10 Horror Movie Franchises That Went Out With A Whimper
Those horror franchises which ultimately ended in such disappointing fashion.
For any film franchise, it's so important to maintain a high level of quality with each passing picture, ensuring you please your existing fanbase while also trying to reach a new audience with each outing. And that task seems to be even harder when it comes to the world of horror.
In this murky corner of cinema, so many franchises have seen a strong foundation ruined by a stinker of an ending. At times, these endings were always intended to wrap up a franchise, sadly concluding things on such a dour note. In other cases, these endings weren't planned, with the sheer awfulness of a film forcing a franchise to quietly sail off into the sunset amidst fan unhappiness and dwindling interest in a property. Heck, some franchises may even come to a wet fart of an ending, only to return years later in some fashion... only for that return to culminate in an even more frustrating endpoint for a series.
With that in mind, then, here are ten notable horror franchises that unfortunately disappointed the masses with the way things wrapped up.
10. The Omen
The Omen franchise wrapped things up in such strange fashion back in 1991, delivering a made-for-TV movie which was just all kinds of lazy. Lazy how, you ask? Why, that's because the film, while serving as a sequel, lazily told such a similar story to the iconic original Omen from 1976.
On the back of the promising but sadly disappointing duo of Damien: Omen II and Omen III: The Final Conflict, Omen IV: The Awakening was developed for TV and centred on young Delia, the daughter of Damien Thorn. Frustratingly, The Awakening spends so much of its runtime just mimicking parts of the first picture; a mysterious child looked after by non-biological parents, a Rottweiler protecting the child, strange deaths for those looking into this child's roots, growing parental suspicions that the child might be the Antichrist, and even a devilish nanny overseeing the situation.
While it's not a straight-up do-over of the entire narrative of The Omen, this fourth film is just so void of new ideas. Well, bar one late bizarre surprise where Delia impregnated her adopted mother with the seed of her twin brother, who would be the actual Antichrist. Uhu...
Of course, The Omen did eventually live on with A&E's Damien TV series... but the less said about that the better. Also, currently flying a little under the radar, is a prequel movie - The First Omen - scheduled for an April release.