Sequels get a bad rap in horror. For every Evil Dead II or Aliens, there’s a million more lazy follow ups that remind everyone why “straight to video” used to be considered a curse word. But here’s the thing: horror sequels aren’t just cash grabs and corpse reanimations—they’re the genre’s weird, experimental playgrounds. When the first movie nails it, the sequel has two options: repeat the formula and get called lazy, or swing for the fences and get called insane. And since horror is the only genre that rewards insanity, some of the boldest, strangest, and most criminally overlooked films ever made came out of that “oh hell, let’s just try it” mindset. This list is for the misfits—the black sheep of the franchise family. The ones that got booed at release, ignored for years, and are only now getting the love they deserve from horror nerds who know a hidden gem when they see one. These are the sequels that went harder, weirder, funnier, or just plain better than they had any right to.
These are the 25 Most Underrated Horror Sequels.
25. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
You ever see a movie so hated that it feels like the universe personally mailed it a restraining order? That’s Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. The sequel to one of the most revolutionary horror movies ever made — a movie that changed marketing, resurrected found footage, and made us afraid of camping — and instead of doubling down on shaky cams and snot bubbles, it said, “Nah, what if we made a real movie?” And for that, the world never forgave it. But here’s the thing: Book of Shadows is not bad. It’s weird, it’s meta, it’s trying something completely different, and for that alone, it deserves a second look.
Director Joe Berlinger (yes, the guy who made Paradise Lost, the real-life documentary about the West Memphis Three) wasn’t trying to make another found footage spook-fest. He wanted to make a movie about the first movie — about what happens when fiction infects reality. The characters in Book of Shadows are fans of The Blair Witch Project. They go to Burkittsville to visit the “real” woods, thinking it’s all fake, and slowly start to lose their minds. It’s a movie about obsession, mass hysteria, and the blurred line between truth and myth.
Basically, The Truman Show if Truman smoked cloves, smelled like Drakkar Noir and wore nothing but black. And yeah, the title’s a lie. There is no damn “Book of Shadows.” I don’t even think they reference one. You could argue that’s part of the joke or maybe someone at Artisan just thought it sounded metal as hell. Either way, it’s awful. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 doesn’t deserve your scorn — it deserves, at the very least, your confused admiration. And maybe a new title, because seriously… there’s no damn book in this movie.
24. Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985)
The Howling worked because it had an incredible director (Joe Dante) and a brilliant screenwriter (John Sayles), both drunk in love with werewolf movies. Together, they didn’t just make a great monster flick — they made a sharp satire on therapy culture and a surprisingly grounded portrait of the psychological toll faced by undercover cops. It juggled a dozen ideas with ease and nailed every one of them. The Howling II, on the other hand, wasn’t interested in juggling anything — it just wanted to watch two things bounce. The first film had something to say. The sequel just wants you to look at it and say, “tits!”
The film picks up right where the first one sort of left off. Dee Wallace is gone, replaced by the legendary Christopher Lee, who clearly lost a bet. Lee spends the entire film wearing these absurdly huge wraparound sunglasses — like Dracula trying to blend in at a Miami Vice convention. He looks like a vampire dad trying to hide from the sun and the shame of being in this movie. But then there’s Sybil Danning. My god, Sybil Danning. She plays Stirba, the werewolf queen, and she’s the reason this movie exists. The reason anyone remembers this movie. She’s got more cleavage than dialogue and more confidence than the entire cast combined.
She doesn’t just chew scenery — she eats it, like she thinks it’s the only thing keeping her tits perky. Her performance is pure camp ecstasy, culminating in a topless transformation scene so infamous they replayed it 17 times during the end credits. Seventeen. Times. Because apparently, subtlety was silver and Sybil was gold. And the crazy thing? This is only the second movie in the series. After this, the sequels went completely feral. We’re talking space werewolves (Howling VII: New Moon Rising), marsupial werewolves (Howling III: The Marsupials), and even werewolf nuns. By the time the franchise hit the direct-to-video stage, it stopped being a horror series and became a cry for help. If only they were smart enough to cast a Sybil equivalent…
23. Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1991)
If you thought the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise was about a killer Santa and stopped there — oh, my sweet summer child. You have no idea how insane this franchise gets. Due to its controversial poster, the first movie was yanked from theaters faster than Santa slides down a chimney. But that controversy led to an increase in rentals, which guaranteed a follow-up. The sequel (the legendary meme factory known as “Garbage Day!”) reused half the first movie as flashbacks. The third featured a psychic girl and a brain-in-a-jar Santa zombie. The fourth went full David Cronenberg with insect cults and spontaneous combustion.
And then came Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker — the one where Mickey Rooney plays an evil toymaker who builds killer Christmas presents. He plays Joe Petto (get it?) who creates deadly toys that come to life and kill people. He’s assisted by his “son” Pino (do you get it?), who may or may not be a wooden boy brought to life through Christmas witchcraft or horny science. There’s an evil toy spider, a lethal Santa ball, and a robot sex-doll subplot that feels like it wandered in from a different movie entirely.
The Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise is one of horror’s most chaotic family trees. Every entry feels like it was made by a different species of filmmaker. One’s a moral panic, one’s a meme, one’s a séance, one’s a bug cult, and this one? This one’s Small Wonder meets The Terminator, but with a scene where a fake boy desperately tries to make himself a new mommy — while also auditioning to be daddy at the same time. Forcefully. If you can’t figure out what I’m putting down, I envy your pure soul.
22. Food of the Gods II (1989)
There’s an unwritten rule when it comes to animal attack movies: If the threat is a singular beast (lion, shark, bear), it better be big and if the threat is tiny, there better be a lot of them. A rat by itself is nasty at best and unwanted at worst. But a ton of them? That’s legit a threat and for some reason, the ’80s was terrified of it. That decade produced so many films about killer rats, that you’d think they were personally responsible for hundreds of child murders. Deadly Eyes, Rats: Night of Terror, Of Unknown Origin, Graveyard Shift and Ratman were all about evil rats. There was even a segment in Nightmares about a giant rat. They were everywhere that decade but no film that dealt with the tiny menace was as insane, ridiculous and unforgettable as Food of the Gods II.
This sequel has almost nothing to do with the first Food of the Gods, which was about giant animals attacking people on a remote island. Instead, part two says, “Forget the island, let’s go to college!” and immediately starts pumping steroids into lab rats until they’re the size of Fiats. It’s Revenge of the Nerds meets Night of the Lepus, if both were directed by someone who hadn’t heard of either. Or any movie for that matter. The plot involves a scientist trying to cure children with growth disorders. Noble enough, sure, until one of his grad students uses the serum on lab rats for funsies, and suddenly you’ve got mutant rats chewing through campus like everyone inside was made of cheese.
Or more accurately, they’re tearing into everyone like they’re walking pinatas and they have a giant stick and the world’s biggest sweet tooth. They don’t just attack people, they destroy them. Heads explode, limbs fly, torsos burst open like overripe tomatoes. The film definitely isn’t chintzy with the gore. And since it’s about rats, they didn’t forget the cheese either. This movie is goofy. It isn’t good by any metric. But it is entertaining and isn’t that all you want from a giant rat movie? Oh, and you’ll remember the introduction of Bobby forever.
21. Damien – Omen II (1978)
The Omen should’ve been the greatest horror trilogy ever made. The first film is almost as good as its own elevator pitch: “It’s a horror movie where the father from To Kill a Mockingbird tries to kill his own son — and you actually root for him to do it.” The sequel builds on that brilliant setup by following the young Antichrist as he comes of age in military school, learning the discipline and strategy he’ll need to one day rule the world. And the third chapter? That’s where he finally has the power — and we get to see what happens when the devil grows up. That arc is incredible—it had all the makings of an epic triptych, one that followed evil even further than The Godfather ever could. But whatever potential it had died immediately once the second one came out. This series needed to be about Damien’s accent to power and the lengths his followers would go through in order to help him achieve his goals.
That is immediately tossed aside for “What if The Omen but Final Destination?” Every time someone figures out who Damien really is, the universe (or the Devil’s HR department) immediately schedules their termination via Rube Goldberg’s Guide to Creative Deaths. You get deaths by ice, by train, by raven. Hell, if there was a spork around, it’d probably stab someone in the eye. They traded the meat of the premise for blood on the plate, and in doing so, killed the franchise. Even with Sam Neill giving it his all as the grown-up Damien, there was no way to steer the sinking ship back on course. But taken on its own terms — not as a sequel, but as a standalone slasher with an invisible killer, it’s really fun. The kills are just as memorable as the legendary pane-of-glass decapitation from the original, and this time, there are MORE of them. There is fun to be had here, you just have to do some mental rewiring to find it.
20. Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)
If the first Sleepaway Camp was infamous for its jaw-dropping twist, Sleepaway Camp II is infamous for not giving a single fuck. The Angela in this is a million miles away from her personality in the first one. She’s back at the camp, this time as a counselor, but her personality and performance are so different, it might as well be a different character altogether. It feels like this was an unrelated script that they tweaked to fit into the Sleepaway Camp series. Which means, it’s not a great sequel in terms of continuity, but a great sequel in terms of delivering mindless kills. Gone is the mean-spirited shock of the original and in its place is a more stab-happy kind of chipper found in movies like Serial Mom.
The Angela in this is basically a homicidal Mary Poppins who thinks murdering you is just a firm form of discipline. Talk back? Stabbed. Flash someone? Burned alive. Tell a dirty joke? Drowned in a porta-potty. You’d think the campers would catch on, but this camp is clearly staffed by people whose combined IQ barely equals Angela’s kill count. The film trades psychological horror for cartoon slasher energy. The kills come fast, the dialogue’s campier than a drag brunch, and Pamela Springsteen (yes, Bruce’s sister) plays Angela like she’s positive this was going to be her big break. She was wrong but God bless her.
