Editorials
Good Or Bad? When a Movie Franchise Changes Direction
Make a Prequel
If I’m being honest (and I’m always honest), this is my least favorite kind of direction change that a franchise can make. I understand it’s purpose, but I don’t want to go back and see things that happened before. I want to move forward in time, not backwards, but I digress. I’ll go back to being objective.
Surprisingly, the prequel approach is something that is becoming more and more popular in recent years. The most recent effort, Insidious Chapter 3 is the perfect example. It is puzzling that the franchise went this route, since the ending of Insidious Chapter 2 deliberately set up a sequel with Specs and Tucker helping people with Elise’s ghost. Insidious Chapter 3 sort of followed through on that promise, except it shows how Elise met Specs and Tucker before the events on the original Insidious. Insidious Chapter 3 is a solid film, and it’s always nice to see more of Lin Shaye, but it severely underperformed after the high mark set by the second installment. Audiences also welcomed it with a rather lukewarm reception.
The issue that Insidious Chapter 3 runs into is that there was really no reason to go back in time and see how Elise came to team up with Specs and Tucker. Ironically, the film is so focused on that backstory that it completely ignores giving any backstory to the villain of the movie: a creepy-looking elderly man with an oxygen mask. It’s a peculiar move, but it is what it is.
A prequel can come across as hollow and pointless if it doesn’t justify its existence. The 2006 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning failed to justify its existence in any shape, way or form. While it may be incredibly gory (much more so than the 2003 remake), all of its prequel elements don’t add up to much of anything. The biggest revelation is how Sheriff Hoyt lost his two front teeth.
No one really wanted to know how Leatherface came to be Leatherface. It’s always scarier not knowing the “why” in a scary movie, as Scream famously pointed out. If The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning actually delved into Leatherface’s younger years in a meaningful way, the film might have been received a little bit better, but it doesn’t.
It (perhaps unjustly) has some of the worst reviews out of all of the films in the series, and only took in $46.6 million to the remake’s $104.1 million, despite featuring the likes of Jordana Brewster and a pre-Magic Mike Matt Bomer.
A more polarizing prequel takes comes in the form of Prometheus. This was a film that was never going to please everyone, and would have been received better had it not been touted as a prequel to the Alien franchise for years before its release. Taken as a standalone film, Prometheus is a gorgeous, poetic film that poses a lot of questions but fails to provide many answers, sort of like life itself.
Fan reaction was mixed upon its initial release, but it has grown a small following recently, especially with news of a sequel coming out in a few years. The film disappointed in terms of domestic box office, taking in a decent $130.9 million on a $134,7 million budget. Luckily, the film performed splendidly overseas, more than making up for its somewhat disappointing domestic box office take.
The verdict is still out on whether or not an Alien prequel was a good idea. We are going to have to wait until Alien: Paradise Lost Alien: Covenant comes out to see if the gamble Prometheus made paid off. The fact remains that it doesn’t really feel like an Alien movie. If director Ridley Scott wanted to distance himself from the Alien franchise so much, he probably should have not touted it as a prequel and just let it be its own film. I realize this is more on 20th Century Fox than Scott himself, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true.
One way to make a prequel work is to hide the fact that the film is a prequel. That is what Final Destination 5 did, and it paid off excellently. Unfortunately, it performed the worst domestically, pulling in $44.9 million (it more than doubled that gross internationally, though. While the original pulled in $73 million, the highest earner in the franchise was also its worst: The Final Destination with $73.6 million. It was given a boost thanks to 3-D ticket sales, but the fact that it was so terrible
What is interesting here is that, like Insidious Chapter 2, the worst film in the franchise performed the best. This means that the most people saw those installments in theaters when compared to the others. Since the worst film was seen by the most people, it had the misfortune of turning many of those people off of the franchise because those installments were so bad. Then, when a quality sequel is made, a significantly lower number of people opt to go see it in theaters.
Surprisingly, Final Destination 5 garnered the best reviews out of every film in the franchise, and is the only one to have a fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. While it wasn’t enough to win back viewers who had given up after the fourth installment, it still stands as one of the best examples of a horror prequel. Using the film’s identity as a prequel works in the films favor, and the only way you could have caught it is if you noticed the cell phones the characters were using in the film. It was a nice “gotcha” moment in an already solid film.
The prequel approach may not be my favorite approach to changing a franchise’s direction, but it can work sometimes. It just has to be handled delicately.
