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Not every sequel is a hit. This video dives into the horror movie sequels that were critical and commercial failures, effectively killing the franchises they belonged to. Learn about the missteps that led to the demise of these once-popular horror series.
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00:00More often than not, horror is extremely reliable when it comes to box office.
00:04Take the insatiable appetite of us horror fans and mix that with the generally low cost of producing so many
00:12horror films,
00:12and bingo, studios usually have an easy money spinner on their hands, regardless of a film's quality.
00:19And while most successful horror movies spawn at least a sequel or two,
00:24there comes a time when a sequel inevitably brings a halt to an IP,
00:28and that is what the focus is on here today.
00:31I'm Andrew from WhatCultureHorror, and here are the horror movie sequels that killed franchises.
00:36Paranormal Activity, next of kin.
00:39In 2015, Paranormal Activity The Ghost Dimension, the sixth movie,
00:44was meant to bring Paranormal Activity to an end, and to be fair, it was clearly about time.
00:51The law of diminishing returns had realistically kicked in with the fourth film.
00:54Of course, The Ghost Dimension was a total, total mess, a barely coherent story with a garish 3D gimmick
01:02tacked on as an act of desperation, and it became the lowest grossing of all the Paranormal Activity movies.
01:10Even then though, the film still took home $79 million worldwide, from a budget of just $10 million,
01:16again, highlighting how even awful horror movies can spin a very solid profit.
01:22Anyways, skip ahead to 2021, and Paramount decided that, yep, we needed a seventh film,
01:28a standalone sequel, and that would be Paranormal Activity, next of kin.
01:34Heading straight to streaming, because pandemic, this was a tepid, unoriginal, embarrassingly cliched movie
01:40that added zero to the franchise, bad enough that even its own producer, Jason Blum, called the film
01:46terrible, and assured audiences that Paranormal Activity, it was being totally shelled, well, at least for now.
01:54Sinister 2
01:55When Sinister released in 2012, and took home nearly $90 million from a measly $3 million budget,
02:03yeah, it was no surprise that a sequel was quickly given the green light.
02:07But without original director Scott Derrickson in the director's chair this time,
02:11instead serving as a co-writer with Kieran Foy directing,
02:15Sinister 2 ultimately felt like nothing more than a slapdash, half-arsed paycheck gig for Derrickson
02:21and fellow returning co-writer C. Robert Cargill.
02:24And this was seemingly reflected in Sinister 2's commercial performance,
02:28taking nearly half the box office of the first movie, but made for over three times the budget.
02:35Much like Jason Blum with Next of Kin, Scott Derrickson has since admitted he and Cargill
02:39dropped the ball on Sinister 2, though he has at times expressed interest in maybe returning
02:45to the franchise at some point. However, given how it's now been a decade since Sinister 2,
02:50and Derrickson and Cargill are busy with the likes of the Black Foam franchise,
02:54Sinister, it remains as dead as a dodo.
02:57Gremlins 2 The New Batch
02:59Considering how much of a huge mainstream hit Gremlins was,
03:04it's genuinely surprising to realise that it took six years for a sequel to hit the big screen.
03:10That would be Gremlins 2 The New Batch in 1990.
03:14After years of struggles to find a suitable director for the sequel,
03:18original director Joe Dante agreed to return to the fold,
03:21solely on the conditions of having full creative control,
03:24and more than triple the first film's budget.
03:27The end result is one of the most gloriously unhinged sequels of all time,
03:33a cartoonish parody of both the first movie and of Hollywood sequels in general.
03:38Not to mention we've got some truly astonishing practical effects here.
03:42To some, The New Batch is one of the greatest sequels ever made.
03:46But for other audiences at the time, it was deemed a more goofy experience that lacked some
03:51of the horror elements of its predecessor, resulting in it being a box office bomb,
03:56taking just over $40 million from a budget that was believed to be as much as $50 million all in
04:03all.
04:03And given how Gremlins took a mammoth $212 million,
04:08yep, Warner Bros. decided to put the franchise to bed.
04:11Hannibal Rising.
04:13Right, okay, okay, this one technically is not a sequel,
04:17but it is a follow-up all the same.
04:211986's Manhunter was the first adaptation of Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter novels,
04:26though it was obviously 1991's The Silence of the Lambs
04:30that made Hannibal a pop culture phenomenon.
