The 10 Best Horror Movie Sequels Ever, Ranked
The only thing harder to get right than an original horror movie is its sequel. For every "Aliens" or "Evil Dead 2," there's (shudder) "Leprechaun 4: In Space." So what are the best horror movie sequels worthy of your time? We got 'em ranked right here.
10. 'Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter' (1987)
The fourth "Friday the 13th" was intended to be the last, and it would have been a great high note to go out on. Instead, the franchise death rattled its way through some very questionable installments. But "Final Chapter" makes up for the misfires with its gruesome kills and a young Corey Feldman delivering quite the finishing move to the number one cause of death for sex-happy teen campers.
9. 'Halloween II' (1982)
Michael Myers terrorizes Laurie Strode in a mental hospital and sends the staff home in buckets in this gory-but-effective sequel that isn't as "meh" as some fans might suggest. Actually, it's the second-best sequel in the series. Right after...
8. 'Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers' (1988)
In this underrated sequel, the local cops don't dismiss all the "redrum" that piles up in their town as anything other than the work of a masked killer. That's just one of the pleasant surprises in the franchise's fourth installment, which subverts expectations with certain horror movie tropes and delivers a very efficient (and at times scary) slasher.
7. '28 Weeks Later' (2007)
Incredibly underrated and very terrifying best describe this "28 Days Later" sequel, which finds London's survivors of the Rage virus struggling to rebuild when the infected wreak havoc on their quarantine zone. The scariest sequence? A trip through a tube station shot mostly in night-vision POV.
6. 'Wes Craven's New Nightmare' (1994)
The franchise's seventh entry is its most ambitious. Director and writer Wes Craven goes full meta here (two years before he would so again in "Scream") with a movie-within-a-movie plot that turns Freddy Krueger into a very real threat -- much scarier and less pun-y than the previous incarnation.
5. 'A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors' (1987)
How do you fight Freddy Krueger? By taking him on in the dream world, naturally. This approach doesn't work well for every member of Team Dream Warriors (pictured), but the movie delivers all the scares a fan needs, thanks to a script co-written by Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption").
4. 'Dawn of the Dead' (1978)
You can't go wrong with the George Romero original, or the Zack Snyder remake. If you watch either, good luck ever going to sleep again.
3. 'Halloween' (2018)
Laurie Strode returns with an earned (and violent) way of dealing with her emotional trauma in this rebootquel from David Gordon Green. The slasher ignores the events of every film in the series, save for the John Carpenter original, as it picks up 40 years later after Michael Meyers' first murder spree. The events of that classic come full circle in "Halloween," culmination in one of the best "hell yeah!" moments the genre has ever seen.
2. 'Evil Dead II' (1987)
If there is anything better than Sam Raimi's balls-to-the-wall horror classic, we don't wanna know about it. There is life before, and life after, watching Ash go another round with the Deadites.
1. 'Aliens' (1986)
Writer-director James Cameron faced the unenviable task of succeeding Ridley Scott's 1979 classic. He went the action-horror movie route, and created a sequel that is arguably better than the original. And who doesn't love an ol' fashioned brawl between Power Loader and Alien Queen?
