10 Horror Movie Franchises With No Bad Movies

Those horror franchises that have managed to avoid serving up a total dud.

Fear Street Part 2: 1978 Sadie Sink
Netflix

While superhero features are frantically playing catch-up, no genre of film is more synonymous with franchises than the horror genre.

Given the relatively cheap cost historically associated with putting a horror picture together, it doesn't take a lot for even bad movies to spin a significant profit. And where there's profit, there will always be an eagerness to return to the well and milk the proverbial cow dry. As such, a horror feature can easily spawn sequel after sequel after sequel after... you get the idea.

Heck, it's not just sequels, but prequels, requels, spin-offs, remakes, reboots, and reimaginings can be brought to the fore as a kernel of an idea is revisited time and time again. For example, the Halloween franchise currently stands at 14 movies; the Friday the 13th series consists of 11 entries and a crossover with A Nightmare on Elm Street; Hellraiser clocks in at a 11 films; and then there's the Amityville Horror IP, which currently has over 40 movies to its name.

Of course, those franchises have all had some major bumps in the road over the years, but there are those rare beasts that can continue to put out film after film without serving up something truly awful.

With that in mind, then, the following ten franchises have (so far) managed to successfully not put out a bad movie.

10. Final Destination

Fear Street Part 2: 1978 Sadie Sink
New Line Cinema

Sure, the formula of the Final Destination films is extremely repetitive, but it's always extremely effective.

Of course, that formula centres around someone having a premonition of an atrocity that's about to play out, managing to avoid that atrocity, and then that person and their fellow survivors are all stalked by the Grim Reaper. The part of this formula that's particularly great in regards to generating dread and keeping audiences on the edge of their seats, is that we know the bulk of these characters are destined to die; we just don't know how they're destined to die.

As such, every scene has you scouring the screen, looking for an item or a situation that could result in somebody's demise.

Across the five Final Destination movies, we've had the Volée Airlines Flight 180 explosion, we've had the Route 23 accident, we've had the rogue Devil's Flight roller coaster ride, we've had the McKinley Speedway pile-up, and we've had the North Bay Bridge disaster.

Not only do all of those film-opening sequences jump from the screen due to their sheer energy, but they also provide subtle clues as to how each of our soon-to-be survivors may be offed later on.

Also, the Final Destination franchise will forever get huge props for its all-timer of a reveal at the end of Final Destination 5, where it's shockingly shown how the film was a prequel as its ending dovetails into the Flight 180 tragedy of the first FD's opening act.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.