10 Horror Movies That Changed Their Franchise
For better or worse, those horror films which changed the foundations of their franchises.
No genre of film is as widely associated with franchises as the horror genre. Over the decades, this murky corner of cinema has spawned a whole multitude of long-running franchises, with certain series even managing to hit double-digits when it comes to the amount of movies under their particular banner. For example, Puppet Master has somehow amassed 15 films, Halloween's various assorted canons clock in at 13 outings, and Hellraiser has an extremely mixed bag of 11 offerings.
Of course, the initial kernel of an idea that launched a franchise isn't always necessarily adhered to with each new feature. With each new film often bringing with it involvement from new personnel and involving new ideas, there are certain pictures which ultimately end up completely changing their respective franchise. And it's on those pictures that the spotlight is on here.
With all of that taken into account, then, here are ten such horror movies which changed the tone, direction, or wider narrative of their franchises. Sometimes those changes were very much for the better, but other times? Yeah, other times, maybe not so much...
10. A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Admittedly, A Nightmare on Elm Street had at least a smidge of dark humour to it ever since Wes Craven delivered the franchise's first instalment in 1984. The problem is, as the series progressed, the genuine sense of dread and nerve-shredding terror got put more and more on the backburner in place of, at times, outright slapstick comedy.
The film that cemented this change, was Renny Harlin's A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. This was the Elm Street movie that fully embraced the mainstream, that fully embraced pop culture, and that fully did its all to present Freddy Krueger as a knowing, winking villain who was essentially 'in' on the joke.
Granted, The Dream Master was the best performing Elm Street film at the box office up until Freddy vs. Jason rolled around 15 years later, but that's again indicative of how the series and Krueger were moving away from their genuinely chilling roots in order to appeal to the masses.
This pattern of chuckles over scares would only become more prevalent with A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child the following year; to the point that this 'horror' franchise had nowhere left to go but to kill off Krueger in 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.