Editorials
What is Going on With These Long-Awaited Horror Sequels? (Part 2)
When discussing horror franchises, there are a few names that immediately pop up. You’ve got your major players like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, plus some lesser entries like The Amityville Horror. There was a time where sequels in some of these major franchises would be released annually, as if on an assembly line. Unfortunately that is not the case anymore, as many of them have fallen victim to studio tampering or some other form of development hell. The following list of six franchises below have long-overdue sequels that fans are waiting for, concluding the piece we started earlier this week.
The Collected
Originally intended to be a prequel to the Saw series, Marcus Dunstan’s The Collector (which he co-wrote with Patrick Melton) was the surprise hit of 2009. A sequel, The Collection was released three years later and left the door wide open for a sequel. Four years later and we still haven’t gotten one, so what gives? Back in 2012, our own Evan Dickson interviewed Dunstan and Melton, where they confirmed the name of the third film would be The Collected. In 2014, lead actor Josh Stewart had confirmed that LD Entertainment had commissioned the film and would be moving forward with it.
STATUS: Looks like the big wigs at LD Entertainment may have changed their minds about The Collected. While they currently own the rights to the franchise, Mr. Disgusting recently spoke with Dunstan and Melton and learned that they aren’t currently working on a sequel. It’s could still happen in the future, but at the moment there’s no momentum.
Laid to Rest 3
Now here is an underrated horror franchise. While not high art by any means, Robert Green Hall’s slasher series is a fun throwback to 80s slashers and it is due a proper ending. The original film was released straight-to-DVD in 2009. ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2 came out two years later and expanded on the series’s mythology, bringing Brian Austin Green and Scream Queen Danielle Harris into the fold. The series is notorious for featuring incredibly graphic deaths with impressive practical effects. The second film left things wide open for a sequel, with ChromeSkull escaping the police with Harris’s character.
STATUS: There has been very little news about a sequel in the five years since the first sequel was released. I spoke to Harris in 2012 and she had heard nothing of a third film. In 2014, Hall reportedly told fans at Texas Frightmare Weekend that a third film was in the works. It’s been dead air since then though so don’t get your hopes up.
Friday the 13th
Oh boy, where to begin with this one? The latest Friday the 13th film has had a long, troubled road to the screen (and it still hasn’t made it there). A sequel was planned to be released in August 2010, just 10 months after the release of the remake. Producer Brad Fuller then declared the remake dead in the water in April of 2010. This was mostly due to New Line Cinema and Paramount Pictures wanting to take fewer risks because of the state of the economy at the time. Warner Bros. relinquished their rights to the franchise back to Paramount in June of 2013, giving the studio free rein to make the film. The first big rumor was that the sequel would be a found footage film, but that was quickly abandoned. The new film was set for a May 13, 2016 release date with Nick Antosca (you can read Mr. Disgusting’s analysis of the script here.) writing the script. It was pushed back to January 13, 2017, with Aaron Guzikowski (Prisoners) writing the script.
STATUS: Back in May, Fuller announced that the film would be a prequel, showing the origin of the Voorhees family. Earlier this month it was announced that Breck Eisner (The Crazies) was in talks to direct. The film is facing an upcoming legal battle over the rights to the franchise, which you can read about in more detail here. Until more details surface about the lawsuit, the status of the film is unknown.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
The 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street was the highest grossing film in the franchise when international box office is taken into account, so one has to wonder why a sequel was never made. It was probably due to the poor audience reception. Nevertheless, last year we reported that New Line Cinema was planning on doing another remake. Robert Englund himself stated that he believed that they would be remaking Dream Warriors, arguably the best sequel in the franchise.
STATUS: A story that Englund would be interested in playing Krueger again was blown out of proportion last year, but other than that there has been no news on a new film since the second remake was announced. Well, unless you count this fun little tidbit about Kevin Bacon.
Halloween
Like the Friday the 13th franchise, this is one that has had a lot of obstacles on the way to a release. After the release of Rob Zombie’s controversial Halloween II, news was silent on the film until Halloween 3D was announced in 2011. It was slated to be released in 2012 but was eventually dropped from the schedule. There was no word on the sequel until last year when it was announced that The Collector‘s Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melon would be writing the new film, titled Halloween Returns. Supposedly, it would bridge the gap between the original Halloween II and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Of course, we all know how that turned out. Dimension Films lost the rights to the franchise in December 2015, and at that time it was announced that Halloween Returns was cancelled.
STATUS: Back in May, it was announced that the next installment in the Halloween franchise would be a collaboration between Miramax Films, Blumhouse Productions and Trancas International Films, with franchise creator John Carpenter(!) set to executive produce. There haven’t been any announcements since.
Hellraiser: Judgment
The Hellraiser franchise isn’t exactly known for the high quality of its sequels, and the last effort to reboot the franchise was notoriously bad. It’s actually quite surprising that a new film is even being made because that film was a bomb.
STATUS: A 10th sequel, Hellraiser Judgment, was began filming this year with Paul T. Taylor portraying Pinhead (he actually looks pretty great!) and Heather Langenkamp starring. While no release date has been set, it is expected to come out some time in 2017.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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