Sometimes a horror movie can be so successful that the studio will insist on just going full throttle and releasing sequel after sequel. Give it enough time, and you’ll get prequels and reboots. While there may be follow-ups that really improve on what the original gave us, a lot of the time, the franchise starts to fall apart somewhere around the third installment. Writing gets lazy and repetitive, or goes to the other extreme by being too off-brand in a bad way. Budgets shrink and the actors and directors who made things work would rather keep their distance. You end up with movies that even series diehards will warn you against.
Here are the runts of the horror franchise litter. The lows of the corresponding series. Each series must have at least five entries to its name. Not that that’s hard to find. Several of these go into double digits. We’re not touching the Amityville franchise and its 40-plus movies, though. Nobody should.
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
There’s no better place to start than one of the most infamous sequels in film history. On paper, you would think there would be a winner here. It’s a follow-up to The Exorcist, directed by the guy behind Deliverance, scored by Ennio Morricone, and not only bringing back Linda Blair as Regan, but also adding in James Earl Jones. Yet what we got was a lengthy fever dream that has you scratching your head and wondering out loud what the hell you’re even looking at.
The movie is less about exorcisms and more about delving deeper into whatever the hell Pazuzu, the demon from the first movie, is about. There’s a lot of hypnotism, psychic powers, grasshoppers, and a hefty attempt to get away from what anyone liked about the original. The movie tries to be trippy, but in a way that will have you laughing instead of taking any of it seriously, whether it’s Jones chilling out in a homemade locust costume or Regan saving the day by doing the Gangnam Style dance.
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
After the so-called Final Chapter, the Friday the 13th movies started relying on gimmicks to throw a fresh coat of paint over the formula. Following up on the copycat killer, zombie resurrection, and not-quite-Carrie, Jason was going to take Manhattan. He was going to take the HELL out of Manhattan! This was a high-concept slasher pitch with potential! Unfortunately… the studio did not have much budget for filming in New York City, so the promise of the title would be saved for the last 15 minutes of the movie.
The rest was just Jason on a boat, killing teens, but more importantly killing time. Yes, the movie really just sat on its hands for a while, having Jason’s teleportation-via-bad-editing go out of control while taking out enough victims to qualify as stuff happening. By the time Jason did make his way to Manhattan, things got entertaining (though his defeat is questionable at best), but he didn’t so much take Manhattan as he took his sweet-ass time on a pleasure cruise.
Omen IV: The Awakening (1991)
Admittedly, this one almost feels like cheating. After the third movie tied things up by killing Damien Thorn and bringing out the big guns by having Jesus show up, someone with clout decided that we needed at least one more chapter. And sure, the reboot was a red flag for only being made for the sake of coming out on June 6, 2006 (which… fair. I respect it), but there is no bigger red flag than “made-for-TV movie.” Yeah, this one hurts.
While a continuation of the series, The Awakening is a gender-flipped retelling of the original Omen. This time, it centers around Damien’s secret daughter, Delia. Instead of just a simple retread, the made-for-TV production values turn this into a laugh-out-loud campy parody of itself. Some of the choices are a riot, like how Delia is depicted as secretly evil by casually eating a Barbie’s face while staring out the window. Not to mention the jaunty score that does not seem to understand that this is supposed to be a tense horror movie. That this movie isn’t featured on RiffTrax yet is genuinely shocking.
Child’s Play 3 (1991)
Not counting the reboot that was immediately overshadowed by M3GAN, the Chucky movies and TV show are separated into two groups: the basic horror series and the experimental weird shit. After the success of the first Child’s Play, the strategy was to just keep releasing new versions of the same killer doll story that were just barely different enough. Child’s Play 3 was when that ran out of gas, as the military school setting just did not have the sauce to keep things fresh.
