10 Horror Movie Sequels That Started In Surprising Ways
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00:00No genre of cinema is more synonymous with sequels than the murky realm of horror.
00:04While certain sequels often retread the same plot points as their predecessors,
00:08in turn bringing a predictability to them,
00:11there are those follow-ups that manage to do something different,
00:14something eye-grabbing, and something surprising.
00:16And it's on those particular sequels that the attention is on here.
00:19So with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture,
00:22here with 10 horror movie sequels that started in surprising ways.
00:26Number 10. Slumber Party Massacre 2.
00:29Slumber Party Massacre is everything you'd expect from a slasher film released in 1982.
00:34Overflowing with the cliches of the subgenre,
00:36this Amy Holden Jones-helmed offering presents a group of disposable teens,
00:40a drill-wielding killer, and the sort of chaos and carnage
00:42one automatically associates with the slashers of that time.
00:45While Russ Thorne, the villain of Slumber Party Massacre,
00:48is offed at the end of the movie,
00:49that didn't stop him from technically returning for the 1987 follow-up picture.
00:53Rather than the middle-aged mass murderer scene in the first film,
00:56the big surprise of Slumber Party Massacre 2
00:59is how Russ is presented upon being resurrected for another dose of bloodshed.
01:03As shown in the opening moments of the sequel,
01:05this rogue is now a hip and cool 1950s greaser,
01:08decked out in leather and sporting a guitar that's fitted with a drill bit.
01:11Oh, and he also sings, like, a lot.
01:13So much so, Slumber Party Massacre 2 borders on being an all-out musical at times.
01:17For better or worse, Slumber Party Massacre 2's first 15 minutes
01:20sets out to make you fully aware that this is very much a different film to its predecessor.
01:24Number 9. Lost Boys The Thirst
01:27With fans having waited 21 years for a Lost Boys sequel,
01:31they were eventually served up two such movies in 2008's Lost Boys The Tribe
01:36and 2010's Lost Boys The Thirst.
01:38To be blunt, neither of these follow-ups were particularly good,
01:41though there was a certain charm to revisiting some of the characters
01:44from Joel Schumacher's iconic 1987 effort.
01:47Pivotal parts of Schumacher's movie were Edgar and Alan Frog,
01:50two young warriors looking to fight the good fight
01:52against the goddamn shit-sucking vampires of Santa Carla, California.
01:56Played by Corey Feldman and Jameson Newlander respectively,
01:59in that picture, the two actors were set to reprise their roles for The Tribe.
02:03Unfortunately for Newlander, he ended up being part of an alternate ending
02:06that didn't make the final cut of that offering.
02:08Still, Jameson did get to be a significant part of Lost Boys The Thirst
02:12alongside Feldman's Edgar Frog.
02:14What was surprising about the opening of The Thirst, though,
02:16is that Newlander's Alan ends up becoming a half-vampire
02:19after being forced to drink vampire blood.
02:21From there, the film jumps ahead five years
02:23to find a depressed recluse Alan living out his days surviving on animal blood.
02:288. House 4 – The Repossession
02:30Steve Miner's House is a relatively family-friendly horror
02:34with just the right amount of humour to go along with its terror and tension.
02:37Unfortunately, the two subsequent follow-ups to Miner's 1982 effort
02:41veered in vastly different directions to that first house,
02:45with House 2, the second story, leaning way too much into slapstick comedy
02:48and House 3, the horror show, veering too much towards excessive gore and violence
02:52for the sake of excessive gore and violence.
02:54Still, 1992's House 4, The Repossession, ended up being a fitting end for the franchise,
03:00managing to recapture the same balance of horror and humour as the original movie.
03:04The Repossession also brought back the first film's lead character,
03:06William Katz, Roger. In House, Roger is spooked by plentiful bumps in the night
03:11at his deceased aunt's old house. That picture also sees him separated from his wife
03:15and puts Katz's character on the hunt for his missing young son, Jimmy.
03:18For the audience, House 4, The Repossession has quite the surprise where Roger is concerned.
03:22When we pick things up with Roger, his prior wife and son are completely ignored by the film.
03:27Instead, he's now married to someone else, Kelly, with whom he has a daughter, Laurel.
