6. Prequels
Hollywood is definitely too reliant on prequels. "Find out the how the horror began", they tell us, as they serve up origin stories to the likes of The Silence of the Lambs, Halloween, The Thing and so on, but is this really something we need to know? Weren't Hannibal Lecter and Michael Myers always scarier when we didn't know why they were so bad, when it was ambiguous, and the possibility was entertained that perhaps they were just, you know, evil? These sorts of prequels take away all the mystique, and usually come up with terrible explanations anyway that prove largely unsatisfying and somewhat ruin our memory of the original property. Then we get prequels like The Thing, which basically may as well not even be known as a prequel. Aside from ending where the first film begins, it is thematically a complete re-tread of the original film, cycling through pretty much the same beats, and certainly being more tolerable as a soulless remake than a lazy prequel. It gives so little to the viewer that it's a wonder a studio ever signed off on it, and the fact they dared to even give it the same name as the original film only enhances this sentiment.