04:33That itself saw more of Harris's work taken to the big screen with Hannibal and Red Dragon,
04:38both commercially successful in their own rights.
04:41And then, well, then we have 2007's Hannibal Rising,
04:45an adaptation of a prequel novel that Thomas Harris didn't even want to write in the first place.
04:51In fact, the only reason he agreed to write that
04:53was because producer Dino DeLorentis threatened to hire another writer
04:58if Thomas Harris did not do it.
05:00So, we've a lack of creative energy, a lack of real want from the writer here.
05:05There's a total absence of Anthony Hopkins, of course, because it's a prequel,
05:08and it's no surprise then that Hannibal Rising was a critical and commercial failure.
05:14Now 18 years since its release, which that makes me feel really old,
05:17we've not had a single other Hannibal movie since,
05:20with the IP only living on through the short-lived but brilliant Mads Mikkelsen starring TV series.
05:26Oh, yeah, and then there's the also disappointing scrapped-after-one-season Clarice series too.
05:32Hostel Part 3
05:34For better or for worse, and let's face it, it is for worse,
05:39Eli Roth's Hostel is one of the films so often credited with popularising the whole torture porn subgenre,
05:47with an emphasis on prolonged, brutal, pain and suffering,
05:51and not any hell-raiser way either.
05:53That first Hostel film did a cracking number at the box office,
05:56turning $82 million from a $4.5 million budget,
06:01and Hostel Part 2, it did solid enough, less than half the original,
06:05but still decent enough, though not enough for Eli Roth to stick around though,
06:09with him deciding to exit the franchise when Hostel Part 3 came around,
06:13a film that went straight to video in 2011,
06:16and featured zero returning characters from the previous two movies.
06:20That threequel was rightly, rightly panned by fans,
06:24and it received barely any attention even from critics,
06:27doing so poorly that Sony seemingly just decided to,
06:30yep, no, peace out, we're giving up on this franchise.
06:33Blair Witch
06:35For those of us around at the time,
06:37it is hard to fully put into words just how much a phenomenon
06:41that Blair Witch Project was back in 1999,
06:44an age where the internet was still a shiny new toy,
06:47an age where everything you saw online,
06:49it was taken as fact,
06:51because why would people make things up, right?
06:53It was just absolutely genius,
06:55as reflected by a box office of nearly $250 million,
06:59for a movie that had an initial budget of no more than $60,000,
07:05just insane, think of those numbers.
07:07And so, while it was no surprise that a sequel happened,
07:10hmm, it was certainly a choice to go with a conventionally formed sequel,
07:14rather than another found footage film.
07:16That would be Book of Shadows Blair Witch 2,
07:19which arrived one year later.
07:21The reviews were rough,
07:22the box office was way down,
07:24and the whole Blair Witch stuff just kind of drifted away after that.
07:27The burgeoning franchise put to bed after just two movies.
07:31That was, until the property was resurrected in 2016,
07:35with Blair Witch, a direct sequel to the original,
07:38shot in secret,
07:40and directed by the usually great Adam Wingard.
07:42I mean, Adam Wingard, you've got You're Next,
07:44and The Guest is just two fantastic films to his name.
07:47The marketing for Blair Witch, it was also pretty decent,
07:50building up the mystique around the film.
07:52Only, sadly, for the end result to be just so, so disappointing,
07:57the writing just feeling a little off,
07:59and a lot of the movie just feeling like a lazy rehash of the original film.
08:03To the point that Blair Witch,
08:05it even took home less at the box office than the awful Book of Shadows,
08:09which, let's face it, that says a lot,
08:11killing all plans,
08:12and any appetite for further sequels,
08:14even if a reboot has kind of been spinning its wheels on and off since 2022,
08:18but that has never seen the light of day, let's face it.
08:21Poltergeist 3.
08:23Tobey Hooper and Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist
08:26is not only an exceptional horror movie,
08:28it made a total killing out of the box office,
08:31particularly by horror standards at the time of its release in 1982.
08:35Granted, Poltergeist 2, The Other Side,
08:37which released in 1986,
08:39yeah, that underperformed financially,
08:41but it still turned enough of a profit for a third movie to be produced.
08:45Unfortunately, that third film is one tinged in sadness,
08:49mainly due to the tragic death of young Heather O'Rourke
08:51during post-production at just 12 years of age.
08:54It's absolutely heartbreaking, even all these years later.