The rest of the series? Part III (Teenage Wasteland) is basically the same movie with slightly less charm and even cheaper effects. Then there’s the unfinished Sleepaway Camp IV, which is so bad it feels like a prank, and finally Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008), where everyone looks like they’ve been preserved in formaldehyde and the jokes aged about as well as milk. The franchise never came close to topping the memorable twist from the first, but this one at least knows it’s trash and acts accordingly.
19. Psycho III (1986)
Psycho II is the classy sequel Hitchcock would’ve actually approved of—elegant, restrained, and respectful of the original’s legacy. Psycho III, on the other hand, is the movie he always wanted to make. Hitchcock became the “Master of Suspense” because the censors forced him to be clever when all he really wanted was to be nasty. Beneath the polish and precision, he longed to wallow in the muck. Cinemax After Dark sleaze disguised as high art. Anthony Perkins—taking on both star and director duties—finally gives Hitchcock that wish. Psycho III is the unshackled id of the franchise: a filthy, feverish, De Palma-style hallucination where the violence is mean, the sex is sweaty, and the guilt is baked into every frame. It’s Psycho without a safety net. It’s dirty, delirious, and absolutely everything Hitchcock secretly wanted.
Taking place shortly after the events of Psycho II, Norman Bates is once again running the Bates Motel and trying to keep his “Mother” issues buried. Easier said than done. The film opens with a young nun, Maureen Coyle (Diana Scarwid), having a breakdown at a convent and accidentally causing another nun’s death. Wracked with guilt and suicidal, Maureen hits the road and ends up at the Bates Motel. Because where else would she end up? Norman, seeing her bloodied wrists and noticing she resembles Marion Crane, immediately becomes smitten and protective. It’s the first time he’s had feelings that aren’t filtered through his mother’s rotting skull, but as always, “Mother” doesn’t approve.
Add in a dirt bag drifter (Jeff Fahey) who’s trying to blackmail him and a nosy reporter (Roberta Maxwell) convinced he’s a ticking time bomb and you have all the ingredients for the perfect thriller best watched half awake at 3 am. By the end, Norman’s secret is once again dragged into the daylight, but his twisted psyche finds a new way to cope. In true Psycho fashion, he’s left smiling, clutching his mother’s skull like a security blanket, and promising to be “just fine” as the sirens wail in the distance.
18. Hatchet II (2010)
The Hatchet trilogy stands apart from other horror franchises for one simple reason: the entire bloody saga unfolds over the course of just two days. Despite taking nearly a decade for Adam Green to complete, he never sacrificed the story’s continuity. Each sequel picks up exactly where the last one left off—literally seconds later. When the first film ends in chaos and carnage, the next opens mid-scream. Marybeth (now played by genre icon Danielle Harris) drags herself out of the swamp, drenched in blood and immediately decides to dive back in for revenge.
What follows is basically Aliens but instead of a group of roughnecks fighting an army of xenomorphs, it’s a group of backwoods redshirts (so dumb they make Friday the 13th campers look like MENSA candidates) led by Marybeth and Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd). But you didn’t tune in for the story, you’re here for the kills and Hatchet II doesn’t just double down, it throws the table, the dealer, and the casino out the window.
Every death looks like Tom Savini’s wet dream: heads split like melons, intestines turned into confetti, and one poor bastard gets the kind of death that would make even medieval torturers wince. It’s a splatterfest so over-the-top it practically high-fives you after each kill. Hatchet II hits the sweet spot when it comes to sequels: more blood, more guts and more mythology.
17. Puppet Master II (1990)
The Puppet Master franchise has always felt less like a series of movies and more like an extended infomercial for action figures. Charles Band never seemed remotely interested in making a good film, let alone a cohesive saga. Continuity? Forget it. The only entries that actually connect in any meaningful way are Puppet Master 4 and 5—and that’s just because they were supposed to be one movie until Band decided to split them up and double his profits. It’s the textbook example of “diminishing returns,” a franchise that starts at the bottom and somehow keeps digging. But here’s the thing—it didn’t have to be this way. All they had to do was build on Puppet Master II, the one sequel that actually sets up an interesting next chapter. Instead, they ignored it completely and wandered off in twenty different, cheaper directions. It’s also the only film in the entire franchise that gives André Toulon (y’know, the guy who made the puppets) anything to actually do.
This time, Toulon’s been resurrected from the grave and turned into a mash-up of Frankenstein and the Invisible Man. No longer the tragic toymaker, Toulon is now a full-on Universal Monster remix—and it works, if only because it’s something interesting. Which is more than can be said for the plot. Once again, a team of psychics/paranormal researchers/unpaid interns show up at the same creepy hotel to figure out what happened last time. What happens is puppets. Again.
Only this time, the puppets are working for zombie Toulon, who’s draining people’s life force to stay alive. The franchise would spend the rest of eternity flip-flopping on whether the puppets are heroes or villains, but here they’re full-blown slashers. Torch, the new addition to the lineup, literally barbecues a child. Puppet Master II isn’t a good movie, but it’s the perfect blend of dumb and delightful—the moment the series finally embraces its own ridiculousness. Toulon gets to play mad scientist, the puppets become proper horror icons, and for one brief, bizarre moment, Puppet Master actually feels alive.