The formula was showing its age already, and the fact that it was such a rush job (coming out a mere nine months after the previous film) did not help it in any way. Don Mancini took a lengthy break from the series, eventually coming back with Bride of Chucky, starting the second phase of the Chucky franchise. After all, when your series revolves around a serial killer possessing a My Buddy knockoff via voodoo magic, you really should be going all-out on the crazy stuff.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
This one was a tough call. Halloween Resurrection is notorious and embarrassing for its handling of Laurie Strode and the hilarious fact that Michael gets his ass kicked by Busta Rhymes. The sixth installment, Curse of Michael Myers, is a special kind of bad though, even with a fresh-faced Paul Rudd being a major player. It’s special in the sense that there are two extremely different cuts of the movie (theatrical and producer’s cut), and they are both in the running for worst Halloween movie.
As the finale of the Thorn Trilogy of movies, Curse of Michaels Myers attempts to give context to why this spooky man in a William Shatner mask is obsessed with killing all of his family members. The deep dive into the character’s mythos only detracts from the series, and when they tried to tone it down for the theatrical cut and make a more run-of-the-mill entry, it ended up becoming incomprehensible while bringing nothing new to the table. This being Donald Pleasence’s final film just feels wrong.
Scream 3 (2000)
The third Scream was always going to be the black sheep of the series. Produced in the aftermath of the Columbine shooting, it was put under the microscope and forced to hold back on the violence in order to ward off those who blamed the media for such incidents. While, yes, the movie had enough of a body count to keep it on the level, it dove harder into the meta comedy aspect of the series. After all, this is the one where Jay and Silent Bob show up as actual characters.
The Hollywood setting and the Stab movie plot thread has some merit, even if Scream 3 feels like the inferior B-side to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Outside of the tone, the big problem is the obsession with making this a trilogy-closing finale. The big Ghostface reveal at the end is not only lackluster, but it retroactively makes the first two movies lamer via over-explanation. Still, if you put all the different entries on this list against each other, Scream 3 would still be one of the more watchable losers.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
The two worst installments of Nightmare on Elm Street are guilty of playing it safe, just in different ways. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare is the final nail in the coffin of the original tone of the sequels, running things into the ground, all while going too far with the humor, Freddy one-liners, lore dumps, and questionable special effects. It’s a stupid movie, but at least it’s a stupid movie with personality.
The rebooted Nightmare on Elm Street tried to retell the first movie’s story, but with little actual personality. Jackie Earle Haley does the best he can with the stiff makeup job and lackluster script, but Robert Englund’s absence is absolutely felt here. Even with some strong dream visuals thrown in every now and then, we’re stuck with a lifeless take that almost redeems itself with a unique twist on the character, only to chicken out so it can revel in its blandness. I’ll take Alice Cooper and Roseanne cameos over this.
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter (2010)
With Saw movies coming out annually like they were Madden games, it was only a matter of time before the wheels fell off. The seventh movie is treated as a big saga finale, and it feels both overstuffed and threadbare. It’s a movie that’s too much style for the substance to breathe, which you would expect from a blatant 3D gimmick flick. The same 3D cinematography which caused the gallons of blood to come off as distractingly pink.
There’s just too much fanservice and traps without anything holding it up other than bad characters and worse acting. It’s a rushed production with a rushed narrative, complete with the overly short John Kramer flashback cameo. That said, the cameo is still a laugh riot due to his backwards hat disguise.
Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)
Oof. Later Hellraiser movies are so painful that even Pinhead would ask you to back off. Many of them are scripts that weren’t initially intended to be Hellraiser movies but were altered enough to arguably fit the formula. Despite all the misfires, Hellraiser: Revelations is just the worst of the worst. The ninth movie is the ninth circle of Hell.
As the story goes, Dimension Films needed this baby done ASAP, else they would lose the rights of the franchise. That meant Revelations was filmed over three weeks and edited together immediately after with a budget of $300,000, and boy, does it ever show! This is the first time that Doug Bradley decided to nope out on portraying Pinhead, being replaced with Stephan Smith Collins, who brought a rather puffy Pugsley Addams look with him. Granted, the movie feels more like a Hellraiser movie than a lot of the later sequels, but that doesn’t mean it’s any good. Clive Barker himself hated the thing with every fiber of his being.