08:56Director Gary Sherman, not to mention the rest of the cast and the crew,
09:00were naturally despondent about completing Poltergeist 3,
09:03which now required a new ending to be shot,
09:06and resulting in a very obvious body double being used in place of Heather.
09:10By the time Poltergeist 3 finally made it to cinemas,
09:13it was critically panned,
09:14and a financial disaster,
09:16taking home just $40 million,
09:19which was barely 10% of the box office of the original Poltergeist.
09:23The critical lambasting,
09:25the dreadful box office,
09:26and just the entire sad tragedy of the production,
09:29that was enough to call time on the Poltergeist movie franchise back then.
09:33Yes, a remake was pushed out in 2015,
09:35but yeah, that was extremely meh,
09:38as bang average as bang average remakes go,
09:40which then, that prompted MGM to once again make the IP dormant.
09:44Megan 2.0.
09:46One of 2022 surprise box office hits,
09:50it was hoped that the bigger budget sequel to Megan
09:52would repeat that same success.
09:55Spoilers, it totally did not.
09:56Compared to Megan's box office haul of over $180 million,
10:01Megan 2.0 didn't even cross the $40 million line,
10:06being made as well for double the budget of that first movie.
10:09One of the big issues with Megan 2.0
10:11was the decision to shift the tone
10:13towards goofier sci-fi action comedy,
10:16all at the expense of the horror aspects
10:18that made the first movie so effective and so popular.
10:22Meaning, plenty of those who did show up to watch Megan 2.0,
10:25they were left disappointed,
10:27and plenty of other people,
10:28they just simply opted to,
10:29no, stay away.
10:30And so, it now looks extremely unlikely
10:33that Blumhouse will move forward
10:35with the previously planned third main Megan movie.
10:38Though erotic thriller spin-off Soulmate,
10:41that has already been shot,
10:42and will release early next year.
10:44And that will surely be the last we'll see
10:46of this fumbled, fumbled IP.
10:48Doctor Sleep.
10:49Stanley Kubrick's The Shining
10:51never needed any sort of sequel whatsoever,
10:54being a one-off masterpiece
10:55that did everything that that story needed to do.
10:58Of course, Hollywood loves nothing more
11:00than adapting Stephen King novels.
11:02And so, when King penned a follow-up
11:04in the form of Doctor Sleep in 2013,
11:07yeah, that was always going to be spun
11:09for the big screen at some point.
11:11To be fair, once the great Mike Flanagan
11:13was brought on board to write and direct,
11:15and with Ewan McGregor signed on
11:16to play the adult Danny Torrance,
11:18it was kind of tough not to be excited for this.
11:20And you know what?
11:21Mike Flanagan and his team,
11:23his cast, his crew,
11:24they absolutely delivered
11:25a very worthy follow-up to The Shining.
11:27Unfortunately, though,
11:28Doctor Sleep flopped big at the box office,
11:32grossing $72 million,
11:33from a budget that was around $55 million.
11:36To the point that all plans for a direct sequel
11:39focusing on the Abra Stone character,
11:41and a prequel revolving around Dick Halloran,
11:44yeah, both of those movies
11:45were totally scrapped by Warner Brothers.
11:47The ABCs of Death 2.
11:50The ABCs of Death is a frustratingly short-lived
11:53horror anthology franchise,
11:55centred around a very, very simple,
11:57but a very, very fun gimmick,
11:59where each anthology is made up of 26 short films,
12:03and each of those short films
12:05is inspired by a different letter of the alphabet,
12:08such as say, T is for toilet.
12:10The first ABCs of Death
12:12received fairly mixed reviews at the time,
12:14but it did well enough
12:15that a sequel happened and arrived,
12:17which, while received more positively,
12:19it did struggle commercially,
12:21with the producers blaming fans
12:22who, instead of buying the movie,
12:24paying to watch the movie,
12:25they decided that,
12:26nah, we're just gonna pirate this one,
12:28we're gonna watch it illegally on streaming.
12:29As a result,
12:30the planned ABCs of Death 3 was never made,
12:33and instead,
12:34we got the ABCs of Death 2.5.
12:36Because the ABCs of Death 2.5
12:38came in and went
12:39without making too much of a dent back in 2016,
12:42there's been zero real movement since,
12:44which is a real, real shame,
12:46and since the concept of the series,
12:48it is so darn fun,
12:49begging for some sort of revival,
12:51on a platform such as Shudder,
12:53just saying.
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