10 Horror Movie Franchises That Wasted Their Perfect Ending

As it stands, we're on the cusp of welcoming the 13th entry in the Halloween series to the silver screen later this month. In amongst those 13 features, of course, there's various different threads of continuity.

Do you follow the trajectory of Halloween through to Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers? Do you follow the canon that features the first two films then ignores everything until Halloween H20 and Halloween Resurrection? Do you somehow discount all of that and see Rob Zombie's duo of pictures as your Halloween? Or do you go with the most recent continuity tweak where David Gordon Green's ongoing trilogy of films discounts everything bar John Carpenter's original 1978 offering?

A brilliant companion piece to the first film, Rick Rosenthal's Halloween II serves as a pretty perfect ending for the then-burgeoning franchise. Picking up the action directly after its predecessor, on the night he came home, this follow-up sees Michael Myers stalk Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode to the hospital. There, we get a fiery climax where Myers is purportedly burned alive while The Chordettes' Mr. Sandman eerily plays over the sight of Michael's flaming body. Added to that, it's also suggested that Loomis has likewise gone down in a blaze of glory to take out his foe and save Laurie.

In actuality, Halloween II was originally intended to bring a close to the tale of Michael Myers, Laurie Strode and Sam Loomis. The plan from here on out was for new entries in the franchise to focus on fresh stories and characters, though the disappointing response to the Michael-less Halloween III: Season of the Witch caused a rethink which saw the Shape brought back into the fold for the aptly-titled Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.