(Image courtesy of Lucas Pezeta)
Horror movies have always been known for getting loads upon loads of sequels. However, there are some series that go above and beyond with just how many movies they get. Sometimes they can be gems that build upon the world and characters the first movie created, but more often than not they’re made to turn a quick buck from a once popular movie. Let’s take a look at five series with more sequels than you might expect, and see which ones were warranted and which ones were rightfully forgotten.
Just to preface, there are series that are longer than the ones listed here. I’m only listing series that I have seen in full so I can accurately talk about them. Believe me, I have slogged through some series for reasons I can’t fully articulate while sounding sane.
5: Child’s Play
The first movie staring the iconic doll Chucky, a foul-mouthed former serial killer and practicer of voodoo magic, released in 1988. Almost immediately, a sequel was ordered that had Chucky raised from the dead. Almost forty years later, and the series now consists of 8 movies and a TV show with three seasons. We’ve seen Chucky get a wife and kid (or kids? It’s weird), we’ve seen him infiltrate the White House, and we’ve seen him get resurrected so, so many times. cour
The series has been a rollercoaster in terms of quality, often going from best in the series to worst within one movie. Despite this, even the worst movie in the Child’s Play franchise is still a fun time, as each movie has a lot of heart put in to it from a cast and crew that has stuck with the series for decades. The most contentious film is the 2019 remake of the original, which was made against the wishes of series creator Don Mancini, but even this movie is enjoyable enough without the wider context.
Another impressive thing about Child’s Play is that it doesn’t have tons of branching timelines and reboots like Halloween. It instead has each movie (except the 2019 remake) iterate on the last and it becomes a soap opera about murderous dolls. Oscar Nominated actor Brad Dourif has voiced Chucky ever since the first movie, and even said that Chucky was the only thing that he would do after he retired. The Child’s Play series, while long, is worth watching.
4: Alien
Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece Alien introduced the world to the Xenomorph, a creature that stuck in the minds of audiences beacuse of it’s creepy design and terrifying presence. The first sequel in 1986, James Cameron’s Aliens, switched it up and made it more action packed while still keeping the Xenomorphs a threatening beasts. After that, it gets a bit more shaky. The Alien series has nine movies and a TV show currently airing on Hulu.
While the first two movies are absolute classics, the series gets a bit shakier after that. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection both had troubled productions that clearly impacted the quality of their movies. The two crossovers with the Predator series (which is another can of worms) were also poorly received, with Alien vs. Predator: Requiem often considered the worst film in both franchises. The two films made in the 2010’s by Ridley Scott were considered divisive as he strayed away from the original and tried something very different. More recently, the series is turning around as the recent movie Alien: Romulus and the TV show Alien: Earth have both recieved positive reception.
While the series has a shaky history, the first two movies are massively influential and are the blueprints for many horror, sci-fi, and action movies. Even the lesser sequels still have great production design and create an enthralling and oppressive world where the Xenomorph reigns. Alien is a series worth watching, as even the divisive entries always try something new and interesting.
3: Hellraiser
Clive Barker, a legend of horror writing up there with Stephen King, made the first Hellraiser movie in 1987 as his directorial debut. Barker created the mysterious and unsettling Cenobites, a group of sadomasochistic beings from Hell that come to collect any person who solves a strange puzzle box. The terrifying presence of the Cenobite leader (nicknamed “Pinhead”) played masterfully by Doug Bradley gave the series a staying power and an iconic horror villain. Their unsettling designs and strange inhumanity gave birth to a large series with eleven movies.
Like with Alien, the first two movies are undoubtedly the best. The first one presents the Cenobites as mysterious beings from another realm, while Hellbound: Hellraiser II expands on Hell and the Cenobite’s story. Things get worse with Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, which tried to be more mainstream and make Pinhead closer to something like Freddy Krueger rather than his stoic and mysterious portrayal from before. Bloodlines is where it all falls apart, as the troubled production led to a disjointed movie that ridiculously jumps between the modern day, French Revolution, and a space ship. After that, eight direct to DVD sequels were pumped out, often using unrelated scripts that Pinhead was later forced in to. They’re awful. Shockingly, Doug Bradley returned for all but the final two direct to DVD movies, making his performance the only highlights of the movies. Finally in 2022, a remake released staring Jamie Clayton as Pinhead, which was fine but forgettable.
