The 10 Greatest Horror Sequels of All Time

Audiences have a right to be afraid of sequels. For every good follow-up (The Godfather Part 2, The Dark Knight) there are dozens of duds. Nowhere is this more true than in an arena viewers really should fear — the horror film. Once the smell of success hits the genre effort, it is quickly spun into a pointless series of repeats and reconfigurations. Granted, a few of these fright franchises have more good (A Nightmare on Elm Street) than bad (can you say, Puppet Master???) but on the whole, the scary movie machine doesn’t deal in quality. Instead, it senses the always willing demographic is open to just about anything, and delivers the same in unhealthy, oft half-baked doses.

However, there are a few fright flicks which actually stand up to — and in a few elite cases, surpass — their fear foundations. Most, if not all, follow a simple, satisfying rule: explain the original while expanding the substance and storyline. Indeed, of all ten choices listed below, only one or two avoid that moviemaking mandate. On the other hand, a film like [REC]2 (new to DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), uses this strategy to take what was already a fantastic bit of dread and turn it into something almost… epic. Thanks to the vision and determination of the filmmakers involved, these ten films represent the best that terror has to offer…the second time around, beginning with the rebirth of a legend:

While far from an accomplished film (it is a standard slasher slice and dice after all), this sequel to the original murder by numbers knockoff has one thing going for it that the first film did not: the hulking behemoth with major Mommy issues known as Jason Voorhees. Oh sure, Part 1 saw the deformed boy version of the soon to be mythic murderer show up, but this is the Jason we all came to know and fear — hulking, half-human, and hating every intruder to his sacred Camp Crystal Lake. While Momma Voorhees made her mark in the initial movie, her son stole the second and the rest of the series.

Leave it to torture porn guru Eli Roth to follow-up his blood drenched look at institutionalized evil in Eastern Europe by keeping the splatter and switching the gender. Instead of a trio of unlikely male victims discovering what terrible truths lay just beyond the Iron Curtain, the director brings a collective of comely babes to the new brutality, and then goes a step further in making them both victim and victimizer, gullible and yet guilty of as many atrocities as their high paying persecutors. Yes, there is an undercurrent of misogyny that’s hard to overcome, but the results are far more intense than their predecessor.

Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm was really nothing more than a collection of known horror beats, a greatest hit compendium of every crazy creepshow concept tossed into a heady stew of drive-in Saturday nightmares. When the ’80s boom in scary movies mandated a sequel, the director decided to trash the homage and go with his series’ strengths; that is, Angus Scrimm’s sinister Tall Man and his collection of lethal metal orbs. Thus we have a story which sees the original characters battling their nemesis for ultimate control of the Morningside Cemetery and its horrific secrets. By upping both the blood and the backstory, Coscerelli manages to top himself.

7 – 4

When Tobe Hooper was finally tempted back into revisiting the Sawyer family and their love of power tools — and human flesh — he decided to mimic the current trend and turn the entire experience into one big darkly comic social commentary. Thus we have Leatherface and the gang as caterers, holing up in a decaying Vietnam War Recreation Amusement Park and serving up steaming bowls of fresh people meat chili. Into their mix falls a fresh faced radio disc jockey and her unfortunate engineer. Taken together, this wickedly wild ride reminds us that even the best can be better with a bit of imagination, and some fright film fearlessness.

With its haunted house in space dynamic, Alien was seen as a solid suspense shocker. Indeed, Ridley Scott has ridden on its (and Blade Runner‘s) effectiveness for several decades since. But when the decision was made to continue the franchise, few could have envisioned what future king of the blockbuster James Cameron had in store. Scuttling the dread for a more military-oriented action ideal, he may have upped the testosterone, but he did an equally effective job of amplifying the terror as well. The final sequence which see our heroine Ripley running into the alien queen’s lair to rescue Newt remains a fright film landmark.

After several years defining the Italian crime film known as the “giallo” Dario Argento decided to try something with a supernatural bent. The result was the mind-blowing masterwork Suspiria. Part of something called “The Three Mothers Trilogy”, the director always planned to do two follow-ups. The first, set in New York City, took the concepts of witchcraft and alchemy created in the original film and upped its diabolical dream logic. Indeed, Inferno features so many amazing set-pieces (the underwater drawing room sequence, the art deco meets atrocity design of the apartment complex) that one sometimes forgets the story. Luckily, it’s equally eerie.

Rob Zombie more or less hated what happened to his directorial debut, House of 1000 Corpses. As a result, the planned sequel jettisoned almost anything to do with Dr. Satan and his underground lair, and instead focused on the Firefly family, turning them into the ultimate example of exploitation revisionism. As they travel the barren wastelands that pass for modern America, leaving a trail of blood and destruction in their path, Zombie mines the entirety of outsider cinema since the late ’50s for inspiration and ick-factor. He succeeds beyond ones wildest dreams, easily evoking the past while playing to his substantial strengths.

3 – 1

With its first person POV aesthetic and single location set-up, the original [REC] was a grotesque godsend, a genuinely creepy film made even more menacing by the manner in which directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza chose to showcase their scares. Utter realistic and brimming with the kind of suspense significantly lacking in contemporary horror, few thought the sequel could surpass it. Surprise – not only was the follow-up a fine fright flick, but it managed to do what few exercises in dread can: make one giddy for another installment. Proof that something iconic can result from a mere expansion of the mythology.

Though he didn’t invent the zombie film, George A. Romero refined it to a powerful political point. Night of the Living Dead was always viewed through the prism of its civil rights era allusions, while this superior sequel attacked the ’70s malaise and upcoming ’80s greed mentality in a bold, blood drenched way. Setting the story within a shopping mall was just one way for the director to discuss the ongoing commercialization and consumerism of America. Adding flesh eating fiends — and a ballsy if braindead biker gang — into the mix turned the entire project into a class struggle with splatter… and a masterpiece.

Director Sam Raimi has always said that this was not so much a sequel to his seminal splatter comedy classic, but more a remake where money (and time, and talent) substituted for raw chutzpah and a naive belief in his ability to direct terror. The results became a horror movie legend, a film that spawned hundreds of imitators and an entirely new way of experiencing movie macabre. Before, seriousness was seen as the only way to deliver the shivers. In Raimi’s more than capable hands, blood and buffoonery went hand in severed hand, leading to the creation of a legitimate genre gem.