03:30Also, while the events of House 4 are meant to take place in the same house as, well,
03:34House, it's clearly a totally different building. If all of that wasn't surprising enough,
03:39the biggest shocker of the Repossession's opening is how it opts to kill off Roger in
03:42an explosive car crash. 7. The Devil's Rejects
03:47What was surprising about the start of Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects is how it immediately
03:51put the Firefly clan on the back foot. In 2003's House of 1000 Corpses, the Fireflies were
03:56introduced as a family who operated under their own grisly, grimy rules of murder and mayhem,
04:01and who were always one step ahead of the law. That MO was perfectly showcased in how Mother
04:06Firefly, Otis, Baby, Captain Spalding and co. duped and brutally slaughtered a group of police
04:11officers who visited their abode as part of a missing persons hunt. Surprisingly, the opening
04:15sequence of The Devil's Rejects turns the tables on the Fireflies. For this 2005 sequel, it opens
04:20with a hefty armed bunch of state troopers ambushing the Firefly household while the family sleeps.
04:25Said ambush results in the death of Rufus Firefly, the incarceration of Mother Firefly,
04:29and puts Otis, Baby, and Spalding on the run as they look to evade the law and plot the rescue
04:34of Leslie Easterbrook's mother. A rescue that doesn't happen, with Easterbrook's character
04:38murdered by the vengeance-seeking Sheriff Wydell. Of course, Three from Hell, the third entry in this
04:43series, likewise opened in surprising fashion, killing off Sid Haig's Spalding. Unfortunately,
04:48that was a decision made by Zombie after it became apparent that Haig's poor health would
04:51restrict his involvement, with the actor sadly passing away in September 2019,
04:55just days after Three from Hell premiered.
04:59Number 6. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 – The Dream Master
05:02With A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 – Dream Warriors seeing franchise fave Nancy use her last
05:07breaths to help kill off Freddy Krueger, many pondered just how Krueger would resurface once
05:11it was announced that Rennie Harlan would be bringing a fourth Elm Street picture to the
05:15silver screen in 1988. After all, you couldn't do an Elm Street offering and not feature Robert
05:20England's fedora-adorned child killer, right? Freddy would indeed, obviously, return for A Nightmare on Elm Street
05:254 – The Dream Master, and Elm Street 5 – The Dream Child, and Freddy's Dead – The Final Nightmare,
05:30and kind of for Wes Craven's new nightmare, plus Freddy vs. Jason and even the awful 2010 remake.
05:36But the more shocking matter was how England's character was reintroduced in The Dream Master.
05:40When Elm Street 3 survivor Kincaid finds himself joined by his dog Jason in a dream,
05:45it soon becomes apparent that the duo are near the remains of Freddy Krueger.
05:48In one of the most baffling, bizarre moments in mainstream horror history,
05:52the pooch takes a literal flaming piss on Krueger's bones, which somehow resurrects the villain
05:57and allows him to carry on with his vendetta against the children of Springwood.
06:005. Hellbound Hellraiser 2
06:03Having won plentiful praise for its sinister visuals, unnerving atmosphere, and ominous dialogue,
06:081987's Hellraiser introduced moviegoers to Pinhead and his Cenobites.
06:12Presenting these sinister sorts as an otherworldly force – after all, they do reside in hell – Clive
06:17Barker's directorial debut set these pleasure-and-pain-obsessed figures up as something
06:21totally foreign to the real world. Catching many a horror hound off guard, follow-up Hellbound
06:26Hellraiser 2 opened by surprisingly humanising Pinhead. Released just a year after its predecessor,
06:32this sequel started by showcasing Pinhead before he was Pinhead. Rather than forever being some
06:36pseudo-supernatural being that's only ever called the murky depths of hell home, Hellbound's opening
06:41teased that Pinhead was previously a human soldier, who was ultimately corrupted by the infamous
06:46lament configuration. The film would later identify this man as Elliot Spencer, a British
06:51army captain during World War I. And with that, Pinhead now had a backstory – a backstory which
06:55itself would be further elaborated on and fleshed out in 1992's Hellraiser 3 – Hell on Earth.
07:01In fact, that threequel went in the bold direction of utilising Pinhead and Spencer as two entirely
07:06separate entities who had been unbonded following the events of Hellbound's finale.
07:104. Hostel Part 2
07:13Oh, Paxton. Having survived a whole bunch of Achilles-slicing, eye-popping, finger-chopping
07:18antics in 2005's Hostel, Jay Hernandez's Paxton had been put through quite the ringer. Of course,
07:24such an experience will leave one traumatised, and that's clearly the case for our sole Hostel
07:28survivor by the time we pick things up with him at the start of Hostel Part 2. Living in seclusion
07:32with his girlfriend, we find a Paxton who is dealing with severe PTSD. It also doesn't help
07:36Hernandez's character that his beau believes he's exaggerating his trauma, with her feeling that
07:41A. Paxton's time in Slovakia can't have been that bad, and B. There's absolutely zero chance of the
07:46nefarious elite hunting group being able to track Paxton down. How wrong was she?