Watching all 11 Hellraiser movies is not worth it. I’d recommend watching only the first four and stopping there. It’s two genuinely suspenseful and shocking movies and two “so bad it’s good movies. While Hellraiser and Hellbound are genuinely great movies that are absolutely worth watching, slogging through the eight direct to DVD movies will tear your soul apart.
2: Halloween
The Halloween series started in 1978 and became highly influential in the world of horror. It codified tons of horror tropes and brought the slasher genre into the mainstream. The killer, Michael Myers, terrified audiences by being a silent husk embodying pure evil. The popularity of the first movie led to a whopping thirteen sequels that branched into five different continuities.
The first timeline is made up of movies one and two and movies four through six. This started off well with Halloween II feeling like a justified second chapter of the full story, it but devolved quickly. Four through six were poorly thought out, pulling a plot point about about a cult that created Michael Myers out of thin air. The third movie, Season of the Witch, is unrelated to the other movies and is about an evil maker of Halloween masks who uses it to try and kill every kid in America. It sounds goofy, but it’s actually a pretty fun watch. The third continuity started with Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, which only recognized the original movie and Halloween II. It was one of the first legacy sequels, a concept that gets used all the time by Hollywood now. It was followed by Resurrection, which was so bad it killed this timeline right then and there. The series was briefly revived in the late 2000’s when a remake and a sequel were given to director Rob Zombie, who injected his signature style into it. It’s good if you’re in to that, but it’s not my favorite. The fifth and final timeline was kicked off with another legacy sequel in 2018, which ignored all but the first movie. It started great, but by the final movie it went off the rails and loses the plot.
The Halloween series has had a lot of interesting ups and downs. It’s mass of branching timelines can be pretty confusing to newcomers. I’d recommend watching the original 1978 film and the 2018 reboot at the very least. You can watch the two follow ups Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends if you want, but they get a little ridiculous, especially Ends. The Halloween series is best experienced on a case-by-case basis, watching the good ones and ignoring the bad or irrelevant ones.
1: The Ring
Alright, you might think I’m crazy with this one. How much can you really do with a girl who crawls out of TVs and kills people for watching a VHS tape? But I promise you, The Ring has far more movies than you’d probably expect. The movie you’re probably familiar with from 2002 is actually a remake of a Japanese film that went ballistic in it’s home country and spawned tons of movies. If you count all of the Japanese and American movies, plus the one Korean movie, you get an eye watering 14 movies, plus two miniseries.
The series started a novel written by Koji Suzuki in 1991. This was first adapted into a low budget TV movie in 1995, but the series really got started with the first theatrical film, Ring, in 1998. The poorly received sequel, Spiral, actually released the same day as Ring. A major timeline split occurred when Ring 2 released in 1999, and movies often jumped between following Spiral and following Ring 2. The original Ring got remade twice, first in South Korea as The Ring Virus and later in America as The Ring in 2002. The American version become a phenomena and an absolute classic, and started a short-lived trend of remaking Japanese horror movies in English. It got two sequels, neither of which made much of a splash. Meanwhile in Japan, they just started throwing random ideas at the wall and somehow made them into movies each time. The later Japanese sequels are a disjointed mess of random ideas, cheap effects, and a clear sense of everyone wanting to go and collect their paychecks.
Most people would probably be satisfied just watching the the American remake. If you want to see the original series, I would recommend watching Ring, Ring 2, and the prequel Ring 0: Birthday before stopping right there. The sequels are just too sloppy and phoned in to even bother watching a couple of them, let alone all of them like I suffered through.
Conclusion
While some horror series are able to keep up the momentum from a great first movie, a lot of them also flounder pretty quickly. It’s an exception rather than a rule that a long running series will mean long running quality. So whats the lesson here? Maybe the lesson is that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Maybe it’s that you don’t need to satiate your curiosity about every single series every single time. Whatever the lesson is, I haven’t learned it.
If you want to torture yourself, a Letterboxd list with all the series talked about here is linked below. Have fun suffering along with me if you’re in to that.
https://letterboxd.com/soup_ladles/list/long-horror-series/share/1z1dJnPeU1VbESpv
Thanks for reading, and tell me what other stupidly long series I can inflict upon myself.