10 Horror Movie Characters Who Died Off-Screen In The Sequel
We never got to see these characters die.
It's basically a time-honoured tradition in the horror genre that, where franchises are concerned, characters who survive the original movie have a massive target painted on their back for the sequels.
It's incredibly rare for long-running horror franchises to keep characters tenured indefinitely, with Scream's Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) perhaps being the most impressive outlier.
For better or worse, it's far more common for surviving characters to get killed off in a sequel one way or another. While this can certainly be meaningful if the original actor returns and gets an arc worthy of their popularity, often it ends up feeling more than a little perfunctory.
And this never sucks more than when a horror sequel just straight-up kills a character off without the visual payoff - that is, they're sent packing off-screen.
In the very least, an outgoing character should be dealt a memorable, ideally gory death that's actually worth remembering, rather than being casually disposed of. There are myriad reasons for this - such as scheduling conflicts or the original actor refusing to return - but it's almost never satisfying to watch unfold...
10. Sara Wolfe - Return To House On Haunted Hill
1999's remake of House on Haunted Hill may not be a great movie, but it certainly has its fans, and memorably concludes with Sara Wolfe (Ali Larter) and Eddie Baker (Taye Diggs) just barely making it out of the haunted house in one piece.
You may or may not even know that a sequel exists, but indeed, Return to House on Haunted Hill was released direct-to-video in 2007, yet neither Sara nor Eddie return - at least not alive, anyway.
The sequel instead follows Sara's sister Ariel (Amanda Righetti), who years after the events of the first film learns that Sara has committed suicide. However, it's subsequently revealed that she was actually murdered by villainous art dealer Desmond Niles (Erik Palladino), who then staged her demise as a suicide.
Sara's ghost does make a brief appearance in the sequel, albeit played by Stilyana Mitkova rather than Ali Larter. All in all, it'd be easier to get annoyed about this if anyone even remotely cared about a sequel to House on Haunted Hill.
Just... keep pretending it doesn't exist, right?