As of late July 2018, eight of the top ten movies at the box office were sequels. It’s as ludicrous sounding as it is lucrative. Original ideas come from indie production companies and the big studios pump out sequels, prequels, and spinoffs to guarantee profits from audiences. Four decades ago, sequels were gambles that never touched the original film’s profits. Films were not produced on the idea that more of that universe would happen and were fully realized one-off products in a director’s oeuvre. Once sequels became profitable, studios tried to stick a number “2” or ‘Part 2″ on all their old properties — even if continuing the story would be impossible without awkward and unnecessary story structures.
The original film directors rarely returned for sequels when they started becoming profitable in the late 70s. For a creator to finish a fully realized project and leave everything inside the celluloid, the last thing they want to hear from a film studio exec is, “That was fantastic! Now do it again!” In today’s market, the studio can pay the original director such a large payout that they will feel compelled to sacrifice artistic integrity for continuing a storyline that doesn’t need a follow-up.
It’s insulting to think artists can just tap back into the same creative mindset again and provide something of the same value — to assume they didn’t give everything they had into making a singular story that stands on its own. Horror sequels just can’t replicate the original. By trying to bring more of the same or change up the story, audiences will be left underwhelmed every time.
Sequels rarely reach the greatness of the original film. There may be a few exceptions people can throw out, but it’s a small percentage of the whole pie. The Godfather Part II changed how Hollywood presented continuations. Studios didn’t want to alienate their audiences by limiting the crowd who would turn out as they would only buy a ticket if they had seen the first installment (why would a studio want to reissue a film in theaters in preparation of the incoming sequel when they could use that spot for a new film?). The French Connection 2 also dropped a year after The Godfather Part II and made about a fifth of the original’s budget. Sequels before the 1970s were titled in a way to avoid drawing attention to the fact that they were the next step in the story. They focused on self-contained tales that could stand on their own (e.g. all the Bond films, Universal Monster movies, etc) to attract a wider audience who had not caught the first film. It wasn’t until the 1978 release of Jaws 2, a sequel to a huge blockbuster, that sequels started to become noticeably profitable.
Sequels in the 80s and 90s weren’t like sequels of the present day. Sequels today are equipped with larger budgets with each installment typically outperforming their predecessor with ease (and a larger budget to spam marketing at every turn).
Sequels to blockbusters and horror films share the same outcome: they will make their money back, but horror films will make their money back, sometimes in the range of ten times their budget or more. Damien: Omen II in 1978 was the start of the influx of horror sequels that began blooming in the 80s. It wasn’t a smash hit like The Omen, but it made $26 million on a $6 million budget. A step in the right direction for horror sequels after Exorcist II disappointed the year prior with critics claiming it as one of the worst films of all time and making only $30 million after the original film raked in almost $200 million.
By 1980, John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s Halloween had scared up enough money to become the highest grossing independent film ever until The Blair Witch Project dropped in 1999. The producers thought making a sequel was a no-brainer, but Carpenter had no intention of directing another Halloween film. Hill and Carpenter took up producing and reluctantly writing the sequel as a way to recoup the money they never saw from the original film. John Carpenter had to be aided by six-packs of Budweiser to finish the script for Halloween II— a script he didn’t even want to write. It includes a brother-sister retconning that fans of the original have always thought was unnecessary along with more gory deaths and nudity because Carpenter thought no one would want a film that moved like Halloween in a post-Friday the 13th world.
Released in 1981, Halloween II and Friday the 13th Part 2 made ten times their budgets, the modern-day horror sequel was birthed, and it hasn’t let up since. Since then, horror films are often finished with a cliffhanger to hint at a sequel which means the original concept is never completely finished. It will be most likely continued by a different director or writer, it won’t come close to reaching the peaks of the original and thus, the story is never finished. When money is involved, art can and will always be manipulated to continue no matter what happens to the memory or intentions of the original masterpieces that led to the initial big payoff.
Why do you think so many horror icons are unable to be killed? You can’t have a series with an antagonist that can die and continue making sequels. Halloween III tried to make the franchise an anthology series after Michael Myers died in the previous sequel and the demand to bring Michael Myers back was so high, they found a way to bring him back. Money can resurrect any dead villains.
There’s never been a horror sequel that felt necessary. Plenty of horror sequels are enjoyable (sometimes for reasons the creators didn’t intend), but none of them were essential to continue the story from the initial film.
To be a fan of horror, you also have to be tolerant of bad films because you will stumble upon plenty. All horror fans have that first scare they hold onto and attempt to chase in the limitless pit of other horror films. Almost every great horror film has tried their hand at being a franchise because whether the follow-ups are good or not, there will be legions of horror fans there on opening night. Take the new Halloween sequel for example. It is completely unnecessary, but most people are quite happy with the results.
So why do audiences watch these sequels if they think they are worthless? Why spend money on sequels that will possibly disappoint? Horror fans are drawn to the characters, the reactions, the discussion and the world of horror, even when it’s not good. That loyalty to the genre that consistently screws viewers over more times than it rewards them is what keeps studios pumping out sequels. These audiences will keep watching horror sequels because there’s nothing else quite like chasing the feeling of that “first scare” film world.
No other genre is quite like horror in the film world. The genre dies and comes back completely different at least once a decade. Audiences will continue to be let down by horror because they will never give up hope that one of the sequels will land perfectly on its feet and redefine the genre yet again.
