It’s Friday The 13th! Didn’t we just have one of these?
I want to do an article ranking the best (read: my favorite) horror franchises, but as it is, it would be so hard to do. We’ll see if that’s where we end up going.
The problem, you see, is that there are several horror franchises where I have only seen some of the movies. I have too many blindspots. The Hellraiser franchise? I’ve only seen the first two. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series? Well, I’ve seen the original, Part 2, The Next Generation, and the 2003 remake. That sounds like a fair amount, but that leaves out a bunch, actually. The same with Predator (is Predator a horror franchise?); I’ve seen the 1987 original, Prey, Killer of Killers, and Badlands. Oh, and the Versus Aliens pair! But not Part 2, Predators, or THE Predator.
I HAVE seen all three entries in the Maniac Cop franchise, though! So that’s something! They would… not make the list.
(Actually, Maniac Cop the first is a pretty decent movie, but the sequels are abhorrent)
Horror franchises as a whole are a lot of fun; just this idea that you can never get away from what terrifies you. It will just keep coming. Year after year. Inevitably. Action and comedy franchises are a big hit with me because, as someone who grew up reading comic books, I love serialized storytelling like that. But there’s just a bit more to doing horror as a series. You can bring in a constant stream of new characters who get to see if they can survive the maelstrom that the killer brings on. You can change settings and see how new populations handle the threat. It’s all such a treat!
Growing up, franchises were all I knew. The idea of the one-off horror movie was the baffling one to me. Even Poltergeist ended up being a series of movies in the 1980’s. But I was raised on Jason and Michael Myers and then waiting on the next editions of those characters to come about so I could see what they got up to next. I remember what felt like an eternity after Halloween 5 as my dad and I waited for Halloween 6 to come out so we could get the resolution to who the man in the boots was! Was the payoff worth it? Maybe not! (Definitely not). But I’ll would never begrudge the world another Halloween movie.
In the modern age, horror does seem to be more one-hit than serialized. Just a little bit, though. I mean, they still make legacy sequels to stuff like The Exorcist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. David Gordon Greene just got to revive Halloween for three new movies. This year alone, we are getting a new Scream and a new Evil Dead! But there’s less stuff out there from the modern era getting sequels, much less whole series. There have been rumors of a They Follow follow-up to It Follows, but nothing serious has yet been unveiled. If this were the previous era of horror, we would be on The Babadook 3: The Dookening by this point!
I wonder why this is. Where has franchise madness gone in the last fifteen years or so? We couldn’t even get a The Cabin In The Woods prequel? How great would that be? Is modern horror not successful enough at the box office to merit multiple scoops of the ice cream? That doesn’t seem accurate; they keep making horror movies, don’t they? They’ve got to be making money!
Is this just nostalgia? Am I refusing to grow with the modern experience? Was M3GAN 2.0 (a criminally under-appreciated movie) not enough for me?
I guess we’ll always have Terrifier keeping the feel of the old era alive!
All right, that’s enough lamentations. Let’s get into that list I alluded to!
#5. Paranormal Activity
Wait, really? Paranormal Activity sneaks in at #5 and beats out some classic franchises like Child’s Play, Alien, and others? That’s wild.
But the thing is, I actually really like the first four entries in this series. Does it all go to absolute shit after that? Definitely. But almost no entry in this top five is without at least one or two straight stinkers.
I remain a fan of found footage horror, and for my money, Paranormal Activity–for at least four flicks–perfected that formula. They are creepy and genuinely scary and have some pretty decent acting across the board. After the massive success of the first outing, they turned it into a series full of lore and backstory and all kinds of goodies.
Honestly, if they’d had stopped after the fourth entry, I’d probably be even higher on these. But yeah… the ones after that started either getting really repetitive or were simply trying too hard to answer the questions the others established.
#4. A Nightmare On Elm Street
For a more thorough examination of the Nightmare series, click HERE!
There are… way too many bad Freddy movies. I really wrestled with whether it was worth it to put a franchise on here that has entries such as The Dream Child, Freddy’s Dead, The 2010 remake, and others. It’s honestly pretty much a fifty-fifty split between movies that are at least Okay and movies that are straight trash.
So how did we sneak this into the four spot?
Well honestly, the 1984 originator of the series and the third entry–The Dream Warriors–are both a solid 4.5 out of 5 for me. Add into that that we can count Freddy Vs Jason and the surprisingly interesting New Nightmare here, and I think it’s safe to say that the good somehow manages to outweigh the bad.
Also, Nightmare remains the single hardest horror franchise to remake or reboot because you just can’t make a movie in this lot without Robert Englund. He IS Freddy.
#3. Evil Dead
Evil Dead could be higher–maybe SHOULD be higher–based on one simple premise: they haven’t made a bad one yet.
My least favorite Evil Dead is the 2013 iteration, and even that is at worst a 2.75 out of 5 for me. I don’t love it, but I can appreciate what it was doing. And hell, if you take out the one I like least, you’ve got the original (3.5), Evil Dead 2 (4.25), Army of Darkness (a straight-up 5/5 for me), and Evil Dead Rise (4/5).
Those are some damn good scores.
Obviously, I’m eagerly awaiting this year’s Evil Dead Burn, even if Evil Dead Rise was one of my worst theatrical experiences ever (people are savages in cinemas nowadays). This franchise hasn’t let me down yet!
#2. Halloween
For a more thorough examination of the Halloween series, click HERE.
Halloween (1978) is, in my opinion, the single greatest horror movie ever made. And I don’t think the competition is particularly close to closing the gap. And the glory that is the progenitor of this franchise is what lifts this one so high because, let’s face it, there are a LOT of turds in this series.
But I simply don’t care. Top-to-bottom, I really enjoy these flicks. Even the bad ones are comfort food to me. I remember being a kid again and watching these with my dad on the weekends.
Michael Myers and Laurie Strode and Jamie Lloyd and Dr. Loomis… these are the names of my childhood. And I’ve probably seen Halloweens 1, 2, 4, and 5 more than I have seen any other movies ever released.
#1. Friday The 13th
For a more thorough examination of the Jason movies, click HERE.
I will let you in on a secret: Every time I sit down to watch a movie, two figures appear on my shoulders. One wears white robes and carries a harp and says “Watch a movie you have never seen before to boost your cinematic repertoire!”. And the others is adorned in a hockey mask and says “Ch-ch-ch-ch, ah-ah-ah-ah”, which loosely translates to, “No, just watch a Friday the 13th again!”.
And while the former angel wins 99% of the time, the latter angel never goes away. And every time I watch a piece of 1.5 star crap, I think, “Man, I could have watched Jason Lives instead”.
What the Friday The 13th franchise doesn’t have that Halloween and Evil Dead do is a 5 star entry for me. But that’s okay, because I think this is the most balanced and interesting set of films in the realm of horror. I genuinely like every entry, even the terrible one (Jason Goes To Hell).
And that’s a list!
Let me know in the comments: do you prefer your horror as a series or as one-offs? What the benefits and drawbacks of each?
And in the meantime, hey! Enjoy your Friday the 13th! It’s a fun day full of Jason memes and horror while we are all twiddling our thumbs waiting for Halloween.
Until next time… take care!
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