18 horror movies that surprisingly got sequels

“Jaws” is a great movie. It made Steven Spielberg’s career. Also, because it was made so well, sometimes it isn’t thought of as a horror movie. Multiple people, including a child, get obliterated by a shark. Then, they made three sequels. None of them are very good, but also none of them were directed by Spielberg. That isn’t coincidental.

The remake of “Carrie?” Not surprising, though it didn’t turn out very well. “Carrie” is a good horror flick, but it also ends with Carrie dying. For a sequel that came out over two decades later, they invented a half-sister of Carrie to basically just do a “girl with telekinesis” movie. At least it gave us a classic, delightfully clunky sequel title: “The Rage: Carrie 2.”

“The Blair Witch Product” was a smash sensation that repopularized found-footage horror movies. It in no way, shape, or form seemed prime for a sequel, though. At least they wisely went for the quick cash-in, as “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2” came out in 2000. However, inexplicably it is not a found-footage movie. Baffling decisions all around.

Before the phrase “elevated horror” was ever bandied about (we think), “The Exorcist” was a blockbuster and an Oscar player. Based on a book, it would have made all the sense in the world for “The Exorcist” to stand on its own. Instead, the first sequel arrived in 1977. There have been a few more, one made by schlockmeister Renny Harlin and another made by madman Paul Schrader.

“Psycho” is a proto-slasher classic from Alfred Hitchcock, but it builds to a twist (a good twist, which is never a given in a horror movie) and ends somewhat definitively. For years, “Psycho” got to stand on its own. Then, they made two sequels in the 1980s. Surprising, to be sure but some credit where it is due: “Psycho II” begins with Norman Bates being released from the mental institution after 22 years, keeping the franchise in real time, more or less.

Making a spinoff of “The Conjuring” about a spooky doll was dumb, but we get it. Also, we totally understand and are not surprised by any of “The Conjuring” sequels, even if the Warrens were total con artists. One braindead horror movie about a spooky doll is enough, but “Annabelle” got a prequel and then got a sequel. It’s also annoying that they made the doll so overtly spooky, when the real doll was a Raggedy Ann.

Why is “Saw III” the one we are surprised got a sequel? Because it’s the one where Jigsaw dies. Keeping a horror franchise going after killing off the killer is a bold choice. Of course, the “Saw” franchise is all about gross deaths, human misery, and meanspirtedness, so stuff like characterization and internal logic may not mean a ton.

The original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was a progenitor of slashers, found-footage horror, and true-crime lampoonery. Tobe Hooper directed the first sequel, which is an insane movie (and do recall the first movie is about a guy in a skin mask wielding a chainsaw). Even the third film, which is a much-delayed shrug, isn’t wholly surprising. Five years after this one, though, we got a movie that was eventually released as “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.” When you are next generation-ing the world of Leatherface, you’re out of ideas.

A slasher movie about a prom night. Totally made sense in 1980, and casting Jamie Lee Curtis in all her scream-queen glory also made total sense. However, a movie about a killer at a high school prom kind of runs out of juice the second, you know, prom night is over. Maybe that’s why the ridiculously-named “Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II” is both inexplicable and largely just riding the coattails of “Prom Night” with the title.

“The Return of the Living Dead” rules. It’s a punk horror-comedy that presupposes the events of the movie “Night of the Living Dead” were real, but exaggerated for the movie. It’s a ton of fun and a proper cult classic, but it ends on a morbidly humorous note and felt like a one-off. Alas, a few years later “Return of the Living Dead” would return. Of course, it’s all new characters and basically unrelated, but they got to coast on the name recognition.

John Landis’ 1981 film “An American Werewolf in London” is a seminal horror-comedy and it changed special effects as well as werewolf movies. For a couple years, a sequel may have made sense. Two things made a sequel surprising. One, it didn’t come out until 1997. Two, it’s set in Paris. “An American Werewolf in Paris” basically has no connection to the original other than being set in a European capital and involving a werewolf. The sequel is also quite poor.

We will accept this sequel to “I Know What You Did Last Summer” because the title is fun. Also, because they fast-tracked it and got it out a year later. That seemed like that, though. However, even if we eschew the direct-to-video “I’ll Always Know What You Last Summer,” the fact this franchise got a 2025 legacy sequel was baffling. Perhaps the nadir of the legacy sequel, in fact.

The sequel to “Ready or Not” hasn’t come out yet, and it has wisely been titled “Ready or Not: Here I Come.” Also, we really like the 2019 horror-comedy. It’s just that, when it ends, there is no practical space for a sequel. The sequel may be fun as well, but it will be hard-pressed to make us anything other than confused as to how it works conceptually.

Once the spooky girl crawled out of the spooky TV, that should have been that. Sure, “The Ring” ends with a “nothing has been stopped” downer of an ending, but it did feel like an ending. A few years later, though, we got “The Ring Two.” If that wasn’t enough of a puzzler, we got the internet-ified “Rings” in 2017.

“American Psycho” is less a horror movie and more a gory satire of 1980s superficiality, but it’s close enough for us to include it. That’s because the fact it has a sequel is bizarre. It makes more sense when you realize it isn’t really a sequel at all in any practical sense. Some craven marketing-minded person at the studio saw a screenplay called “The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die” and figured, “If we call it ‘American Psycho 2’ and loosely connect it to the original it will be more successful!” Yeah, it still ended up direct-to-video. Notably, the film stars Mila Kunis, and she has also said she got hoodwinked by the faux sequel of it all.

We’re going to hit you with back-to-back, “You can’t use the word final in your sequel and then keep making movies in the franchise.” It’s particularly galling to call your movie “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” and then generate sequels. This was the sixth “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie, which is some real “Guys, enough is enough” stuff as it is. There have since been two sequels and a reboot, with one of the sequels being where Freddy fights Jason. Speaking of which…

The audacity of the “Friday the 13th” franchise is even more galling on the finality front, but to be fair this has always been a braindead franchise only interested in gore and nudity. Even so, “The Final Chapter” is the fourth “Friday the 13th” movie. The fifth movie came out literally less than a year later. Later, they would also do “Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.” Guess what? Also not the last one!

At no point until we saw that “Black Phone 2” was coming out did we envision “The Black Phone” getting a sequel. That wasn’t the vibe of that movie at all. Plus, spoiler, the killer played by Ethan Hawke is himself killed in the first movie. As such, the sequel seems to be essentially, “Look, nobody is making new Freddy Krueger movies right now so cut us some slack for trying to step into the market!” You know, you are allowed to make a successful movie and not make a sequel, right?