The Cutting Room Floor A wrap up of October sequels.
A whole month of nothing but horror sequels, 63 films in 31 days.
I was surprised there was that many I remembered, let alone GOOD sequels. Though I recognize Leprechaun 2 is still up for debate.
But I enjoyed it, even if it was pretty flesh clawingly difficult deciding what to include and not. Which I did get some questions on elsewhere about. I did promise I’d list a few of the films I considered but didn’t add. Because it does I guess warrant explanation. For those that were curious.
I also will mention I’ve been watching 2-3 horror movies each day on Netflix. I’m pretty sure I went through everything they had to offer. I really enjoyed this month. Even if it kept be insanely busy.
So here we go. Those that didn’t make the cut and why.
ALIEN and ALIENS
The simple answer for this? Genre. In the long long ago, before video disk. Video stores combined horror and science fiction together. Which wasn’t really fair to Science fiction. But alas it was. Some people would classify ALIEN as horror, or Science Fiction horror. It isn’t. It’s a fair label. However ALIENS is Science Fiction Action. Not Science Fiction horror. There is no debating that.
Though I love these movies deeply, and they are great examples of a sequel surpassing the original. They just weren’t horror. There’s horror elements for sure in the first, less so in the second. Still amazing movies though and would definitely recommend them.
The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2
I don’t hate these movies because they’re modern films. The sequel just wasn’t nearly as good. The first film was a definite surprise film and I really dug it. It was a refreshing horror film for a change.
What wasn’t so good was the sequel. The sequel followed an interesting story about the girls in this family being haunted. But the movie served more as a trailer for Annebelle’s movie and a setup for the standalone movie The Nun. Which does not help a movie. At all. The movie also veered away from the family curse and became more about cursing the Warrens. It just wasn’t as good when it steered away from the core of the film.
IT and IT Chapter 2
I loved the first film, a lot. Seriously they did an amazing job with the movie and book material. It was well casted and well done. The sequel however. Though it was good moments, didn’t hold up to the original. The movie had nothing to extend the story, so it created a long drawn out and unneeded substory where the adults had to discover hidden immunity idols they apparently had in the first film, but we never saw. So it made no sense. It also downplayed Pennywise a great deal. In the first film he felt like an actual threat. In the sequel he just sorta pops up to remind you he’s in this movie and doesn’t do much of anything else until the end. Also what in the name of all that is holy, was “Don’t call me Angel” doing playing during a scene where a character gets vomit shot out onto his face? The scene didn’t work made no sense and yeah. Same as Conjuring 2. There’s some good scenes in the sequel, just pales in comparison to the original sadly.
CREEPSHOW and CREEPSHOW 2
I seriously considered tossing these two in there as well, but they’re anthologies. I really love these movies, grew up loving them in fact. Me and my sister recreated ontop of our families television set and table the opening scene where ‘The Creep’ tosses out the comic books from his truck.
Great collection of stories, and they’re all fun. Memorable too! But just wasn’t a story, in the sense the others were. So it didn’t make the cut sadly. Which I do mean because I would’ve included them, but hard to really get away with that using an anthology film versus one with an arching story. Especially when the sequel has more of a story to it with the bullied kid being chased by bullies vs the few scenes of the kid in the fist being struck by his father and at the end ordering a voodoo doll to deal with him.
The Thing and The THING (2011)
One of the greatest horror films I’ve ever and likely will ever see is and will always be The THING. However The THING 2011 is more a loosely based prequel versus sequel. While I enjoyed the prequel. It just wasn’t nearly as good. Which I know It’s hard to top but the story was very loose and only really connects toward the end. It wasn’t a story that really needed to be told and the fact they sold the film to horror fans by showing off all the practical effects they’d use in it, but then decided to rip out and replace with ungodly bad CGI. It killed the movie for me. Still a fun watch. Just not a well worth the time sequel.
PREDATOR and PREDATOR 2
Again another face of Science fiction and Action. Though you could always find these two films in the horror Science Fiction section of video stores. They were and have always been classified as Action films. Even with the horror elements in them. They’re still Science fiction action films. Amazingly awesome ones at that. But still yeah. Not horror so it had to be given the pass. Which is unfortunate.
Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2
Fuck me where to begin with these movies. The entire franchise can be summed up with Marilyn Mansons score. He got in trouble because he purposely included ‘the brown note’ in his score. It’s the musical tone that is believed to trigger your bowels and make you have to crap. He wanted to make people crap themselves. That’s the best summary I think anyone can give to the entirety of that films 9 film franchise.
The first movie was just, insanely bad but funny bad. The sequel was just Hollywood throwing money and some of the worst one liners, characters I’ve seen committed to film, But bless their hearts for making ‘the licker’ creature not look like a cgi nightmare created by a no longer functional alcoholic suffering insomnia. Basically a Rockstar Games employee.
There were a few that I felt deserves honorary mention as well, but didn’t meet the list:
The Curse and The Curse 2 The Bite
The Hills Have Eyes and Hills Have Eyes 2
Gremlins and Gremlins 2
Pumpkinhead and Pumpkinhead 2
Puppet Master and Puppet master 2
SUBSPECIES and its sequel
The Howling and Howling 2
They were good, just not the better of them, to be fair. Though Gremlins 2 is highly underrated. It’s more a comedy vs Horror where the first film was a good mix of both.
These were pretty quickly written, I say that and most are averaging 15 pages, but I WILL be revisiting some of these later and going a good deal more in depth. They were pushed out to keep with the theme and, well. I love these movies. So I have a good deal more yet to say on them. So look forward to revisiting them and sharing far more than anyone should know about these movies.
For now. Enjoy your candy hoard and look forward to more reviews soon!