10 Horror Movie Sequels That Killed Franchises

Horror is perhaps the most consistently reliable of all movie genres where box office is concerned. Horror fans are insatiable, which, combined with the generally low cost of producing films in the genre, makes it an easy money-spinner for studios regardless of the eventual quality.

And while most successful horror films do end up spawning at least a sequel or two, there of course comes a time when a new movie makes audiences realise that they've just had enough of a given IP. That's most certainly true where these ten horror sequels are concerned, each of which ended up killing their respective franchises stone-cold dead.

Now, to be clear, that doesn't mean all of these sequels were inherently bad - a few of them are actually quite good, and one is even arguably better than the original - but regardless of quality, each was so thoroughly rejected by audiences at large that the studio decided to end things there and not proceed with any more direct follow-ups.

While it's worth noting that Hollywood can always resurrect these franchises years or even decades from now with a reboot or remake, for now these horror properties are all firmly in the grave.

2015's Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension was the sixth and apparently final entry into the phenomenally successful found footage franchise, and frankly, it was about damn time.

The law of diminishing returns had firmly kicked in by the fourth movie, and so this "finale" was an utter mess of scarcely coherent storytelling slapped with a garish 3D gimmick for added financial desperation. The film's box office underperformance indeed seemed to confirm that it would mark the end of the series, then, but in 2021, Paramount decided to release a seventh film: the standalone sequel Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin.

This direct-to-streaming found footage romp felt warmed-over from top to bottom, a tepid, unoriginal, laughably cliched addendum that added virtually nothing to the franchise. It was bad enough that even the movie's own producer, Blumhouse head Jason Blum, called Next of Kin "terrible," and assured audiences that Paranormal Activity had now been put on ice.

While Blum added that he wouldn't be against resurrecting the franchise if a horror auteur pitched a compelling take, he wasn't interested in making more movies just because.