The 31 Best Horror Movie Franchises of All Time Ranked

Depending who you talk to, the most terrifying thing a scary movie can do is continue after the end credits. For film critics in the late 20th century, “horror movie” and “sequel” amounted to verboten words as ghastly as “plague,” “terminal,” and “holiday special.” They were seen as tacky add-ons, engineered by studios desperate for quick profits built on diminishing returns. Even so, we wager if you poll real-life horror movie fans, they’ll have at least one sequel on the tip of their tongues that they argue surpassed the original. There are many others, too, that at least matched their forbears. And plenty more that didn’t, yet cumulatively created mythologies so rich, bloody, and diabolically nonsensical that entire fandoms and studio executives have dedicated lifetimes to untangling them. The confounding work continues to this day. As do the pleasures of the bloody screams.

Yet not all horror franchises are created equal. There are some that consistently cut deep and others that have a terrific, even legendary kickoff, before fading into SeaWorld ignominy. So we here at Den of Geek have put our heads together to discern which is which for your reading pleasure. Just a head’s up before we get started: to qualify for this list, your horror franchise must include at least four released films to qualify for this list (so apologies to the still building 28 Days Later and Terrifier stables).

31. Underworld

Every generation or age group has a horror franchise of debatable merit—yet guilty pleasure entertainment value. This is mine. And the trick about the Underworld movies is that these campy, kinky, leathery things somehow play it straight. Led by mostly by committed performances from respected English actors of the stage—including Derek Jacobi, Michael Sheen, Bill Nighy, and Kate Beckinsale—the first several Underworlds are amusingly insistent about their vision of a monochromatic world divided between vampires and werewolves, err excuse me, “lycans.”

Before True Blood or Twilight, these iconic Halloween decorations did gruesome, R-rated battles to the death while clad in head-to-toe skintight latex and prosthetic fangs. The best of the acting was so bombastic in its Shakespearean earnestness, and aggressive in its desaturated melancholy, that it convinced a generation of moviegoers that the Oxford-trained Beckinsale came to the big screen for one reason and one reason only: to slay wolf-men.

Well she slays, and the first three movies in this franchise are also pretty killer if you have the right disposition to enjoy Nighy and Sheen go ham, particularly in the third installment, which is also a prequel set in what must‘ve been the Middle Ages’ first Hot Topic. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is indeed a guilty pleasure, and along with the other first two installments is so much fun that we will allow the series the grace of pretending Underworld: Awakening and  Blood Wars never happened. – David Crow

30. Wishmaster 

People who want to see horror franchises follow in the footsteps of Clive Barker instead of Freddy Krueger will have all their desires granted by checking out the Wishmaster franchise. Okay, that might be setting the bar a little high for a quartet of films about a malevolent Djinn who browbeats his victims into saying that they want something and then granting their wishes in the most cruelly ironic way possible. But there’s no denying that there’s much fun to be had in Wishmaster’s gleeful nastiness.

Much of that fun comes from star Andrew Divoff, who carries the first two films as the central villain. Divoff’s piercing stare and his strange baritone way of speaking heightens the absurdity of the Djinn’s method, which again, mostly involves bad faith rhetorical wrangling that even your average internet commenter would find unfair. The series loses steam when John Novak steps for Divoff for the third and fourth entries, but he has a solid model to follow, allowing even those Wishmaster movies to satisfy the audience’s basest wishes. – Joe George

29. Hammer’s Frankenstein Series

When Hammer Film Productions first secured the rights to remake Universal Pictures’ iconic line of monster movies from about 15-20 years earlier, many in Hollywood assumed it was a fool’s errand. Who could replace the likes of Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff? Those same folks obviously didn’t appreciate how much younger generations would enjoy bright color and even brighter blood splatters. They also could not anticipate how much the British production company would invert the concepts of these familiar tales. Nowhere is this clearer either than Hammer’s Frankenstein pictures.

Whereas Universal spent six or seven movies essaying Frankenstein’s Monster (depending how you count his run-in with Abbott and Costello), Hammer had eyes only for Baron Victor Frankenstein, who was played with gravitas and malice by Peter Cushing. The respected thespian indeed brought weight to everything he did, including elevating some pretty suspect scripts at the tail-end of Hammer’s seven-film run about the not-so-good doctor’s bouts of playing god. While the first Monster the Baron made was portrayed with similar (if underwritten) heft by Christopher Lee, by the end of the cycle, the manmade things’ third act romps around the lab barely mattered at all when compared to the sadistic egomania of Cushing’s mad scientist who would lie, cheat, murder, and in one contentious demand from American investors, sexually assault his way to infamy. The movies varied drastically in quality, but Cushing’s performance was always top shelf stuff. – DC

28. Poltergeist

Here begins a conundrum that will haunt more than a few entries on this list: how do you evaluate a franchise that consists of one all-time classic and then a series of schlocky sequels of rapidly diminishing value? In the case of Poltergeist, you mostly just bask in the pleasures of the first film which was directed by Tobe Hooper, albeit with a lot of help (or undue pressure, depending who you ask) from writer and producer Steven Spielberg.

