10 Awesome Horror Movies With Disappointing Sequels

The Silence of the Lambs broke new ground in 1992, becoming the first, and still only, horror movie to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, which it swept with seven nominations, winning five.

Director Jonathan Demme’s film follows FBI agent Clarice Sterling (Jodie Foster), who consults the psychiatrist/cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) from his prison cell to help solve the case of a new serial killer, Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). The movie is brimming with iconic scenes and lines, and continues to be analysed and picked apart today, the way Lecter might do to his dinner.

It was ten years before we got a sequel, Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, starring the returning Hopkins as well as Julianne Moore and Gary Oldman. Despite the massive anticipation and talent involved, the movie received mixed reviews, with praise for the performances but criticism towards the lack of tension and character depth compared to Lambs.

The sequel gap was closed dramatically when the prequel Red Dragon was released a year later to warmer reviews, but continued unfavourable comparisons to the first film. Then another prequel, Hannibal Rising was released in 2007, to atrocious reviews. However, the franchise did finally begin to redeem itself with the Hannibal TV series (2013-15), starring Mads Mikkelsen.