20 Things Horror Movies NEED To Stop Doing
11. The "Final" Movie That Isn't
It's been a running joke for decades at this point that when a horror movie has the word "final" in its title, it's basically a guarantee that it won't be the last one.
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter was merely the fourth entry into a franchise with a dozen installments to its name, there have been three additional A Nightmare on Elm Street movies since Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, Saw: The Final Chapter wasn't, and The Final Destination had another sequel just two years later.
While many fans will ultimately be happy that these beloved franchises have endured, there's also value in committing to a concrete ending and actually meaning it.
The most recent horror series to fall foul of this is Hell House LLC, whose recent fifth installment Lineage was marketed as the final one, only for the ending to leave the audience hanging for another sequel.
Even though you'd be smart to approach any "final" entry in a horror franchise with a truckload of salt, it's such a cynical, transparent ploy that it actively makes one view such a film with skepticism even before it's come out - no matter if it actually is a rarest of genuine franchise-enders.
The salient point here, really, is that so few horror franchises ever have a definitive, unambiguous end, so why try and pretend otherwise?