10 Horror Movie Franchises That Forgot How To Be Scary

At the time of its release, The Exorcist was considered the scariest film ever made. Based on William Peter Blatty's novel, William Friedkin's film follows the tortured Reagan, a young girl whose demonic possession gradually gets worse until she's puking pea soup and shouting obscenities at priests.

Its slow-build, genuine characters and subtle shocks blended with the intensity of the final exorcism made it a legitimate hit and begged for a sequel.

No one expected said sequel to include James Earl Jones in a bee costume though.

Whatever goodwill Friedkin built up with the first film was almost instantly squandered with the sequel, which focusses on confusing lore, dull hypnosis scenes and a typically solid director (John Boorman) seemingly having no investment in the project. To say that The Exorcist II is bad isn't enough - it's BORINGLY bad.

The hospital scenes that populate the first half of Friedkin's film, for instance, are just as hard to sit through as the demonic ones, as a young girl's body is invaded with arduous medical tests. In part II, she mainly just stares at blinking lights and has visions of locusts.

Part III, directed by Blatty himself, tries to regain some bonafides and does contain a scene fans claim is one of the scariest in the genre, but studio interference marred the rest of the project.

Studios also screwed the prequel, which started as a semi-interesting Paul Schrader project before more violence and jump scares were demanded and action director Renny Harlin was hired to reshoot it.