10 Horror Movie Franchises That Should Have Stopped At One Film
Does anyone ACTUALLY remember The Woman In Black: Angel Of Death?
When looking at the various genres that exist in cinema, it seems that horror films always spawn the most sequels. There are numerous reasons for this. A lot of the time, horror movies are made with a small budget and bring major big box office returns. Films like Paranormal Activity have proven this.
However, the constant pumping out of content often means that the films are rushed, don't service the original or are just completely unnecessary. The sequels can also be a rinse and repeat of the previous films with less memorable characters and over-reliance on cheap scares.
That's not to say that all horror sequels are terrible. Friday The 13th, A Nightmare On Elm Street and Halloween are celebrated because of their longevity. It just so happens that the bad outweighs the good, and some of these franchises need to be put to rest.
This, of course, won't happen. The success of Blumhouse and the found-footage boom of the 2000s means that Hollywood will drive horror franchises into the ground. Like the villains who inhabit them, some of these horror franchises are un-killable.
10. V/H/S
V/H/S is a whacky adventure. Releasing at the tail end of the found-footage boom in 2013, V/H/S was an anthology film that focused on various different horror tales all woven together with an overarching narrative. It proved surprisingly effective; however, the sequels were...subpar to say the least.
V/H/S 2 veered too far into the fantastical, and while it did implement some clever ideas such as the GoPro zombie story, the overall film felt like a cluster bomb of nonsense. The third film in the series took the film "VIRAL" and it ultimately fell completely flat.
Neither of these sequels lived up to the hype brought on by the first film. It was such a clever idea to have horror filmmakers like Adam Wingard and David Bruckner direct horror short films and then stitch them together into one spooky package. Unfortunately, the idea just didn't have legs and the gimmick ran its course very quickly.