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The Most Successful Horror Movie Sequels, Prequels, and Remakes According To Supercomputer Data Analysis

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Horror movie sequels, prequels, and remakes are a dime a dozen and in 2024, have become an overly saturated part of the genre. Sometimes it’s good, Sometimes, not so much. And sometimes the film even surpasses its predecessor in terms of quality. Recently, a local magazine in my hometown, Vegas Insider, ran a data analysis on a supercomputer on the extension films on approximately 361 horror movies including, Alien, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Jaws, Scream, Saw, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser just to name a few.  And because it is Vegas after all, they were assigned points by the supercomputer based on their worldwide box office reported gross, user reviews score, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic score as well as the estimated return on investment. In the points analysis, 1 point was given to the sequel/prequel/remake/revival which had a higher performance than the first movie in the given franchises in the following categories: Rotten Tomatoes score, IMDb rating, Metacritic score, reported worldwide gross and an estimated ROI.

So who made it out on top? Let’s take a look!

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

The most successful franchise continuation when the estimated return on investment is considered is Paranormal Activity 2 (2010). On a budget of 3 million dollars, it grossed 177.5 million dollars, thus an ROI of, 5817%.

The top 5 of the most successful ROI franchise continuations are: 

2. Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) ROI 4040%, Paranormal Activity universe

3. Annabelle (2014) ROI 3862%, The Conjuring universe

4. Saw II (2005) ROI 3593%, Saw universe

5. Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) ROI 3138%, Insidious franchise

USER RATING 

When looking strictly at the highest-rated continuations of horror franchises, the movie with the highest IMDb user rating is Aliens (1986), which has a user rating of 8.4/10, only 0.1 point lower score than the 1979 Alien.

The rest of the top 5 of the highest-rated horror continuations are: 

2. Dawn of the Dead (1978) – 7.8 rating, George Romero’s Dead series

3. Evil Dead II (1987) – 7.7 rating, Evil Dead series

4. The Fly (1986) 7.6 rating – remake of The Fly

5. Army of Darkness (1992) 7.4 rating, Evil Dead Series

CRITIC REVIEWS

The top 5 horror continuations with the highest Rotten Tomatoes score are: 

  1. Creep 2 (2017) – 100% score, sequel of Creep (2014)
  2. Slumber Party Massacre (2021) – 100% score, remake of the 1982 version
  3. Aliens (1986) – 98% score, sequel of Alien (1979)
  4. Prey (2022) – 94% score, prequel of Predator (1987)
  5. The Fly (1986) – 93% score, remake of the 1958 version

On Metacritic, the top 5 horror continuations with the highest score are: 

  1. Aliens (1986) – 84 score, sequel of Alien (1979)
  2. The Fly (1986) – 81 score, remake of the 1958 version
  3. 28 Weeks Later (2007) – 78 score, sequel of 28 Days Later (2002)
  4. Pearl (2022) – 76 score, prequel of X (2022)
  5. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) – 76 score, second movie in the Cloverfield franchise

WORLDWIDE GROSS

Even though the budget and gross of the 1990 TV Mini-Series “IT” is not known, as it was a television event, it can be safe to say that the 2017 remake of “IT” surpassed the success of the first adaptation, grossing over 704 million dollars and becoming the highest-grossing horror movie of all time. It is also the highest-grossing horror remake ever.

When only the total worldwide gross is considered, the remaining highest-grossing franchise continuations that make up the top 4 are: 

It Chapter 2 (2019, gross: 473 million dollars, IT franchise), 

Prometheus (2012, gross: 403 million dollars, Alien franchise)

 The Nun (2018, gross: 366 million dollars, Conjuring universe). 

However, when looking strictly at the difference in total worldwide gross of a franchise’s first movie and its continuations where box office numbers are known (since it was not known for 1990’s It), the most successful franchise continuation is the 2012 prequel to the legendary Alien – Prometheus (2012). 

Alien (1979) was a box office success of its own, grossing 108.5 million dollars on a budget of 11 million dollars, however, Prometheus reportedly grossed over 403 million dollars, thus grossing 294.5 million more than the first movie in the Alien franchise. Its worldwide gross of over 400 million also makes it the most successful horror prequel ever made. 

