Fifteen more days until we officially launch our 31-Day Horror Sequel Marathon, wherein we review our 31 favorite horror movie sequels (number 2’s only). Last year when we published the 31-Day Indie Horror Marathon, it was a great deal of fun introducing friends and readers to some great lower-budget horror movies that they might never have heard of.
This time, we’ll be going back to some of our favorite horror franchises to look at how their second installments aged. Sequels are always complicated to review, because they’re generally compared to the merits of the original– whether or not that’s fair to the vision of the sequel. Sequels have to follow rules that the original was too busy creating. They come with different (usually higher) expectations than the original.
I was inspired by many other bloggers’ horror sequel top ten lists to try to find the ones that audiences and critics generally found to be worthy follow-ups. There was a lot of interesting suggestions. However, this will be wholly our list. And so, the entries will be based on our opinions and not necessarily critical reception alone.
Some of the movies we include may surprise (“upset” might be a better word for certain subsets of commenters) by our choices. A few were critically panned. But after watching about 50 horror movie sequels over the past couple years, we picked our 31 favorites based on our own preferences. We hope you enjoy this list and we look forward to sharing it with you!