Great Horror Movie Sequels

Horror movies often don’t bear the weight of having a sequel, and we’d argue that some of the best are self-contained stories that simply don’t need a follow-up. Sometimes, however, you wind up with a film that’s pretty incredible and still has more story to tell. If you’ve ever seen a horror film that didn’t just leave you hanging at some ambiguous end, but actively had you wanting to see more of the horror critter that made it perfect, you know what we’re talking about.

Bride of Chucky

Bride of Chucky is far and away one of our favorite horror sequels. It’s almost like this series realized its campy nature from the very beginning and dedicated itself to raising the bar in the most creative ways possible. The love affair between Chucky and Tiffany is one that will go down in the annals of twisted relationships with Harley Quinn and the Joker. I would even say it’d be hard to guess which one of the two would be the more dysfunctional. All we know is that this film is an incredible ride and we’re happy to rewatch it a dozen times.

The Exorcist III

Let’s be honest, we were all a little concerned when the suggestion of an Exorcist sequel was brought up by, well, anyone. While The Exorcist II was a terrible film that really never needed to be made, when III came out they completely redeemed themselves. Sometimes you have to know when to make a change in your films direction to recapture the story and approach it from a different direction. They did all of this in The Exorcist III, and avoided the use of campy horror props and halloween costumes while making it happen.

Aliens

While we’re talking about incredible horror movies that changed direction to make a sequel work, let’s look at the classic Alien franchise. One of the best examples of deep space monster horror Aliens is a completely different kind of film than Alien. In the original you had suspense and horror combined as the crew of the Nostromo did everything it could to defend itself against a cunning solo assailant. The sequel has a team of highly qualified marines dropping into a xenomorph hive and battling its way through an entire community of these beasts. This changing of gears is really what made the sequel work.

These are just a few of our favorite sequels, but the list is hardly all inclusive. The horror genre has its fair share of gems with atrocious sequels, and a surprisingly high number of solid follow-ups to original stories to boot. We know that sequelitis is a terrible disease that is far too common in the horror genre, but do give a sequel a shot before deciding that it’s just another piece of money-grubbing trash. Start with the ones above to get a good start, and then let us know which ones you think should go on a list of amazing sequels.