16. Seoul Station (2016)
Yeon Sang-ho made Train to Busan right after this one, but Seoul Station is technically its prequel — and it shows. Where Train to Busan is slick, fast, and designed to make you care about the people before killing them off, Seoul Station is an animated middle finger aimed directly at society itself. This is less “zombie movie” and more “we live in hell, the dead just make it obvious.” Romero waited till the last film in his Dead trilogy to give up on society, Yeon Sang-ho couldn’t even make it two movies. The outbreak starts with a homeless man bleeding in the streets of Seoul, and within minutes, the city collapses into chaos. We follow three main characters (a runaway sex worker, her boyfriend, and her estranged father) as they navigate a nightmarish city full of the living dead and even deader morals. The twist? Humanity’s already rotting before the first corpse gets up.
Yeon doesn’t care about scares or spectacle here. The animation’s rough, jagged, and borderline ugly on purpose. It’s like he wanted the art to feel as uncomfortable as the subject matter. The police are worse than the zombies, the citizens are indifferent, and every act of survival feels like the slow rot of the human soul. If Train to Busan was about hope clawing through despair, Seoul Station is about despair realizing hope was never real. It’s not fun, it’s not fast, and it sure as hell isn’t comforting. But it’s powerful. Seoul Station proves the only thing worse than the apocalypse is living long enough to realize you were already in one.
15. It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987)
It’s a testament to Cohen’s talents as a writer that I think about the themes of the It’s Alive trilogy more than the content therein. All three films are about killer mutant babies (and in this one, they’re like tiny little Hulks!) and yet, that’s like the fourth thing that pops into my mind when I think about them. The first film took aim at evil corporations (namely pharmaceuticals) and was a thinly veiled riff on Frankenstein that asked “who’s the real monster, the doctor(s) or the monster they created?” The second deals with a post-Watergate secretive government plot to capture the babies and this one is all about pro life and asks “do these monsters have a right to live?”
He’s asking some serious questions and tackling some heavy themes and for the most part, I think he’s successful. So successful, that I don’t even see these as horror films (or in the case of this one, a horror comedy), I see them as social commentary. Good social commentary but not exactly entertaining social commentary. And therein lies the rub. Sometimes Cohen forgets to put in the fun. He’s got the social commentary, the clever premise and unique looking monsters but it’s missing entertainment to tie it altogether. Those imperfections make it a cult classic. That and the tiny hulk monsters.
14. Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)
Unfriended was what would happen if Skype got possessed and its sequel was all about the dangers of the dark web. Gone are the ghosts, gone are the supernatural revenge stories — this one’s all about hackers, snuff films, and the deep, dark corners of the Internet only sickos dare explore. It’s less Paranormal Activity and more Mr. Robot if Mr. Robot was a sociopath who harvested organs for Bitcoin. A group of friends are hanging out on Skype when one of them shows off his “new” laptop. Which, surprise, isn’t new at all. It’s stolen. They decide to poke around on it but quickly realize it belongs to a human trafficker and he’s none too pleased that they’ve stumbled across his business.
It’s the rare horror sequel that improves on the original by not doing the same thing twice. Instead of a ghost sending you spooky messages over Instagram, you’ve got an army of faceless tech boogeymen manipulating webcams and hacking into every aspect of your life. Considering the fact that everyone nowadays is permanently online, films that explore the horrors of the dark web are surprisingly few and far between. There are more films released per year about possessed dolls than the scariest part of the Internet. It’s too bad audiences didn’t embrace this sequel, because not only could we have had a strong series by now but it could’ve opened up the door for more films about the dark web.
13. Fright Night Part 2 (1988)
The first Fright Night ended perfectly. Vampire dead, hero gets the girl, everyone goes home. Roll credits. It was clearly meant to be a stand alone film considering it’s nothing more than “Rear Window plus vampires” but apparently it made enough money that some madman decided to greenlight a sequel. Thankfully that madman had the good enough sense to bring Tommy Lee Wallace — the only man besides Carpenter himself that could make Halloween III: Season of the Witch work — on board to direct. Three years after the original, Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) has done what every good horror sequel protagonist does — gaslit himself into thinking the first movie didn’t happen.
He’s in therapy convincing himself Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) was just a serial killer and not, you know, a literal vampire who turned his best friend into a ghoul. It’s a great hook for a sequel and it gives William Ragsdale something to work with besides paranoia and terror. That is until the vampires show up and shatter his delusional reality. Enter Regine Dandridge (Julie Carmen), Jerry’s extremely fashionable vampire sister, here to get revenge and maybe seduce everyone in the room while doing it.