OVERALL POINTS

According to the results of a points-based system, which was assigning 1 point to the movies that performed better than the first movie in their respective horror franchises, the supercomputer determined that the most successful horror sequels / prequels / remakes / reboots / spin-offs ever are: 

DRUMROLL PLEASE!

Evil Dead II (1987) and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)!

When it comes to Evil Dead 2, it performed better than The Evil Dead (1981) in 4 areas: total worldwide gross, Metacritic score, Rotten Tomatoes score, and IMDb rating score, thus gaining 4 points in total.

Hail to the king, baby. I’m not going to argue with that!

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) also outperformed Cloverfield (2008) on 4 metrics, thus gaining 4 points: Metacritic score, Rotten Tomatoes score, IMDb ratings score, and Estimated return on investment.

Also, all hail the John Goodman.

For more data on these films along with a visual table, head on over to Vegas Insider by clicking here!

Horror Nostalgia

That One Time Horror Icons Got Together For A People Magazine Photoshoot in 1988

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Image: Bloody Disgusting

To be a horror fan, and what’s more, a horror slasher fanatic in the year 1988 was probably peak orgasms for genre enthusiasts, and we had more than material in that year alone to make every one of us cream our jeans. Classics like THEY LIVE, CHILD’S PLAY, and KILLER KLOWNS IN OUTER SPACE touched just the tip of the iceberg in the massive slew of horror films we got this year; including sequels to the unholy trinity of the horror slashers-Jason, Freddy, and Michael. So it was only appropriate, and damn right of them, for People Magazine to give these guys their due credit with a special spread and photoshoot honoring horror’s greatest icons.

Bringing together for the first time Robert Englund (Freddy), Kane Hodder (Jason), George P. Wilbur (Michael- HALLOWEEN 4), and Bob Elmore (Leatherface- TCM 2) like this is not something we’ve seen before, and never will again in the light of Wilbur’s passing in 2023; and it’s just beautiful.

The article in People that banded together the foursome of fear was unleashed on newsstands on November 7th, 1988, with a cute picture of Baby Jessica on the cover (remember that debacle)? That kid went through more trauma than any of these bad boys could give her so why not, eh? And with the releases of HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER, and FRIDAY THE 13th PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD dominating the horror game in 1988, it was time for horror fans to truly celebrate as these homicidal maniacs were finally to be taken seriously as major influences in the genre and pop culture fandom as a whole. It really was a major win for us as only a few years prior, the MSM ran countless stories, and news pieces about how horror films were trash and led to violent teenagers. Just another arm of the whole Satanic Panic bullshit that needed to be laid to rest. And the fact these iconic characters and their legacies are even stronger today than it was over 35 years ago, is a testament of the power the four horsemen of the slasher films have on our dark, corroded hearts.

So let’s take a look at what PEOPLE had to say about our boys, huh?!

They’re the reason that Hollywood accountants sleep well at night and American teens don’t. Averaging 20 victims per outing, these Hollywood horror hounds have laid a trail of death over a quarter-mile long (assuming a 5-foot skull-to-toe-tag span per corpse). The box office take from their combined 17 monstrous flicks has topped a bloody $500 million. So, for Halloween, it seemed ghoulishly appropriate that Jason, Freddy, Michael and Leather-face, the peerless princes of the pathological, gather to compare notes.

Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder, 33), the hockey-masked murderer of the Friday the 13th movies, which have grossed $172.5 million to date, groans about his teenage telekinetic adversary in Friday Part VII. “I chase her out onto the porch, and she causes the entire front of the house and the roof to collapse. About 700 pounds fell right on my head,” he moans. “Kind of rang my bell.”

George P. Wilbur, 46, the new endoskeleton beneath the other masked maniac, Michael Myers of the Halloween series ($168 million), is not to be outdone. Myers has just emerged from a 10-year coma to launch more mayhem in the new Halloween 4, and Wilbur is trying to number his latest cache of victims. “Oh, it’s countless,” he says despairingly. “A minimum of 15. I’ve got a massive body count on this one.”