07:51In a jarring move, Hostel Part 2's opening sequence ends with Paxton's girlfriend finding
07:55his headless corpse in the pair's kitchen. From there, we see Paxton's decapitated head couriered to
08:00the waiting hands of Sasha, the big boss of the aforementioned elite hunting group.
08:04With that, the first Hostel sequel switches its attention to a trio of new female characters,
08:09who soon find themselves in the sinister clutches of Sasha's organisation.
08:13Number 3. Jason Goes to Hell The Final Friday
08:16With any long-standing horror franchise that has a particular villain constantly at its core,
08:22the big question of any sequel tends to revolve around how exactly this bad guy or gal will be
08:26brought back after having been stopped at the end of the previous picture. In the case of Jason Goes
08:31to Hell The Final Friday, the big opening moment surprise wasn't how Jason Voorhees was resurrected,
08:36but more how he was shockingly killed off. Well, sort of. Having ended Friday the 13th Part 8,
08:41Jason takes Manhattan in the form of a young boy following a run-in with some New York toxic waste.
08:46Yep, it makes zero sense, just go with it.
08:481993's The Final Friday opens up with Jason very much alive as a hulking adult who's stalking an
08:54unsuspecting female in a Camp Crystal Lake cabin. While there's zero explanation as to how Jason
08:59reverted to his adult self and departed the bright lights of New York City following Part 8,
09:04even more surprising is how Voorhees is blown to smithereens mere minutes into Jason Goes to Hell.
09:09You see, the aforementioned unsuspecting female was really an FBI agent who was tasked with luring
09:14Jason into an ambush from a SWAT team that shoot the s**t out of that serial killer and blow him up.
09:18From here, The Final Friday devolved into an odd movie about the spirit of Jason, which looked like a turd,
09:24passed from person to person with the physical form of Voorhees absent for the vast majority of the
09:29film. Number 2, The Grudge 2. Having survived plentiful supernatural chicanery in 2004's The
09:36Grudge, Sarah Michelle Gellar's Karen Davis was back for another round of spooky shenanigans for
09:40that movie's 2006 follow-up. As The Grudge 2 begins, we come to learn that Karen is laid up in
09:46a Japanese hospital following the fiery finale of the first film. When Karen's sister Aubrey heads to
09:51Tokyo to retrieve her elder sibling, things immediately take a turn for the worse during
09:55the picture's opening moments. When Karen panics after seeing the sinister Kayako spirit which
10:00plagues her in The Grudge, she bolts from her hospital bed and winds up on the building's roof.
10:04Convinced that the visage of Kayako is merely her own mind-playing tricks on her, Sarah Michelle
10:08Gellar's character finds out the hard way that that's not the case, with Kayako flinging Karen to
10:13her death from the hospital rooftop. In a surprise move, it then becomes clear that The Grudge 2 will
10:18instead follow the story of Amber Tamblyn's Aubrey as she takes centre stage and has to deal with her
10:23own supernatural chicanery in this so-so sequel.
10:26Number 1. Halloween Resurrection
10:28In terms of shocking horror sequel opening, it doesn't get more jarring than seeing the
10:33greatest franchise protagonist in horror history being brutally killed off in the first few minutes.
10:38For the off-lumbasted Halloween Resurrection, that's exactly what it ended up doing.
10:42Picking things up after Laurie Strode had beheaded Michael Myers after the conclusion of Halloween H20,
10:47Resurrection finds Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie locked up in a mental institution. There,
10:52it's detailed how Michael had pulled a switcheroo in H20, putting his famed mask on a poor paramedic,
10:57who Strode then decapitated. Thus, Laurie was traumatised and left as an institutionalised
11:02mute. Of course, Curtis' character was really playing possum here, for yes, while she was locked
11:06up, she was merely biding her time for Michael to come and find her. In typical Myers fashion,
11:11the shape does indeed turn up at the facility housing Laurie, with a rooftop battle between the two
11:16actually seeing Strode get the better of her long-time rival. When Laurie hesitates in killing
11:20her then-canon brother, for fear of it being another innocent under the mask, Michael seizes
11:25the moment to stab his sibling and throw her body to its death. And with that, Halloween Resurrection
11:29peaked, as the film then descends into a farce that culminates with Busta Rhymes busting out some
11:34kung fu moves on Michael Myers. And that concludes our list. If you think we missed any, then do let
11:39us know in the comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap
11:42that notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across
11:46various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhatCulture.
11:50I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.