10 Great Horror Movie Characters Ruined By Terrible Sequels

No genre has more sequels than horror and while there are exceptions, an awful lot of horror sequels suck. Far too many of them are focused on milking a story far past its sell-by date in order to create a profitable franchise and, in these often-endless narratives, characterisation nearly always takes a back seat. 

Horror sequels do have a nasty habit of screwing over the characters from their predecessors, prioritizing long-term financial success over good character arcs. Some horror sequels thoughtlessly kill off their predecessor's characters for cheap shocks, others retcon a previous victory in order to keep the sequel factory going and others just keep throwing all of these unearned narrative curveballs at viewers in order to create new story opportunities. 

Alternatively, there are other sequels which did, on paper, feel like a justified continuation of a story but proceeded to take the characters in completely the wrong direction. As a general rule of thumb, it's best not to get too attached to any horror movie characters. This is a genre where no-one is safe, be it from the monster or from terrible writing choices, and these following ten sequels are all reminders of this...

Annabelle the Doll wasn't actually in 2013's The Conjuring that much and she wasn't even a part of the main storyline. Having said this, that's easy to forget - such was the impact of this sinister doll. 

She was so creepy, creating an overwhelming sense of dread every second she was on-screen, and she instantly became the single most iconic element of this wildly successful franchise, which is one of the only cinematic universes outside of the MCU that's actually worked out. 

As such, when a spin-off about the character was announced it seemed more than justified, and audiences were thrilled to see more of Annabelle, who seemed set to be a terrifying killer doll for the ages. They... shouldn't have been. 

2014's Annabelle was a disappointingly mediocre spin-off to such a great horror film as The Conjuring, and arguably its biggest problem was, believe it or not, Annabelle herself. It turns out that the doll itself isn't really malevolent. Rather, some generic demon has latched onto the doll but the doll itself rarely plays a big part in the movie's scares. And thus, Annabelle stopped being any sort of presence and just became a vaguely creepy prop. 

The two subsequent Annabelle films - 2017's Annabelle: Creation and 2019's Annabelle Comes Home - were quite a bit better yet both also struggled to work out what to do with Annabelle herself. She's still iconic but ironically enough, she hasn't been particularly effective in the majority of her big-screen appearances.