She’s like if Elvira and Grace Jones had a baby that drank blood and was somehow hornier than both combined. Her gang of undead cronies includes a bug-eating freak, a roller-skating vampire, and a werewolf who looks like a clone of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since they’re all played by established “that guy” character actors, they’re easily the best thing about the movie. The reason most forget this movie exists is the fact that it’s one of those cursed sequels that got kneecapped by studio politics and tragedy — a change in ownership buried the release, and the film basically vanished until cable TV and VHS cultists resurrected it years later. Which is fitting, really. It’s a vampire movie that got resurrected by its fans.
12. Ghoulies II (1988)
Ghoulies II is one of those rare sequels that improves on the original in every measurable way. Ghoulies was all build-up, no pay-off. All demonic chanting, no demon antics. The only reason anyone even saw it was due to its memorable poster where a ghoulie pops out of a toilet with the tagline, “they’ll get you in the end!” If you stepped foot in a video rental shop between the years 1988 and 1995, you remember that poster or at the very least, the VHS cover. And if you were one of the unlucky few who decided to roll the dice on a fun, schlocky puppet monster movie based on the strength of that poster, you found out the hard way that movie posters and VHS covers can straight up lie to you. The most famous thing about this franchise doesn’t even happen in the franchise. There is no scene in the first Ghoulies where a ghoulie pops out of a toilet. The movie was sold on a lie and the worst part about it? It’s awful. You could forgive the deception if the movie was at least good but it is most assuredly not.
Charles Band must’ve felt some sort of remorse from hoodwinking so many people, that he actually decided to give them their monies worth. Not in refunds or anything but in a sequel that not only has a plot, characters and a fun location but it also gives the tiny little green devils something to do. Instead of intermittently popping up in a haunted house, this time the demonic toilet gremlins are stalking a Satanic funhouse attraction called Satan’s Den (because of course it’s called that) and proceed to turn it into an accidental hit with the locals.
What starts as a struggling roadside horror show suddenly becomes the biggest attraction at the fair once the Ghoulies start making real bodies drop. There’s a scene where they hijack a dunk tank. Another where they straight-up melt a guy. And the grand finale? A giant Ghoulie shows up like the world’s ugliest kaiju, eating his smaller siblings in a grotesque display of practical effects glory. Ghoulies II is what happens when a movie knows exactly what it is and leans into the skid. It’s cheap, it’s silly, and it’s filled with more practical monster mayhem than most horror films twice its budget. It’s not scary, not really, but it’s the cinematic equivalent of a carnival corn dog: greasy, artificial, and absolutely perfect in the moment.
11. Leprechaun Returns (2018)
This is the eighth movie in a franchise that’s basically a long-running exercise in diminishing returns and increasing absurdity. We’ve seen the little bastard go to Las Vegas (Leprechaun 3), the hood (Leprechaun in the Hood), back to the hood (Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood), and even space (Leprechaun 4: In Space), which, if you’re keeping track, means he’s done more globetrotting than Indiana Jones. Then there was Leprechaun: Origins, the 2014 WWE-produced reboot that was so joyless and generic, it somehow made you miss Warwick Davis’ bad limericks. So when Leprechaun Returns came along, expectations were subterranean. Like, “I’d rather be waterboarded with green beer” low. But here’s the twist: this thing’s actually good.
Director Steven Kostanski (of The Void and Psycho Goreman fame) takes the series back to basics. Literally. It ignores every sequel except the first one and picks up 25 years later at the same North Dakota house where it all started. A bunch of eco-conscious college girls move in to turn it into a sustainable sorority house and wouldn’t you know it, a little blood in the soil brings back our favorite pint-sized psycho. The new Leprechaun, played by Linden Porco, doesn’t just fill Warwick Davis’ shoes — he tap dances in them. He’s leaner, meaner, and delightfully sadistic.
His one-liners are still groan-worthy, but in a fun way. It’s all so gleefully self-aware that it borders on parody, but never crosses the line. Kostanski gets the tone just right: gory enough for the horror crowd, silly enough for the cult fans, and confident enough to actually make the Leprechaun scary again. After seven sequels that ranged from “kind of fun” to “please make it stop,” Leprechaun Returns finally strikes gold. It’s gory, fast-paced, self-aware, and loaded with more charm than it has any right to have. The series may have started as a joke, but this one’s the punchline that actually lands.
10. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)
Back in 1985, nobody knew what the hell this thing was. Wes Craven refused to come back and New Line needed a sequel fast, so they handed the reins to Jack Sholder, a director who didn’t understand Freddy, didn’t care about Freddy, and, by his own admission, didn’t even think dreams were scary. That’s like hiring a chef who hates food. So instead of another surreal nightmare where Freddy stalks teens in their sleep, Freddy’s Revenge is about a teenage boy who moves into Nancy’s old house and starts getting haunted while awake. Freddy wants to possess him and use his body to kill in the real world. It’s a possession movie, a haunted house movie, and a coming-out story all wearing the skin of a slasher sequel. It also happens to be the gayest horror movie ever made. Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton) is a high schooler who spends the entire movie sweating, screaming, and running around shirtless. His bedroom is pink. His dance scene (you know the one) is so unintentionally homoerotic, it was clipped and shown at day clubs.
