The 13 Worst Scary-Movie Remakes and Sequels To Avoid This Halloween

As Halloween approaches, one of the best ways to celebrate the spooky season is to have a scary-movie marathon. Unfortunately, even the most beloved horror franchises have subpar sequels and remakes that are more trick than treat.

For every decent installment such as Halloween (2018), Scream 2, and The Exorcist III, there is a dubious entry such as Halloween: Resurrection, Jaws: The Revenge, or Exorcist II: The Heretic. The best option is to skip the substandard entries and pretend that they never happened, or stick to the original if the remake stinks.

All of the following horror sequels or remakes are a huge step down in quality from their predecessors. This lifelong horror-movie fan sat through all of them to spare you the pain. Don’t get tricked!

Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

This eighth installment of the Halloween franchise is about an Internet reality show called Dangertainment that is filmed at the Myers house. Unbeknownst to the cast and crew, Michael Myers is still alive and has returned home.

Halloween: Resurrection is the worst movie in the entire Halloween franchise, which is somewhat surprising given that Rick Rosenthal — the director of the fan-favorite sequel Halloween II — directed this abysmal entry. After Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) seems to have chopped off the head of Michael Myers at the end of Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, we learn that Michael put his mask on a paramedic’s head, meaning that Laurie killed an innocent man. This lands Laurie in a mental hospital, where Michael tracks her down and kills the iconic character in the movie’s opening scene.

After dropping the franchise’s beloved heroine off a roof, the action turns to the Myers house where characters played by the rapper Busta Rhymes and supermodel Tyra Banks are filming their lame reality program. At one point, Rhymes karate-chops Michael and blurts, “Trick or treat,” and you realize the only one tricked was you and anyone who paid to see this garbage.

Alien Resurrection (1997)

Set some 200 years after the events in Alien 3, Alien Resurrection begins with scientists cloning the long-deceased Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) so that they can extract the Alien queen from her body. Since the queen’s DNA and Ripley’s became intermingled, the Ripley 8 clone has some memories of the original Ripley and what happens when xenomorphs get loose on a spaceship

The most disappointing plot point about Alien Resurrection is that Ripley 8 is a clone and not the same character that fans love from the previous three installments. Ripley 8 moves and acts differently — almost like a jungle cat slinking around — because she is part xenomorph.

Although director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection has some cool sequences featuring underwater xenomorphs and a human-xenomorph hybrid baby that is nightmarish, the supporting cast is mostly unlikable and insufferable with the exception of Winona Ryder as the android Annalee Call. If filmmakers want to resurrect Ripley in the future, let’s hope that they establish that Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection were nothing more than hypersleep nightmares experienced by Ripley.

The Fog (2005)

This remake of John Carpenter’s 1980 ghost story The Fog is about a mysterious fog that sweeps over the Oregon town of Antonio Island, bringing with it the vengeful spirits of sailors who were murdered there 134 years earlier.

1980’s The Fog is a chilling, atmospheric ghost story that boasts an on-screen pairing of mother-daughter scream queens Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis. This soggy remake directed by Rupert Wainwright has CGI effects that look like a Windows 95 video game cut screen instead of more convincing practical effects. To “update” and distinguish this remake from the original, the town’s DJ spins phat rap beats instead of smooth jazz. Got it — there is little doubt that we’re in the aughts now!

If you’re going to tell an old-fashioned ghost story set in a remote Oregon town, is it too scary to ask that the music match the setting and the ghosts don’t look like an old video game? Keep this remake lost in the fog.

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning arrived one year after Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. The sequel follows an institutionalized Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd) — the boy played by Corey Feldman who killed maniac Jason Voorhees in The Final Chapter — at a halfway house.

Not only did Paramount lie about the “final” aspect of The Final Chapter, A New Beginning doesn’t even feature Jason Voorhees, the slasher series’ main man. Instead, a copycat in a hockey mask is running around the halfway house dispatching amorous teens, per usual. Even the blood and gore — why fans see slasher films — got toned down due to increased scrutiny by the MPAA.

The studio quickly realized its flub and brought Jason back a year later in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Just skip Part V during your marathon and go right to Jason Lives after The Final Chapter.

Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

Jaws: The Revenge is the fourth and, to date, final movie in the Jaws franchise. The fishy sequel features Lorraine Gary reprising her role as Ellen Brody from the first two films. In this nonsensical sequel, a great white shark kills Ellen’s younger son off Amity Island before swimming down to the Bahamas to go after her eldest son. “This time, it’s personal,” reads the poster tagline.

Critics universally panned Jaws: The Revenge, the lowest-grossing movie in the Jaws franchise. Not only did the rubbery shark look even more fake than “Bruce” from the 1975 original, but the shark roars like an angry lion. Those who watch Shark Week know that sharks do not have vocal cords, so a roaring, plastic-looking shark elicits more giggles than screams from viewers.

Jaws: The Revenge won the Razzie for Worst Visual Effects and was nominated for many more. Star Michael Caine could not accept his Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters because he was filming Jaws 4 in the Bahamas. Caine famously said, “I have never seen [Jaws: The Revenge], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”

Poltergeist III (1988)

In this third installment of the Poltergeist franchise, Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O’Rourke) gets terrorized by dangerous spirits while staying with her aunt and uncle in Chicago’s John Hancock Center.

