10 Horror Movie Sequels That Took Risks... And Failed
4. Spiral
It's time to look at an obscure sequel now, one which shows exactly how not to do a follow-up.
1998's J-Horror masterpiece Ring was based on a popular novel, and the producers decided to make the sequel, Spiral, at the same time. That's already a risky strategy - Ring was ultimately a huge hit, but that wasn't guaranteed - and what makes this even more ridiculous is that the two films were done with different creative teams, resulting in two radically different pictures.
Ring was a straight-up horror flick that deviated from the novel, while Spiral was more faithful, indulging in complicated sci-fi shenanigans and outright undermining Ring's story on multiple occasions.
Like quite a few of the other sequels on this list, Spiral is a bad movie even when taken on its own terms, thanks to its terrible narrative and lack of scares. Having said this, it gets several times worse when treated as a sequel to Ring, as it feels so completely divorced from that first film in every way imaginable. This is one of the weirdest horror sequels of all time - and not in a good way.
Financially, this strategy also failed as Spiral was a massive bomb compared to Ring, so much so that a new, better sequel was made the next year, one which ignored Spiral.