Leprechaun: Origins (2014)
The Leprechaun has been around. He’s been to the hood, to space, and back to the hood. As goofy and dumb as those movies can be, they are at least held together by Warwick Davis’ performance and iconic look as Lubdan the Leprechaun. Back when WWE was going ham with WWE Films, where they would endlessly advertise movies where wrestlers had starring or just supporting roles in upcoming movies (Randy Orton WILL go to the papers if he has to!), they announced that Hornswoggle (Dylan Postl) would be playing the titular leprechaun in this new movie. That sounded like something with promise, actually. His wrestling persona was a shithead, trickster leprechaun. Why not give him a shot in a comedy slasher?
Well, Origins is not a comedy slasher, nor is it a Leprechaun origin story. It’s a story about some young people being chased around by a feral goblin thing in Ireland. The stunt casting feels incredibly pointless, as the Leprechaun has no lines, looks and acts nothing like the classic version, and is barely ever on screen to begin with. It’s bland and hollow, making you feel like you were tricked.
V/H/S Viral (2014)
Being an anthology series, V/H/S is always going to be all over the map in quality, but its third installment Viral was incredibly uneven. Oh, sure, there were a couple of strong shorts in Parallel Monsters and Bonestorm, but those were only two of the three shorts in this film when there would usually be four or five. What happened? Well, Todd Lincoln completely misunderstood the assignment and made an avant garde short called “Gorgeous Vortex,” which was cut from the final film for not being found footage. To add to that, the other remaining short, “Dante the Great,” also cheated the concept by dropping the gimmick during its climax.
With only three shorts to its name, V/H/S Viral had to rely on its wraparound segment, “Vicious Circles.” Wraparound segments have always been the series’ worst aspect, and this one is no different. It’s barely coherent, isn’t very interesting, and goes on forever. There’s a reason why it took seven years for there to be another V/H/S installment.
Phantasm: Ravager (2016)
Built on dream logic, the Phantasm series is a wild one that doesn’t have as many entries as the other movies on this list, but has stretched across five decades. After Phantasm IV: Oblivion was met with a big shrug in 1998, it took 18 years for there to be a follow-up. After so many plans for a fifth installment that could not get off the ground, a new Phantasm finally came out in 2016 with an exasperated, “Well, it’s the best we could do.”
Ravager had too much working against it. While it was relevant to the plot, the cast had just become too old (Angus Scrimm died shortly after the production and his performance reflects that). The series’ regular director Don Coscarelli was not behind the camera, instead giving the duties to David Hartman. The budget was so miniscule that the special effects and cinematography look like somewhere between a fan-film and a SyFy show. Most damning, the whole thing was initially intended to be a series of online shorts, but they decided to Frankenstein it into a full-on film at some point. Sadly, the final chapter was never going to be worth the wait.
Leatherface (2017)
The first Texas Chainsaw Massacre was such a grimy lightning in a bottle success that most attempts to follow up on it feel pointless. That is, except maybe the first sequel, which is so balls-to-the-wall bonkers that it earns its existence. Otherwise, they never seem competent or interesting enough other than mining nostalgia for how crazy that first one was.
Leatherface is the second attempt at a prequel that nobody really asked for. It’s a boring road trip movie about a group of escaped mental patients where one of them is destined to become Leatherface. The fact that one of them looks like a dead ringer for a young Leatherface, but the exposition makes sure to point out that the two male escapees were given assumed names makes the movie’s big twist laughably obvious. It also feels unearned once the movie chooses to finally get to the Texas Chainsaw fireworks factory in the final minutes. At least Lili Taylor and Stephen Dorff were able to breathe some life into this.
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