Great horror movies introduce worlds and characters that people can’t get enough of. Whenever a horror film has an innovative premise and unforgettable villains or creatures, there is strong potential for franchise development. Universal’s monster movies from the ’20s and ’30s, and other contemporary black-and-white horror movies that still hold up today, have influenced generations of filmmakers. These iconic stories and creatures have made countless appearances in various films, TV shows, books, games, and all other mediums of storytelling imaginable.

Ghostface is a horror movie character who helped reshape genre expectations when Scream came out in 1996, by which time, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees had become slasher icons. Such characters make it lucrative for studios to invest in as many sequels, prequels, and even reboots as possible, because audiences will return for more action from them. However, turning classic horror movies into franchises isn’t necessarily good from an artistic viewpoint, because forcefully making up stories hurts the quality of writing and can potentially ruin a fantastic premise or character.

10

Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

Directed By Joe Berlinger

The temptation to make a sequel to The Blair Witch Project is understandable. Not only did the film revitalize and change the found footage genre forever, almost giving it mainstream popularity; it even gained a specific cult following. There were a significant number of viewers who developed conspiracy theories about the film not being fictional because the found footage made it look rather realistic.

However, not everything has sequel potential, or should be given a sequel. Haxan Films didn’t want to make a new one immediately, but Artisan Entertainment wanted to exploit the film’s prominence in discussions at the time. As a result, a poorly-thought-out and underdeveloped story without any compelling characterization was made. It doesn’t have a strong emotional core, and it feels like a shallow attempt to capture the first movie’s magic. The witch’s revenge is fun to watch, but the implication that metal music and horror movies make children psychopathic is questionable at best.

9

The Crow: City of Angels (1996)

Directed By Tim Pope

If you’re looking for a cheesy and dark movie to inspire your inner goth, look no further than The Crow. If you’re looking for a cheap imitation that ruins its legacy, look no further than The Crow: City of Angels. The entire point of The Crow was that it’s a one-time story. The тιтular character loses his powers by the end, is presumably ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, but has successfully avenged his ᴅᴇᴀᴅ fiancé after being brought back to life by a crow.

His popularity makes perfect sense because of his punk rock appearance, heavy metal music taste, benevolence, and hyper-violent fighting style. Eric Draven, aka the Crow, even inspired the WWE wrestler Sting’s appearance. So, it’s understandable that there was interest in the character, but The Crow: City of Angels just tells the same story again with a different protagonist. While the soundtrack is still great, like the first film, Mia Kirshner delivers a great performance, the movie is a disappointing attempt to cash in on people’s love for Brandon Lee’s Crow.

8

American Psycho II: All American Girl (2002)

Directed By Morgan J. Freeman

If Patrick Bateman from American Psycho is an unintentionally hilarious movie character, American Psycho II: All American Girl is an unintentionally horrendous sequel. Mary Harron’s film, based on Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, parodies the world of investment banking and the vapid capitalistic lifestyles of Wall Street brokers. If its sequel is trying to parody something, it’s unclear if the film itself knows what that is.

Mila Kunis plays a murderous college student who is willing to kill her classmates in order to become a criminology teaching ᴀssistant. The absurdity of being a psychopathic murderer as a means to speed up being employed by the FBI aside, the film’s writing entirely lacks coherence. Moreover, it is so obsessed with detaching itself from American Psycho that the new protagonist kills Patrick Bateman early on, destroying the character’s legacy. The film still fails to establish itself as new because Patrick Bateman is mentioned all the time, in what seems to be a poor attempt at keeping audiences interested.

7

Jaws 2 (1978)

Directed By Jeannot Szwarc

Picking the most influential Steven Spielberg film is a Herculean task, but it’s undeniable that Jaws, the movie that celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2025, is up there. It has entertained generations of fans in the half-century since its release. Spielberg never envisioned it as a franchise film, but Bruce the Shark became so popular, that the studio decided there should be at least one follow-up, if not more films after that.

As one would expect, the film fails to live up to the standards set by Spielberg. Is Jaws 2 a bad creature feature? Not by any means. It has thrilling sequences, characters you’ll find yourself caring about, and relatively memorable dialogue. However, it does feel like a series of bad creative decisions in the context of being the sequel to the first-ever summer blockbuster.

6

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)

Directed By Michael A. Simpson

Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp is a violent slasher that follows Angela, whose brother and father die in a boat accident. The ending reveals that Angela is the brother, forced to dress up and behave like a girl by her aunt. The film is often criticized for this harmful depiction of transgender people. However, I’d argue that since Angela was forced to pretend to be of a gender she was never comfortable identifying with, she experiences a kind of gender dysphoria. The film depicts how traumatizing that experience can be, and is thus not entirely transphobic.

