It doesn’t take an Eli-Roth-like horror expert to understand why the genre’s penchant for sequels has a muddy reputation. Just flip through the “Horror” section of any DVD store—you’ll see entire rows dedicated to endless Friday the 13th sequels, A Nightmare on Elm Street follow-ups, Halloween extensions, and Saw death trap fests. More than any other genre, the scary one is prone to beating its popular movies into the ground with one unnecessary sequel after another, until Jason Voorhees has been "killed" more times than Will Arnett's sitcom dreams.
Good ones do get made. For every three pointless slasher movie sequels, there’s a Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, which is a much better film than the 1980 original. But that’s the exception.
More often than not, they’re laughably perfunctory. Case in point: The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, the sequel to Daniel Radcliffe’s surprise 2012 hit, The Woman in Black. This one, which surprisingly isn't half bad, doesn’t star Radcliffe, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a fan of the first movie who really wants it. Nevertheless, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death opens today and will probably make a decent amount of box office money, because there’s literally no other movie opening this weekend.
Of course, you could always skip The Woman in Black 2: Electric Boogaloo and watch one of the guaranteed-to-be-good entries on our list of The 25 Best Horror Movie Sequels of All Time at home on DVD, Blu-ray, or via a digital streaming service. Go on, you know that’s the better option.
Matt Barone is a Complex senior staff writer who, yes, will also watch any and all *bad* horror movie sequels. (FYI, he actually paid to see The Last Exorcism Part II. Feel for him.) He tweets here.