EJ Moreno looks at lackluster entries from in horror…
Horror fans will tell you that even movie series they find to be absolute classics will have at least one stinker. No franchise is safe from a bad film, regardless of the genre. But there’s something about a bad horror movie that can shake the foundation of a horror series.
We’ll examine seven well-regarded horror franchises and the movies that make the entire series look bad. The only requirement is that the franchise has more than four movies and at least one highly praised entry. Let us know if you agree with our picks below…
Halloween: Resurrection
Let’s say there are quite a few offerings when pinpointing the worst Halloween. With its multiple timelines and some of the most puzzling creative choices, you won’t be faulted if you have a different pick than we’ve presented. But as it stands, Halloween: Resurrection is flawed in only the way an early 00s movie could be.
Stuck between the underrated Halloween: H20 and the controversial Rob Zombie retelling, it mainly places here for how bland it ends up. While it attempts an interesting narrative choice for a Michael Myers reality show, that’s all it does regarding spicing things up. It’s another butcher knife-filled hack-and-slash session from the masked killer, and he doesn’t even have exciting fodder to dispose of this go-around.
Add the disrespectful intro with Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, and you can see why this one is the easiest Halloween to skip.
Paranormal Activity 4
It’s a toss-up between the fourth Paranormal Activity and the equally bad Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, but the sixth one has a charm that Paranormal Activity 4 lacks. Out of all the haunted entries, this feels like the only one purely trying to play with its tech rather than conjure up scares or a plot.
From MacBooks, iPhones, and the infamous Xbox Kinect, you see a lot of styles involved here but very little substance. And that’s not to say the Paranormal Activity franchise has some needed in-depth story we all must follow, but it’s hard to care when it doesn’t connect directly to series mainstay Katie’s story. While other entries get wilder and wackier, this one suffers from “middle-of-the-road” syndrome.
Much like the others included here, Paranormal Activity starts strong but begins to slip as quickly as the franchise’s middle.
Jaws: The Revenge
It’s hard to call the Jaws franchise a great horror franchise, as it has only one perfect film followed by dwindling returns. But we always have time to mention the insane hot mess that is Jaws: The Revenge, a movie so bad it ended any attempts at another Jaws film forever. While Jaws 2 is bland and 3D is a romp, this one sinks.
As the franchise attempts to return to its roots, bringing back original actress Lorraine Gary and tying back to the Brody family, it loses all control of itself and becomes a parody. It’s a mockery of everything that made the Steven Spielberg classic work: a near-telepathic shark travels to the Bahamas to hunt down the remaining family members from the first film. It’s a farce, and not in a good way.
With almost every franchise seeing modern reboots, it’s safe to say this was so bad that Jaws was permanently laid to rest.
Saw 3D
With Saw X reinventing how people look at the long-running gory franchise, it’s easy to remember the lowest points during Jigsaw’s run. Some would say there’s no good Saw movie, but the original and some of the sequels show there’s some life to these movies. Sadly, entries like Saw 3D show how weak things can get.
Serving as the final movie in the original run of Saw movies, Saw 3D is a mean-spirited and uneventful movie that does everything in its power to turn away viewers rather than attract them. While none of these movies are for the faint of heart, it’s nearly impossible to get a moment of joy or pleasure from this lifeless 3D mess. Not even the wild return of Cary Elwes as Dr. Gordon could save this dreadful affair.
While the following films, Jigsaw and Spiral, had their faults, none were as tedious to sit through as this.
Alien 3
After two incredible bangers in Alien and Aliens, you’d expect the third movie to be serviceable at best. But Alien 3 falls firmly into the nearly unwatchable territory, which Alien Resurrection avoids with its powerhouse cast alone. David Fincher’s disavowed Alien 3 is a dull and forgettable detour.
It’s a prison drama with Ripley waking up in the bleakest timeline possible. She’s without Newt and Hicks, who were carelessly killed off-screen, and there’s an evil alien living within her. That’s not even mentioning the tragic fate that befalls our hero, even if it’s oddly corrected in the fourth movie. All of the Xenomorph stuff is rehashed ideas, and there’s not enough of Fincher’s later flair to help transcend this.
Not even a different cut of the film could save this; Alien 3 is not even good enough to be a cult classic.
Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
As iconic as Freddy Krueger is in pop culture, it’s upsetting how many lackluster movies the slasher has. From the strange sequel to the awful reboot, our Dream Demon doesn’t get as many good films as you’d hope, but none of them are as hard to watch as the sixth installment, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.
In one of the worst times for the genre, one of the worst Elm Street movies came to be. Being the final mainline entry in the iconic franchise, you’d expect a glorious send-up or a bit of a throwback to what made Freddy just a killer figure to watch. Sadly, it doubles down on the character feeling like a cartoon parody of himself and steeped with everything terrible about early 90s horror movies.
Robert Englund would get two more solid performances after this with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and Freddy vs. Jason, but the franchise never recovered after The Final Nightmare.
Scream VI
It’s time for a hot take, but there’s no such thing as a “bad” Scream movie. You may feel the franchise never hit the heights of the original again, or a sequel could rank a little less high for you, but it’s hard to say any of the Wes Craven films are bad. As for the newer era, they aren’t bad, but Scream VI will age the worse.
Radio Silence did their best with their time in the Scream franchise, but outside of some fun moments and the rise of Melissa Barrera & Jenna Ortega, there’s little to point out as anywhere near the original set of films. Scream VI attempts to move the franchise outside its standard settings, but it feels too jarring and too much like another franchise to feel like a signature Ghostface outing.
Let’s not even talk about the exclusion of Sidney Prescott and possibly the worst set of killers yet. It’s not bad, but it can’t compete with the rest.
What do you make of these picks? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
EJ Moreno