It’s been 75 years since The Thing From Another World first warned us to “watch the skies”, and filmgoers have done just that by showing up to multiple instances of extraterrestrial contact on the big screen. This makes sense, as a recent CBS news poll estimated that 63% of Americans believe in intelligent life on other planets, and the ongoing disclosure movement aims to raise that number with each passing day.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day leaving many genre fans hungry for more alien footage (preferably of the spooky variety), today I’d like to share a list recommending six underrated alien invasion thrillers for your viewing pleasure. After all, regardless of whether or not you believe that we’re alone in the universe, it can be fun to dream about the worst-case scenario if our cosmic neighbors ever decide to visit.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on lesser-known invasion stories rather than the popular extraterrestrials of franchises like Alien and Close Encounters of the Third (or even Fourth) Kind. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own alien favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling movie.
While it won’t be featured in this article, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean Alioto’s UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape if you’re up for some ufology-inspired found footage thrills.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. The Arrival (1996)
Not to be confused with Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning Amy Adams vehicle about learning to communicate peacefully with extraterrestrial life, David Twohy’s The Arrival is a much more straightforward (but no less entertaining) genre romp where Charlie Sheen faces a global conspiracy involving hostile alien invaders.
It’s not exactly up there with Close Encounters or even Independence Day, but Twohy’s conspiratorial thriller plays out like an exceptionally fun episode of The X-Files that I’d recommend to sci-fi/horror fans who don’t mind a little bit of wonky CGI and 90s excess alongside their alien thrills.
5. Extraterrestrial (2014)
The Vicious Brothers made a name for themselves with the success of 2011’s Grave Encounters, but that was far from the Canadian duo’s only collaboration. And while it’s not exactly a fan favorite, I always point out 2014’s Extraterrestrial as one of their most underrated projects simply because I agree with the filmmakers’ opinion that there aren’t enough ‘cool alien abduction movies’ out there.
Admittedly, the majority of the picture functions like a run-of-the-mill creature feature with paper-thin characters and familiar horror tropes, but I’d argue that the cosmically-terrifying final act elevates the experience to new and memorable heights. The movie also boasts great performances by both Michael Ironside and Emily Perkins – a combination that more than makes up for the occasionally janky CGI.
4. Alien Raiders (2008)
Director Ben Rock has gone on record lamenting how his John-Carpenter-inspired creature feature was forcefully renamed from Supermarket to the painfully obvious Alien Raiders (a change which likely resulted in many potential viewers skipping out on the experience), but the new title doesn’t change the fact that this single-location thriller is something of a hidden gem.
Taking place entirely within a supermarket, Alien Raiders tells the story of an ensemble of customers and employees who are taken hostage by a group of armed men looking for something far more dangerous than an easy payout. I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but I’d highly recommend this criminally underseen flick to fans of John Carpenter and the Resident Evil games.
3. Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
You’d think that a Ridley-Scott-produced retelling of one of the most infamous real-life UFO sightings of all time would have a bigger following, but I rarely see Justin Barber’s Found Footage period piece brought up during discussions about extraterrestrial-focused horror movies.
This is a huge shame, as Phoenix Forgotten is just as spooky as it is convincing, with this well-researched dive into the Phoenix Lights incident benefiting from surprisingly believable special effects as well as an appropriately horrific finale.
2. Communion (1989)
I wouldn’t blame you for disregarding Whitley Strieber’s controversial book about his alleged close encounter as sensationalist slop, but I’d argue that Phillipe Mora’s 1989 adaptation of these events is much better than the source material. After all, the movie works as a standalone piece of speculative fiction while also benefiting from an incredible performance by the one and only Christopher Walken!
Mora’s take on Communion may not be particularly scary, but the film is still an unforgettable character study regardless of whether or not the abduction really happened. Not only that, but the flick also paved the way for plenty of future sci-fi stories where the extraterrestrial invaders aren’t as evil as they initially appear.
1. Altered (2006)
Originally envisioned as a Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy titled Probed, Eduardo Sánchez (of The Blair Witch Project fame) eventually realized that it would be much more interesting to turn the film into a serious exploration of the emotional aftermath of a traumatic abduction incident.
That’s how we got Altered, a clever inversion of the standard abduction narrative that follows a group of troubled friends as they capture and experiment on an alien in order to enact revenge for their own abduction years prior.
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