10 Horror Movie Sequels That Saved The Franchise
The sillier slashers! The scarier possessions! The self-referential instalments!
Every horror fan is familiar with the sad experience of seeing a once-beloved franchise fall apart thanks to a deluge of lesser instalments.
Slasher cinema is the most frequent victim of this phenomenon, as the simple set up of "masked killer offs a new set of forgettable teens" can become stale pretty quickly, even when said killer is as iconic as Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees or Halloween's Michael Myers.
However, sometimes the arrival of an ambitious new director (or the return of the original creator) can herald a franchise's rebirth, and means a return to form after the diminishing returns of recent instalments.
In some cases listed here, an inventive director changed the story's setting to reignite audience interest. In some, the now-laughable villain was rendered scarier than ever by stripping away convoluted backstory and returning to the raw horror roots of the franchise.
Whether they were funnier, scarier, gorier, or sillier, these are ten horror instalments which prevented their franchises from falling apart as fast as the victims of their villains.
10. The Purge: Anarchy
Let's face it: Whilst 2013's The Purge was an effective slice of social satire and home invasion horror, it didn't really exploit the promise of the film's ingenious premise.
The first film in the series starred Ethan Hawke as a harried suburban dad whose questionable morals are thrown into sharp relief when his creepy but well-meaning kid allows a vagrant to shelter from the eponymous violent free-for-all in their palatial upper class home.
Perfectly serviceable as a home invasion movie, the film didn't give viewers any idea of the Purge's scope, how it came into existence, and why any government would sanction such a brutal tradition. Luckily, that's why we have The Purge: Anarchy,
This bracing, brilliant action-oriented sequel took the Purge out of the suburbs and into the inner city, realising the series’ potential for both witty political satire and larger scale set pieces at once. Following a more diverse group of survivors, the film deepened the lore of the series whilst also providing some unsparing criticisms of American society and culture which were only implied by the more demure first film.