The subtext isn’t subtle — it’s text. There’s a leather bar, a sadistic gym coach who hangs out there in a harness, a locker room spanking scene, and more sweaty teens than you can shake a stick at. Freddy himself becomes a metaphor for repressed desire: a monstrous, figure trying to “come out” through Jesse’s body. Mark Patton, a closeted gay actor at the time, later called himself the first “male scream queen,” and honestly? He earned it. He spends the whole movie being terrorized, terrified, and tragically misunderstood — by Freddy, his friends, and a script that didn’t realize what it was saying.
When it first came out, Freddy’s Revenge was hated. Fans thought it betrayed the rules of the first film. Critics dismissed it as nonsense. Even Mark Patton’s career took a nosedive because Hollywood wasn’t ready for a gay horror lead. But like any good cult movie, it clawed its way out of the boiler room of obscurity and found new life decades later. Now, it’s a staple of midnight screenings and queer horror retrospectives. There’s even a documentary (Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street) about how the film both hurt and helped Patton — and how it unintentionally became one of the most important queer horror films ever made. Oh, and Freddy has arguably never been scarier, so it also has that going for it.
9. Halloween Ends (2022)
I predict in five years or so, when the furor dies down and we’ve moved on to other cinematic punching bags, this is going to get reevaluated and more and more Halloween rankings will have this around the 5-6 area. While that sounds like faint praise to some, keep in mind, there are many, many people who consider this to be the absolute worst entry in the franchise, and they’re wrong. It’s the first film since Season of the Witch to do anything even remotely new with the series, and like that film, everyone immediately hated it.
They wanted this ultimate showdown between Michael and Laurie, even though we had just gotten that two films previously, and because of that, they got pissy. But what made them even more angry is the fact that Michael is barely in it, and I couldn’t care less. Carpenter knew this was a one-film franchise. There was no more story to tell past the first movie, and he was right. Michael only works in that one movie; every other movie tries so fucking hard to justify his inclusion, and it never works. Now he’s the brother of Laurie, wait, now he’s a demigod a cult worships or some shit. Never mind, we’ll just reboot the timeline two more times to make this shit make sense. It’s ridiculous.
The best idea this franchise ever had regarding Michael was passing the torch in 4. Moving the evil from one person to another like a plague is a great concept, but they never did anything with it. Halloween Ends picks up that thread and finally does something with it. Is it entirely successful? Not exactly, but I’m all for new ideas. And at the end of the day, I watch these fucking things to see gruesome murder set pieces, and this film has some of the most violent kills in the series. It took as hard a swing as it could, and while it wasn’t a home run, I respect the fact that it didn’t take an easy bunt like most of the other films in the series.
8. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
In 2022, we got two Texas Chainsaw-style bloodbaths: X and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I’ll never understand how one got showered with critical praise and sequel deals while the other was treated like it ran over a basket of kittens. X was a solid, no-frills slasher — nothing groundbreaking, but it delivered enough skin to distract from its flaws. The problem? It forgot that slashers run on a strict diet of boobs and blood, and it definitely skimped on the latter. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, on the other hand, douses the screen in more fake blood than the last three installments combined.
Say what you will about it but it more than delivers on it’s namesake. It takes place in Texas, there’s a chainsaw and there’s most definitely a massacre. The biggest complaints I’ve heard are that the characters are annoying and that the legacy character was useless. First of all, every single one of these movies has an annoying character, even the first one. And secondly, the film knows the legacy character is useless, that’s the point. That’s why she’s killed almost instantly. In fact, almost everyone in this movie is killed. It has one of the highest body counts of any slasher this decade and yet people shit on it while defending movies like Terrifier 2 that suffer from the same issues. I don’t get what horror fans want from horror anymore because I had a blast with this movie.
7. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)
By 2014, the found-footage trend was drier than a saltine in the Sahara. The Paranormal Activity movies had gone from “genius minimalist horror experiment” to “cheap security cam highlight reels.” They were the cinematic equivalent of watching someone’s Nest footage and waiting for a chair to move. But The Marked Ones? This one actually moves. It’s the rare spinoff that doesn’t just shuffle the same haunted furniture around — it grabs a GoPro, hits the streets, and says, “Let’s get weird.” Set in Oxnard, California, the movie ditches the suburban blandness of the earlier entries and drops us into a lively Latino neighborhood. Our heroes, Jesse and Hector, are two goofball best friends whose lives revolve around pranks, parties, and screwing around with their new camera. They’re the kind of guys who would absolutely die in the first five minutes of a Blair Witch movie because they’d try to take a selfie with the witch.
Things get creepy when their reclusive downstairs neighbor — the local bruja — turns up dead. Naturally, the boys decide to break into her apartment and immediately start messing with cursed objects, because horror movie characters are powered by bad decisions. They find some VHS tapes, a mysterious bite mark, and before long, Jesse starts acting off. What makes The Marked Ones stand out is that it doesn’t treat the haunting like a slow-burn mystery. It turns it into a superpower. Jesse starts showing signs of possession that make him look like a street magician: levitating, throwing people around, taking punches like he’s auditioning for The Raid.
