10 Horror Movies That Got Better YEARS Later

10. Psycho II

Though Psycho II will always be popularly regarded as an inferior sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's iconic original, it's also a film that got a majorly bad rap for decades.

While many dismissed it out of hand as a belated cash-in coming some 23 years after the first movie, Psycho II has actually been vindicated by time as the first major horror legacy sequel. 

Literally, decades before we had Halloween 2018 or Scream 2022, Psycho II saw the murderous Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) return home after spending 22 years in a mental institution. At the same time, a new killer - or perhaps Norman himself - starts offing some of the locals.

All the typical legacy sequel hallmarks are here - namely, dusting off a couple of O.G. characters to stand alongside a bevy of new ones, while offering up a number of homages to the original movie - and it's a genuinely very well-crafted sequel, even if it unavoidably suffers from being a follow-up to one of the greatest horror movies of all time. 

Psycho II's own legacy, however, lies in setting the template - albeit inadvertently - for basically every navel-gazing legacy sequel, good or bad, that followed.