However, this interpretation immediately comes undone when one watches its sequel, also written by Hiltzik, which suggests my reading of the first film wasn’t intended by him. Angela has seemingly transitioned and is happily working as a camp counselor now, no longer just killing people for hurting her. Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers is unambiguous in its transphobic characterization of Angela, who kills anyone who doesn’t adhere to her ridiculously strict code of conduct. She may be a slasher icon, but the sequel is ill-conceived, and its sequels are even worse, devolving into formulaic entries.

5

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

Directed By John Boorman

William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty, the director and the writer of The Exorcist, respectively, fell out over conflicts about the profits from the film and the production. So, they didn’t want to be involved in a sequel, and thus, Warner Bros. commissioned playwright William Goodhart to write the script. The sequel is different in its approach to the religious and demonic themes, taking the form of a metaphysical thriller.

Unfortunately, with a low budget, and constant rewriting, the film lost all its coherence and structure, especially because it kept being changed during filming. Linda Blair, who reprised her role as Regan from the first part, delivers a committed performance, but her character is inconsistently written. The infamous tap dancing scene remains one of the most cringe-worthy scenes in horror movie history. As a separate film, The Heretic may have been a funny and whimsical movie, but as a sequel to one of the greatest horror movies ever, it’s an abomination.

4

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)

Directed By Danny Cannon

Kevin Williamson broke onto the scene as a great horror writer with the first two Scream movies when he wrote another classic slasher movie in 1997, I Know What You Did Last Summer. It features Jennifer Love Hewitt in her breakout role, introducing viewers to the would-be scream queen of the early 2000s. A year later, Williamson wrote The Faculty, a horror movie with an incredible ensemble cast, while a sequel was developed to his 1997 film without his involvement.

While Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. reprise their roles from the first film, the sequel isn’t worth watching, and the first film should never have become a whole trilogy. It is a fun B-horror classic with a complete story that doesn’t need more to its story and doesn’t leave anything to be desired. Funding a trip via a fake contest seems like too much effort for a killer who could try getting revenge in the protagonist’s backyard. The incoherent plot details are too distracting to gloss over them and enjoy the violent slasher action.

3

The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)

Directed by Katt Shea

Brian de Palma’s Carrie, a movie whose trailer gives away important plot points, is one of the most iconic horror movies of the ’70s. It’s the first of many Stephen King movie adaptations, and has influenced uncountable teen horror movies over the years. While it has been remade quite a few times, there has only been one direct sequel, which should have been its own film. The Rage: Carrie 2 is not a bad horror film by any means. It’s a haunting exploration of Sєxism and Sєxual misconduct in high schools.

The protagonist, Rachel Lang, has supernatural powers she uses to avenge her best friend, who kills herself after being Sєxually exploited by a boy in school. Rachel’s story is one of feminine rage – she is fed up with the jock culture and the misogynistic bullying in her school. The temptation to turn the story into a Carrie sequel, wherein the ’70s classic is mentioned all the time, hurts the film, though. The sequel pales in comparison and doesn’t feel like much of a sequel anyway, thus disappointing fans of the original, who might watch it for more of the same.

2

Tremors 2: Aftershocks (1996)

Directed By S.S. Wilson

The 1990 creature feature Tremors is Kevin Bacon’s best horror movie, and might be getting a reboot soon. It introduced one of the most underrated creatures in horror movie history – the graboids, who live underground and terrify ground dwellers by causing the тιтular earthquakes and attacking them by burrowing up. While the film hadn’t done well at the box office, its home video distribution had returned significant profits, thus suggesting interest in a sequel.

However, Reba McEntire, who was touring at the time of production, and Kevin Bacon, who chose to instead take up his job offer for Apollo 13, never returned for the sequel. With Fred Ward alone, a slashed budget, S.S. Wilson directing for free, and many good special effects sequences scrapped, Tremors 2: Aftershocks is nothing like what it was intended to be. It was released straight to video, but naturally underperformed. The fact that every subsequent sequel is worse makes one wonder if Tremors should even have become a franchise.

1

Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Directed By Jean-Pierre Jeunet

David Fincher’s directorial debut, Alien 3, is considered his worst film, and the worst possible follow-up to Alien and Aliens, which introduced the world to iconic female action hero, Ellen Ripley. Ripley came into the genre when it was significantly more male-dominated than it is today, and changed the face of sci-fi alongside Princess Leia from Star Wars. However, fans would have to wait half a decade after Fincher’s film for the worst entry in the franchise.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection, written by Joss Whedon, features Sigourney Weaver as a clone of her iconic character. She has become a sort of Petri dish for xenomorph breeding because scientists have infused her with xenomorph DNA and are using her body to grow xenomorph embryos. Yes, Ripley fights back, and there is a potential to explore how women’s bodies are commodified. However, the film’s poor dialogue, fetishistic gaze, and conflicting tones reduce it to an incoherent mess that brought the Alien franchise to a halt for a while. This horror sequel should never have been made.