10 Horror Movie Sequels That Were Just Too Cruel

The recently released The Exorcist: Believer has been largely pilloried by fans and critics alike both for being a bad Exorcist sequel and a bad horror movie, period.

David Gordon Green's sequel to the original 1973 Exorcist makes a number of missteps which, while bold, ultimately left most frustrated and annoyed.

First and foremost, Green managed to coax the brilliant Ellen Burstyn back to reprise the role of Chris MacNeil a half-century later, only to have her character receive an absolutely loathsome treatment.

For starters, she's been estranged from her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) for decades due to writing a memoir about her experiences in the first film. But far more egregiously, she's eventually blinded when one of the two demonically possessed girls, Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), stabs her in the eyes.

Yet perhaps even worse than this? At the end of the movie, the demon presents the parents of the girls with a choice, to pick which one will live and which one will die.

Katherine's father Tony (Norbert Leo Butz) ends up choosing Katherine, only for the demon to reveal that the chosen child would be the one to die, not survive, at which point Katherine is dragged to Hell.

If not strictly the worst of all the Exorcist follow-ups, Believer is surely the most tonally off-kilter, taking the inherent hope of William Friedkin's original and tossing it out almost completely - despite what its flowery final moments might try to tell you.