10 Great Horror Movie Characters Ruined By Terrible Sequels

Time for a really obscure one now. 

When the Ring Novel Series was being adapted to film, the producers made a bizarre choice. They decided to make and release Ring and its sequel, Spiral, simultaneously... with different filmmakers and creative teams at the helm. Ring deviated from the books and was a fully-fledged supernatural horror film, Spiral is more faithful to the novels and leans into the sci-fi elements. 

It's hard to believe that anyone actually thought this was a good idea. While Ring, a horror masterpiece, was a huge hit Spiral bombed, so much so that the studio made a new (and better) sequel to replace it the next year. It deserved to bomb, for it's too dull and poorly-written to work on its own terms while also completely failing as a sequel. The tone and genre are radically changed, the story doesn't follow on from what was established in Ring and worst of all, every character from the original is ruined. 

Ring's protagonist Reiko (Nanako Matsushima) and her son Yoichi (Rikiya Otaka) are weightlessly killed off-screen, while Ryuji's (Hiroyuki Sanada) entire character is retconned. According to this sequel, he was working with the original film's ghost antagonist, Sadako, all along - like that makes any sense! And as for Sadako herself? The cursed tape barely features and she's no longer one of the most terrifying movie ghosts ever, she's now a sexualized supernatural femme fatale who spends all her screen-time with her face uncovered. 

'Misjudged' is an understatement.