflect the POV of a door knob.
#2 – Jaws: The Revenge
#1 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – The Next Generation
This movie has the honor of being one of the two movies I have turned off part way through with no intention of ever finishing it (the other being Love Actually). Even though it boasts stars like Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger it is one of the worst movies of all time. Characters and plot threads come in and get dropped with reason, characters turn up in different places without explanation…everything is just bad. This is a clusterfuck of movie that you can’t even laugh at.
