10 Horror Movie Sequels MASSIVELY Better Than The Original
3. When A Stranger Calls Back
1979's When a Stranger Calls earns a lot of goodwill because of how exquisitely crafted its opening 20 minutes are.
Yet the rest of the film - and especially that flabby middle hour - categorically struggles to live up to such a stellar first act, ultimately feeling packed with filler at even just 97 minutes in length.
Bizarrely, despite the film's massive box office success, a sequel wasn't produced until 14 years later, and more oddly, ended up being released direct to cable TV.
1993's A Stranger Calls Back brought Carol Kane and Charles Durning back into the fold along with original writer-director Fred Walton, for a belated sequel that most unexpectedly outdid what came before.
Though it suffers from the same structural issues - the first and third acts are the strongest - it doesn't feel nearly as padded as the original, while weaving a more consistently unsettling story.
Impressively, Walton crafts an opening sequence that at least matches if not bests the first film, while segueing into an exploration of trauma that's allowed it to age shockingly well over the last three decades.
If you quite understandably dismissed When A Stranger Calls Back as a lazy, belated cash-in, it's worth giving it a second look.