10 Horror Movies Ruined By Listening To The Fans

While movie franchises should absolutely try and serve the interests of their fanbase if they want to enjoy long-term profitability and success, there's certainly a limit to this, where it simply ends up stifling - even ruining - the end product.

Sometimes fans just lack the critical distance necessary to appreciate the creative direction a sequel needs to take, and that's especially true where horror is concerned, given the genre's penchant for boasting some of the most enthusiastic and obsessive fandoms in all of pop-culture.

For though the fans of these respective franchises made it vocally clear online what they wanted to see next, they made these requests without considering how things would likely pan out in the execution. After all, just because an idea sounds good doesn't mean it'll play well on-screen.

But in an attempt to chase the money, the producers and filmmakers fell in line, indulging fans' silliest, most fan-serving, and perhaps even creatively bankrupt requests, resulting in critical and/or commercial failure and a general downturn for the series in question.

Some franchises managed to survive this dud entry and still march on to this very day, while others were categorically taken out for the count by lending an overly sympathetic ear to the fanbase...

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension was the sixth entry into the hit found footage franchise, and while the series was still reliably turning a hefty profit at this point, the law of diminishing returns had long since set in.

As such, The Ghost Dimension was marketed as the last entry into the series, and after five movies of seeing the various characters tormented by the demonic entity "Tobi," audiences wanted to finally, finally actually see what the creature looked like.

Up to this point, Tobi was an invisible entity which attacked sight-unseen - the most we ever got to see of him was powdered footprints in the first movie - but The Ghost Dimension finally decided to indulge fans' rabid curiosity and show them what Tobi looked like. And hoo boy, it wasn't good.

The film, which was also shot in 3D for added desperation, abandoned all of the series' remaining subtlety and envisioned Tobi as a generic CGI ghoul whose face flew close to the screen, ensuring those who forked out for the 3D presentation got their apparent money's worth.

And finally, it ended with Tobi being transformed into a human, though we never ended up seeing more than his legs and feet.

Granted, the series was already on the creative skids by this point, but Paranormal Activity is a textbook example of the unknown being infinitely more compelling than peeling back the curtain.