Editorials
The 5 Most Embarrassing Horror Sequels!!!
As horror fans, we often feel that our beloved genre is under attack from the mainstream. People who just don’t get it, people who wonder why we waste our time on such “crap.” We want to scream from the mountain tops, “hey! A lot of this stuff is great! You just don’t get it!”
It’s fine. Horror’s not for everyone. That doesn’t bother me. What does bother me are sequels so bad they disgrace the genre. Why? Because there’s a good chance that when you say, “I love ‘Scream'” someone else thinks back to the time they saw Scream 3 because a friend dragged them to it and they think *that* is your favorite movie. It kills me. With that in mind, I’ve actually stricken some horrible films from this list because they don’t quite qualify. Sure, Jaws 4 is horrible, but there’s no way on earth anyone’s going to confuse it with Jaws. The entire planet knows Jaws 4 is bad and no one is assuming you like it (unless they really hate you).
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This movie has a high pedigree in terms of its cast and production value, but it’s flat out terrible. Still, I’ve kept it low on the list because it kind of falls into Jaws vs. Jaws 4 territory in the sense that everyone and their mother knows the original Poltergeist is great.
This is a dangerous movie for you Halloween fans out there. Since the second, third and fourth movies are all varying degrees of decent, people associate you with the franchise because you rightfully defend most of its installments. Hell, you’ve probably even defended H20 – which I can totally understand. Unfortunately, a side effect of this might be that people actually think you like Halloween: Resurrection. Just imagine that there’s a family member out there watching one of the Busta Rhymes scenes right now thinking it’s your favorite movie.
While the Wrong Turn series is fairly low profile, a lot of us have gone to bat for the first two films. Joe Lynch’s Wrong Turn 2 in particular has inspired many conversations that involve the exchange, “you should give it a chance! It’s good!” While the chances are low anyone will confuse this soon to be forgotten installment with the first two, it’s so mean spirited and repugnant that it stains the entire franchise.
Remember how they basically tried to bring the illuminati into the mythology of the series as a way of explaining the cannibalistic family as some sort of borderline alien “experiment in terror?” That was the most interesting part of the movie! Yet, two of its actors (Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey) went on to become major stars. Which means that a lot of uninitiated folks have seen this film over the past 19 years and none of the others. Makes you feel uneasy, right?
The film that inspired this entire list. An American Werewolf In London is one of my favorite movies. Ever. Hands down, regardless of genre. I openly share with many people that it’s one of my favorite films and an alarming percentage of them come back to me with a variation on, “oh the one with Julie Delpy and the guy from ‘That Thing You Do’?” And I’m sitting there wondering why the person thinks so lowly of me as to assume that it’s my favorite f*cking movie.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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