If Poltergeist II let people down after the classic Poltergeist, then Poltergeist III makes the first sequel look like The Godfather Part II. Poltergeist III reportedly cost $9.5 million and looks cheap compared to the imaginative effects in the previous two entries. Amusingly, everyone living in the John Hancock Center in this movie does everything you can think of on-site: work, recreation, cocktail receptions, swimming, shopping, and residential living. Convenient!

To worsen matters, 12-year-old O’Rourke died 4 months prior to the movie’s opening, making marketing the horror movie challenging. The scariest thing about Poltergeist III is how terrible the reviews were.

Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

The Hellraiser horror franchise that began with Clive Barker’s 1987 classic Hellraiser features four big-screen movies and countless direct-to-video sequels, reboots, and requels. The ninth film in the series, Hellraiser: Revelations, is about two friends who fool around with a puzzle box and open a gateway to another dimension inhabited by sadistic demons known as Cenobites.

Dimension Films faced a dilemma: make another Hellraiser movie within weeks or risk losing the rights to the franchise. Due to the rushed nature of the production, Doug Bradley — who played the iconic Pinhead character in the previous eight installments — passed on this sequel, forcing the studio to recast Pinhead with an unknown actor.

The end result is every bit as amateurish and embarrassing as you might expect. If you’re binge-watching the Hellraiser movies this Halloween, pretend this one never happened.

The Omen (2006)

By now, Hollywood has remade almost every classic horror film, including 1976’s The Omen about the Antichrist’s arrival in the form of a little boy named Damien. In this 2006 remake — the fifth film in The Omen franchise — young Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick plays the spawn of Satan and Mia Farrow plays the nanny who knows the evil that dwells within him.

Part of the appeal of the original Omen movie is that the audience wasn’t sure if the angelic-looking boy who played Damien was really evil or if everyone’s imagination just got carried away. In the remake, there is little doubt that Damien knows he’s the ultimate baddie — the young actor scowls and gives his best “mean” face to drive the point home that he’s the ultimate evil in case you forgot the plot of the four previous movies. Pray you never have to see this sinful remake.

I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (2006)

I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer is a direct-to-video stand-alone sequel that follows the events of I Know What You Did Last Summer and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. In the third entry, a group of friends stage a prank with someone impersonating the fisherman killer, Ben Willis. After someone gets killed, the friends cover up the evidence of their prank and swear to take the secret to their graves… which won’t be long for most of them.

Although it’s disappointing that none of the actors who played surviving characters from the previous installments showed up for this suspicious sequel, I’ll Always Know‘s biggest problem is that it introduces a supernatural element to a slasher series very much based in reality. In this third movie, the Fisherman is a ghost or zombie or something otherworldly.

If the filmmakers didn’t want to make a movie with a flesh-and-blood boogeyman, they should have titled the movie something else, like The Fisherman Ghost Fillets. OK, maybe not that, but you get the idea.

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

Set four years after the events in The Exorcist, this much-maligned sequel follows Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) as she experiences residual effects from her epic demonic possession. Richard Burton plays Father Philip Lamont and Louise Fletcher plays Dr. Gene Tuskin.

Despite featuring an all-star cast and Blair in her famous role, Exorcist II: The Heretic got trashed by critics as one of the worst movies ever made. Regan spends most of the movie under hypnosis, during which we see visions of past exorcisms and locusts — many, many locusts. Those who watch this abomination expecting 360-degree head turns and projectile vomiting are setting themselves up for the biggest horror movie letdown of the last century.

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)

This murky sequel to Alien vs. Predator is set in modern times and follows a Predator ship that crash-lands outside of Gunnison, Colorado. An Alien-Predator hybrid known as a Predalien escapes the ship and is pursued by a “cleaner” Predator to eliminate the Predalien and anything else in its way.

Neither Aliens vs. Predator nor Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem are considered canon in the Alien series because the events of Prometheus, Alien, and the rest of the franchise wouldn’t make sense if they were. In addition, AVP: Requiem was so poorly lit that audiences couldn’t see what was happening on-screen anyways.

After AVP: Requiem got panned by critics, any plans for future Aliens vs. Predator movies were immediately scrapped.

Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (1999)

This direct-to-video Candyman sequel stars Tony Todd as the titular spirit of a murdered son of a slave who is invoked when someone says his name five times in the mirror. Baywatch babe Donna D’Errico plays a distant descendant of Candyman.

Candyman says “Be my victim” so many times in Candyman 3 that, if you don’t turn the movie off, you may say his name five times in the mirror just in case the urban legend is real and the hook-handed boogeyman will show up to end your suffering. Even Todd admitted at a horror convention that he didn’t like this uninspired third entry in the franchise that began with 1992’s Candyman, based on a character created by Clive Barker.

The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1995)

This fourth entry in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre series follows four teens who, on their prom night, run into Leatherface and his messed-up family of cannibals in the woods.

The only selling point of this god-awful sequel is that it features Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey before either of them were famous. The original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is brutal, relentless, and terrifying, whereas this fourth movie comes perilously close to self-parody. It’s difficult to believe that McConaughey went on to win an Oscar after his bug-eyed, manic performance in this shoddy sequel.