Resting on the 45-inch blade of his insatiable chainsaw, Leatherface (Bob Elmore, 35) reminisces about filming the first sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre($100 million) in 1986. “It was 170°,” he moans. “But I destroyed a Mercedes, killed lots of people and cut a guy’s head off. So that was real nice.”

Freddy Krueger (the recently wed Robert Englund), 39, is the only actor here to have played his fiendish character in every sequel of A Nightmare on Elm Street I through 4, which have grossed $148 million. Now star of the new TV series Freddy’s Nightmares, he looks undead on his feet per usual. The char-grilled “bastard son of a hundred maniacs” is lazily skewering apple slices on his razor fingers. Sneering in perfect Freddy fashion and baring his rotting fangs, he raises his wineglass and hisses a toast: “This blood’s for you, sucker.”

Uh, thanks, Freddy, and Happy Halloween, guys.

I’m pretty sure we won’t ever see something that fucking cool again.

Creature Features

Believe It’s Magic! The Painstaking Special Effects of “Ghostbusters”

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I think it goes without saying Ghostbusters is a once-in-a-lifetime movie experience that can and never will be replicated, and a lot of that credit goes towards the special effects of the film. In 1984, this sort of visual sorcery wasn’t running rampant across filmmaking. With few exceptions like Star Wars and Poltergeist, (both of which Ghostbusters visual effects supervisor Richard Edlund worked on) audiences were bedazzled with the hypnotic effects the movie presented within.

Let’s take a ride and talk about that.

A mere year after the visual stunner of Poltergiest, Ivan Reitman and his crew were tasked to make Ghostbusters in UNDER A YEAR. In this case, is asking the impossible with the sort of movie that called for such heavy special effects to sell the story. But according to Ivan Reitman, it had to be done in such a way as to balance the comedy with the “ghosts” so as to not make it too silly, or too scary as doing so would damage the film entirely.

“The special effects are just as important as the comedy. We’ve never seen this level of first-class effects in a comedy film before and it has to be evened out.” – Ivan Reitman

Much of Dan Akroyd’s vision for the creatures were on a large scale, some of which even ended up in space if you can just picture that! However, the budget for the film was about $5 million and Reitman worked with Akroyd to rewrite the script and the creatures in a way that would work in a beautiful balance of comedy and terror. Though they ended up around $700,000 over by the time the film was locked, if Dan Aykroyd’s original script had been filmed, according to associate producer Joe Medjuck, it would have had “50 large scale monsters”.

Enter Richard Enlund, head honcho of Boss studios. Launched in 1983 specifically for Ghostbusters, who knew the importance of not making these creatures into flat-out jokes for the film. And what we ended up with was some of the best damn practical effects of apparations still to this day.

In the instance of the Marshmallow Man, Edlund and his team went through dozens of ideas and designs before opting for the simple, yet practical 100-foot monstrosity we all know and love.

Part of what made the effects so, well, effective, was their practical nature. You just can’t beat practical movie magic no matter how much technology you throw in front of it. The clip below from Ghostbusters.net gives us a short and sweet breakdown of some of the wizardry undertaken in bringing the Library Ghost, Slimer, and more to life in the film.

Made in just ten months and filmed in 55 days, Ghostbusters is the prime example of practical effects done in a time-crunch without the technology of a computer. Cliche to say it has aged like fine wine, so we’ll just say it has aged as well as Keanu Reeves in 2022. Charming, beautiful, breathtaking, and as soft and nostalgic as a twinkie.

With that, I’ll leave here with my personal favorite shot from the movie- the ghost escape from the firehouse that wreaks havoc on New York City all leading up to the climax of Gozer. I’m actually kind of obsessed with this scene as it has everything that is great about this movie all rolled into two minutes of spectacular energy. It’s ominous, a bit silly, but not so much to where you can’t overlook the sense of dread that is coming. Paired with Mick Smiley’s “I Believe It’s Magic”, this is just cinematic gold right here. And I believe what Ivan Reitman set out to do in balancing terror and comedy, marries perfectly in this one scene alone.