There’s an amazing sequence where he and Hector test out his new “abilities” in the park like a possessed Jackass bit. It’s absurd, it’s funny, and it’s actually kind of awesome. For once, a Paranormal Activity movie isn’t afraid to have fun with the concept. The scares are still there (doors slam, shadows move, creepy noises whisper) but the pacing is faster, the characters are more likable, and the tone feels alive in a way the sequels hadn’t since the first film. It’s the first and only film to do something new with the concept and for whatever reason, fans treated it like it killed their dog. This is why studios don’t roll the dice on new because horror fans say they want it but clearly they don’t.
6. Encounter of the Spooky Kind II (1989)
Raimi and Jackson may be the kings of the over-the-top, everything and the kitchen sink approach to horror but what none of their films have is kung fu. No kung fu zombies. No kung fu hopping vampires. No kung fu, period. Which puts them at an extreme disadvantage when compared to the Jiangshi films of the 80’s. Originating in Hong Kong, Jiangshi is a regional subgenre (which is named after the hopping vampire that all the films center around) that blends horror, comedy and action into one movie that would prove so successful, dozens and dozens of films would copy the formula.
The progenitor? Encounters of the Spooky Kind. A mixture of Western horror movies and Chinese literature as well as slapstick kung-foolery and black magic, Encounters of the Spooky Kind is a slam-bang supernatural adventure that never stops throwing new and bizarre things at you. This is about as seamless a combination of action/horror/comedy as you’re likely to see in any realm of cinema. And the craziest part? The sequel some how tops it.
5. Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight Part 2 (2021)
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight Part 2 is a movie made by a man who just does not give a fuck whether or not you are going to like it. The first one was all about nostalgia, this one is about alienating 99% of its audience with the most bonkers and audacious twist since From Dusk Till Dawn. The original Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight was Poland’s first real slasher. A backwoods bloodbath about horny teens and deformed killers in the woods. It was comfort food for horror fans: big kills, dumb kids, gallons of gore, and a knowing wink at the classics. It didn’t reinvent the genre, but it understood it on a molecular level. Then Bartosz Kowalski came back a year later and said, “You know what? Let’s burn it all down.” Part 2 ditches the formula, changes the protagonist, and goes full tonal whiplash.
This time, the focus shifts to Adam (Mateusz Wieclawek), a socially awkward, painfully lonely cop who works at the same police station that dealt with the mutant hillbilly massacre from Part 1. He’s quiet, timid, and the human equivalent of a damp sponge—until Zosia, the Final Girl from the last film—enters his life. But here’s the catch: Zosia’s not the same as she once was. You would assume that means emotionally broken due to the trauma she endured but no, it’s way worse. Due to the events of the last one, she’s now part mutant, part human, and 100% pissed off. Their awkward romance (and I mean awkward) becomes the emotional anchor of the film — and by “anchor,” I mean it drags everything into deep, weird waters.
Because what starts as a tale of unrequited love turns into a surreal story about identity, otherness, and body horror that feels truly deranged. Kowalski basically uses Part 2 to dismantle every slasher cliché he paid homage to in Part 1. The brave Final Girl? Now a monster. The sympathetic virgin cop? Corrupted by lust and loneliness. The evil family of mutants? Weirdly relatable. By the end, the film transforms from a gorefest into a grotesque love story about monsters finding comfort in each other. It’s the movie Bride of Re-Animator and Return of the Living Dead Part III didn’t have the balls to be.
4. Memento Mori (1999)
Part of the unofficial “Whispering Corridors” series, Memento Mori stands apart from the others because it’s less interested in who dies and more interested in why life hurts so much in the first place. Two girls at an all-girls school are secretly in love. The relationship ends in heartbreak and after one of them dies, the surviving girl starts seeing creepy visions and hearing whispers that suggest her dead lover hasn’t exactly moved on. From there, things spiral into an ethereal fever dream where grief, guilt, and homophobia are just as deadly as any vengeful spirit. And that’s the secret sauce of Memento Mori: it uses the ghost as metaphor instead of monster. The supernatural stuff is subtle—more “lonely footsteps in an empty hallway” than “creepy girl crawling out of your TV.” The real horror is emotional repression, societal shame, and that uniquely teenage brand of heartbreak that feels like the end of the world because, in a way, it is.
The film is much more than just a ghost story. It’s a critique on Korea’s conservative social norms at the time. A movie about queer love, made when that kind of love was still considered taboo. The horror here isn’t the ghost, it’s the way a prejudiced society makes people into ghosts while they’re still alive. It’s also worth noting that Memento Mori came out in 1999, five years before A Tale of Two Sisters blew up internationally and before The Ring and The Grudge made long-haired ghosts the export of the decade. The film was ahead of the curve, paving the way for more emotional, character-driven horror in Korean cinema.
3. Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005)
Suicide Club is one of the most infamous foreign horror films of the 2000s because it dares to depict one of major no-nos of cinema: teen suicide. The television show 13 Reasons Why was hit with a wave of controversy after its depiction of suicide was too much for audiences to take. Thank God they weren’t alive when Suicide Club came out or they’d never stop crying. It’s a movie where fifty schoolgirls jump in front of a train like it’s an Olympic event—and that’s just the beginning. Kids are killing themselves left, right and center in that thing and the further it goes on, the weirder it gets. But did you know it has a prequel that attempts to explain the why behind their actions? Noriko’s Dinner Table looks at the previous film’s mass suicide and asks: what kind of world makes that happen?
Spoiler: a world full of lonely people trying to find meaning. The film follows Noriko, a shy teenage girl from the middle of nowhere who escapes her boring life, her emotionally constipated dad, and her sister to join a strange Tokyo “family” she meets online. Except this family isn’t related by blood — it’s a performance troupe that sells fake family experiences to lonely clients. You want to feel like you have a daughter who visits you? A wife who listens? A dad who apologizes? Pay up, and someone will pretend for a few hours. While that sounds crazy on the surface, this is very much a real service that still exists today.
Over its insanely long runtime (it’s three hours), Noriko’s Dinner Table slowly unravels into a psychological horror show about identity, alienation, and the suffocating loneliness of modern life. It’s less about suicide and more about why people disappear before they die. Every character is desperately trying to play a role but the lines don’t make sense anymore. It’s existential cosplay, and everyone’s costume is a lie. By the time it’s over, you’ll feel drained, confused, and deeply unsettled — but also kind of impressed that a movie can make you rethink what it even means to “be yourself.” It’s the cinematic equivalent of an emotional root canal. Painful, necessary, and probably too long, but you’ll thankful after its finished.
2. Door 2: Tokyo Diary (1991) and Door III (1996)
Each entry in the Door trilogy begins the same way: a woman stalked by an obsessive man, trapped in what seems like a standard home invasion thriller—until the film mutates into something far stranger. The first plays like Repulsion by way of Chantal Akerman, the second like analog horror filtered through David Lynch’s subconscious, and the third feels like Kiyoshi Kurosawa using the genre as a sketchbook for the ideas he’d later perfect in Cure and Pulse. It’s the kind of trilogy that shapeshifts so radically from one film to the next, the only real comparison is The Evil Dead—and the only reason you’ve probably never heard of it is because it’s been gathering dust in the corner of a Tokyo video shop since 1996.
Door 2: Tokyo Diary is a sequel in name only. The connective tissue between it and the original is barely there—both center on women struggling to survive the suffocating presence of men, but that’s where the similarities end. Where the first film is a paranoid, minimalist thriller in the When a Stranger Calls mold, Tokyo Diary dives headfirst into surrealism. It doesn’t want to startle you with jump scares or blood. It wants to unsettle you, to make you feel like you’re trapped inside someone else’s fever dream. The story follows a call girl whose encounters grow stranger and more dangerous until the line between fantasy and nightmare completely erodes.
Five years later, the series returned with Door III, following a weary saleswoman who becomes entangled with a potential client—imagine Harvey Weinstein crossed with David Cronenberg. Each film tells a distinct story, both narratively and stylistically, offering a completely different experience every time. In an era when most horror franchises cling desperately to formula, the Door trilogy deserves credit for having the guts—and the imagination—to reinvent itself with every installment.
01. Possessed II (1984)
A follow-up in name only to Possessed (1983), this one ditches continuity for chaos. It opens with a haunting, ends with an exorcism, and in between, it feels like reality keeps tripping over itself. The film follows a detective investigating a string of bizarre deaths that seem to circle back to a single cursed woman, but good luck trying to track the logic—this isn’t a mystery so much as a mind fuck given cinematic form. This movie throws so much at the viewer, even Raimi would tell it to calm the fuck down. Like so many Category III-adjacent horror films of the era, it’s a mix of the sacred and profane—priests versus demons, sex versus damnation, the living versus the guilt they can’t bury. But what makes Possessed II hit harder than its contemporaries is the amount of crazy it throws at you.
While others at the time focused on the extreme, this only cares about the non-stop gags it has planned. There are so many demons, so many unrelated murders committed by said demons, so many weird hauntings, you will forget half of what you just watched because it’s impossible to remember it all. There was definitely something in the air in Hong Kong horror from the early ’80s—a kind of manic, electric weirdness that feels like the filmmakers were all chasing a nightmare they half-remembered. Possessed II is the purest form of that energy: part exorcism film, part supernatural noir, and part cosmic fever dream about guilt, ghosts, and the cruel weight of karma. It isn’t polished. It isn’t coherent. But it doesn’t need to be. If The Exorcist is religion gone wrong, Possessed II is what happens when even God stops picking up the phone.
Greatest Horror Sequels
What are some underrated horror sequels you think screenagers should check out? Share them with us down in the comments!
