10 Horror Movie Sequels That Saved The Franchise

If there's one thing which made the iconic slasher Halloween so effective, it was the simplicity driving the classic horror.

Masked murderer Michael Myers was an unstoppable force of evil who killed for the sake of it, and his remorseless monstrosity made him an instantly iconic figure in the genre.

The first film's director John Carpenter admitted that the idea to reveal that the heroine, final girl Laurie Strode, was Michael's secret sister came to him "at 2am surrounded by empty beer cans", and many fans argue that it shows. This twist led the franchise to become bogged down by byzantine backstory, with the plot growing more complex in every subsequent instalment.

Only a full-blown rehaul could salvage this twisty, over-complicated plot, which is exactly what indie director David Gordon Green opted to do with 2018's simply titled, simply told Halloween, the hard reboot necessary to save Carpenter’s never-ending franchise. The presence of Halloween's returning star Jamie Lee Curtis let the 2018 film quickly dismiss the "secret family" story and return to the first film's unrelenting intensity as a result.