Only a pessimist would write off 2016 after 6 weeks, but if youre a horror fan, the years highest profile releases dont inspire much confidence. Once again, sequels and reboots look set to dominate multiplexes, or if they dont float your boat theres always an adaptation of Stephen Kings novel Cell. Yippee. On VOD, things arent much better. Released on 12 February, Travis Zariwnys remake of Cabin Fever (2002) currently holds a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was dismissed by the Los Angeles Times as perfunctory and insipid. Variety called it a repurposed dud while Nick Allen said it was one of those questionably greedy, Xeroxed remakes, where its business is in restating, not just restarting or rebooting, what the original has done. Nobody believes that these films are going to be good, so pointing out that theyre not up to much feels like a redundancy. Far more interesting than the pictures themselves are the curious economics behind them: the pulse to prolong a franchise is financial rather than creative so expectations are never high, and when audiences turn up to see how bad the results are, their curiosity is mistaken for enjoyment and helps greenlight another instalment. The following films are perfect examples, ranked according to curiosity.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
