10 Horror Franchises That Spectacularly Bounced Back

8. Halloween

Chucky Tiffany Valentine Nica Pierce
Dimension Films

Granted, the franchise has certainly suffered a further slump in the aftermath of Halloween H20, but that 1998 Steve Miner picture was a glorious high point for a series which had sadly become a source of mockery for its previous few films.

Yes, John Carpenter's 1978 original is an all-timer, a revolutionary movie which helped usher in the slasher boom and reinvigorated the wider horror genre, but some of the features which followed that first Halloween were extremely ropey.

Halloween II is one of the most underrated sequels in horror history, Halloween III: Season of the Witch has thankfully been reappraised as a sci-fi horror classic in recent years, and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers has a monumental shocker at its close, but the fifth and sixth Halloween films left the franchise down and out.

Of course, those films - Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers - undid the impressive work of Halloween 4 and sent the series in the dreaded Cult of Thorn direction which explained how Michael was under a curse that forced him to kill his own family on Halloween.

Ignoring the events of everything bar the first two Halloweens, H20 was a breath of fresh air, bringing back Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode for one more battle with the Shape, featuring some of the franchise's best kills, and concluding with a shocking decapitation.

Well, that is until Halloween: Resurrection rolled around four years later and sank the franchise again, which itself was followed by Rob Zombie's opinion-splitting Halloween films, and then David Gordon Green's likewise opinion-splitting trilogy.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.