10 Worst Horror Prequels Ever Made

Finally, the prequel nobody wanted... not even the man who wrote it.

Forced into writing a Hannibal Lecter prequel by producer Dino De Laurentis ("if you don't do [the prequel], I will do it with somebody else"), so Thomas Harris hashed out the unfortunate Hannibal Rising, which details the earliest days and upbringing of Hannibal the cannibal. Making the best of a bad lot, the story has Hannibal hunting the war criminals who ate his sister, learning to become a samurai (really) and himself developing a taste for human flesh...

By far and away the worst of the Hannibal Lecter movies, this prequel is saddled with an atrocious Hannibal (model Gaspard Ulliel), a bad Rhys Ifans performance, an even worse script ("you're always hurting the bullies") and demistifies the horror icon to the point where we never want to see his face again.

Thankfully, eventually we would, in Bryan Fuller's Hannibal, which not only managed to make its prequel status work but also (the bare, bare bones of) Hannibal Rising. Delectable.