This month I've been starting to go through every horror franchise in history, the full reviews for each installment are on the site, check them out for a more in depth review on each movie in each series.
The Exorcist
The original is the greatest film ever made, but I also highly recommend you watch the only true sequel The Exorcist will ever get which is Exorcist 3 , it is a phenomenal movie that is criminally underrated. Featuring great performances from George C Scott and Brad Douriff and it's written and directed by the original writer of The Exorcist , William Peter Blatty.
Sleepaway Camp Franchise
The Sleepaway Camp series is extremely original, offensive and controversial. The original is disarmingly hammy in places but has a genuinely disturbing ending that would never be made today.
I think all three are good films however I recommend the first and the third, which is my personal favorite.
Angela is a great slasher villain and she's only fully realised in the third and final film which does not contain some of the very negative anti-trans messaging present in the first two entries.
Friday The 13th
my personal favorite is surprisingly the 2009 remake
it's a good jumping on point for the series as it gives you really a better version of the first four films and the most intimidating Jason Vorhees there is. I also really enjoyed Jason Takes Manhattan and Friday the 13th Part 6, and of course the ridiculous but extremely fun Jason X.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a very strange series, obviously nothing surpasses the original but there's a few unexpectedly enjoyable entries. I also recommend Part 3, and the 2017 prequel Leatherface which is surprisingly good.
Final Destination
Oddly final destination 3 is my favorite of the franchise, it has the best final girl played by Mary Winstead and is the strongest film of the entire series. I also recommend the original and the first sequel (which has some huge issues but the best opening of the franchise), after that it gets pretty boring.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Both films are entertaining, are they good, no,
but they're stupid fun. the second though is utterly ridiculous,
why it is set in the Bahamas and why it has a voodoo sub plot that it completely forgets about before the end of the third act is beyond me.
Wishmaster
I love the first Wishmaster film, it's super creative, has great practical effects and created a horror icon. I don't recommend the sequels but that original movie is pure 90's cheese at its best.
The Purge
The Purge series has a great concept behind it,
that being, what would happen if all crime was legalized for one night. The answer the movies give is that many ordinary people would succumb to their base desires and kill each other without conscience or remorse. The first film is one of the best home invasion films ever made, it's well acted, fast paced and intense as all hell.
The biggest problem with the sequels is that they lean too heavily into the social commentary aspect of The Purge which only the original and its sequel the first purge manage to pull off, the others try to say too much on race and social inequality without having the writing talent necessary to pull these themes off.
I would recommend the original and its prequel The First Purge,
and to a lesser extent The Purge: Anarchy.
SAW
The SAW series is pretty entertaining for what it is,
John Kramer is an excellent villain who has an air of menace about him very similar to say Anthony Hopkins in the silence of the lambs. The films get increasingly ridiculous as they go on but I can't say I was bored by any of them, the two standouts of the series are SAW 2 and SAW 3. I'm not a huge fan of the original movie but I really enjoy the two sequels. Shawnee Smith and Tobin Bell are great in them.
Rob Zombie's Corpses Trilogy
I personally love the Devil's Rejects and to a lesser extent House Of 1000 Corpses. the former is a great homage to the gritty grindhouse movies of the 1970's like The Last House On The Left and the latter is clearly heavily influenced by Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 but in my opinion its a far superior movie. It takes the zany insanity which is the only aspect that works about that film and then builds on it to create something better. The third film however is an abomination and doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the first two installments.
Insidious
I really like the concept, characters and story of the first insidious film but as a movie I absolutely hate it. It is everything wrong with modern horror, as it contains all the tedious tropes that have become popularized by director James Wan. It has jump scares every five seconds which are preceded by a loud obnoxious violin score. It is so obnoxiously put together that it is unwatchable.
The second film improves on these flaws a bit but I would really only recommend watching the third film. It's a genuinely good horror movie which shows that often franchises set up by James Wan are better handled by more competent directors.
The Conjuring
There are only two good films in the whole Conjuring universe, the original and Annabelle Creation. Annabelle creation is surprisingly good and I would even go as far to say its the best film of the lot.
there are some very eerie sequences in it. The original Conjuring is also a lot of fun, the rest however range from acceptable to down right terrible as is the case with the second Conjuring film. A nun that looks like Marilyn Manson may scare school children but to me its all a bit silly, not to mention how overly long, boring and tedious of a watch the Conjuring 2 is. It like the first Insidious movie is everything wrong with modern horror.
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