10 Movie Sequels With Massively Improved Rotten Tomatoes Scores
3. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (20%) To Wes Craven's New Nightmare (78%)
Score Difference: 58%
Another long-running horror franchise, the Nightmare On Elm Street movies have dipped up and down in quality just as much as Child's Play has, with 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare being a standout low point.
The sixth Elm Street film in seven years, Final Nightmare is the movie that finally turned Freddy Krueger into a Looney Tunes-trickster instead of the murderous, bloodthirsty devil he was always meant to be.
Krueger is pretty funny in this movie, whether he's riding a broom and quoting Wizard Of Oz, or dancing around and taunting behind a deaf would-be victim. But all this is also pretty stupid, and without a menacing baddie on display, it's hard to take anything seriously and the whole movie just falls flat.
Three years later, Wes Craven's New Nightmare (which stands outside the continuity of the preceding films, but is still considered a sequel) was able to effortlessly rectify this problem, once again making Freddy the dark, scary villain we all wanted to see.
Critics agreed, and, after the original film, New Nightmare's 78% score is currently the best in the series.