A perfect encapsulation of Spielberg’s preferred vision of suburban Americana being invaded, and in this case haunted, by the extraordinary, Poltergeist walks a delicate line between family-friendly adventure movie and seriously perverse horror chiller. The cant camera angles of JoBeth Williams taking a dip in a mud bath with real-unalive cadavers that the filmmakers, umm, borrowed from a morgue is all Hooper. What a pity none of the sequels could recapture that magic, especially in the absence of Dominique Dunne after her tragic death shortly following the first film. The visible frailty of Heather O’Rourke in the third Poltergeist only gives that film a further queasiness. And the remake technically gets this franchise to four entries, but why bother talking about it? – DC

27. Hellraiser

Another series that started far better than it ended up, this is a franchise that can perhaps be best defined as a two-part classic plunge into BDSM fantasia—and then just kept going as a largely direct-to-video affair of junk. The first Hellraiser of 1987 is the particular cult classic with Clive Barker finding a deliciously genre way to articulate the forbidden appeal of pain… and what happens when safe words are ignored for the likes of Frank (Sean Chapman), a degenerate libertine who gets more than he bargains for when he solves the Lament Configuration. Alas, his poor niece Kristy (Ashley Laurence) is taken along for the ride into the netherworld of dominatrix Cenobites and the demon diva supreme, Pinhead (Doug Bradley).

The only sequel that really had much to add to the series was the first one, Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), which Barker at least stayed on to contribute the story for. Once again Kristy finds herself trying to explain “no” means “OH PLEASE, GOD, NO!!!” to demons of the kink, and the film has a certain ‘80s fantasy grandeur to it as she walks through the proverbial looking glass into Barker’s happily pagan conception of hell. But the rest of the series’ more prosaic Judeochristian visions of the afterlife, and of Pinhead’s vibes, made for duller games. – DC

26. The Purge

A case can be made that The Purge represents the best kind of horror franchise: one that gets better after its first installment. The OG Purge definitely has some merits: Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey are always worth watching, and James DeMonaco came up with a hell of a killer premise when he asked “what if crime was legalized by a new fascist regime for one night of the year?” But that 2013 movie still ultimately felt like every other home invasion flick that was released in the shadow of The Strangers a few years earlier.

In the sequels though? DeMonaco, Blumhouse Productions let their freak flag fly. The second feature The Purge: Anarchy (2014) is probably the series’ peak, with DeMonaco’s script and lens turning its attention from the WASPy conclaves of suburbia to the inner-city where working class folks like Frank Grillo’s Sergeant and Carmen Ejogo’s Eva are just trying to survive the night. However, the whole series weaves a tapestry that is both sensationalistic and  eerily prescient. Produced mostly during the calm of the Obama years, here is a vision of America that’s become desensitized to government-sanctioned violence wrapped in a ghoulish perversion of the American flag. And the movies predict this future with some pretty killer set-pieces that might be heavy-handed in their “rich eating the poor” imagery, but no less provocative. – DC 

25. Friday the 13th

If this list was ranked purely in terms of iconography or popularity, there would be few entries higher than Friday the 13th. While folks can quibble over whether Alfred Hitchcock, Tobe Hooper, or John Carpenter invented the slasher movie, Sean S. Cunningham and his successors pretty much defined it during the subgenre’s peak in the 1980s. With a new installment released virtually every calendar year in that decade, Friday’s Jason Voorhees and his menacing hockey mask are so synonymous with hack-and-slash killer movies from this era that most folks forget he didn’t even get the mask until Part III. He wasn’t even the main killer in the original film!

But in terms of quality, the Jason movies are better remembered for their kitsch and kills than their whole merits. The one where he smashes a camper in a sleeping bag into a tree, and then fights not-Carrie by the lake, is great (Part VII, for the record)… at least until you go back and watch all the dead air until those sequences. Also the fact that Jason is himself the hero of the franchise, with audiences encouraged to wait for him to come out and shove a machete/electric guitar/corkscrew into some horny teen’s skull (more often than uncomfortably not a young woman) diminishes the franchise’s ability to either scare or entertain when the teenagers we follow exist solely to be wiped out.

Still, there are some darkly amusing moments in the series, and even some genuinely fun throwbacks to the slasher done right at its basest level. Part IV is like the platonic ideal of an ‘80s “slasher at a camp movie,” right down to none of the friendships being all that platonic. Later entries like Jason X and Freddy vs. Jason lean into the absurdity with ironic charm, and Part VI tries the novel idea of developing an actual storyline wherein one of the previous film’s survivors (young Tommy Jarvis, now played by Thom Matthews) fights back. Jennifer Cooke’s final girl is also witty and proactive in tripping up the machete man, and there is at last a high noon showdown between the usually off-screen law enforcement and the guy in a hockey mask. If you only watch one Friday the 13th…

24. Candyman

We are keeping the Clive Barker theme going with Candyman, another strangely romantic cult classic about having your body and soul utterly annihilated by a mythic force. One might say he has a type? And when that type is personified by Tony Todd’s velvety nihilism in Bernard Rose’s 1992 Candyman, despair takes on a majesty that appears strangely sweet. 

It also helps that the original film and the more recent 2021 legacy sequel (or “requel”) lean into the concept of urban legends, especially in Black spaces that are colonized and commodified by commercial interests (read: white folks). In the original film, this is wrapped in a deliberately thorny and uncomfortable subtext as Todd’s Bloody Mary-like ghost seeks to possess the soul of a white woman (Virginia Madsen), and yet this slipperiness adds texture that Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele unpacked in the far grislier reimagining. Their follow-up turns Candyman’s essence into an entire neighborhood’s curse. It’s like a communal werewolf yarn where everyone is doomed by evil outside their control. When combined with the first movie, this addition elevates a franchise that also has a handful of pretty mediocre sequels scattered about like rotten candy corns in the ‘90s.

23. V/H/S

When the V/H/S franchise started in 2012, it was not rapturously received by critics or fans. Some appreciated the anthological found footage concept for its variety. But as with all anthology films, some installments were better than others (here’s looking at you, “Amateur Night”). However, what might have initially seemed like a gimmick to tap on the even-then waning found footage fad has outlived its cultural context. And now thanks to the support of Shudder, Bloody Disgusting, and other production companies who protect the dream of low-budget scares, the series has turned into a safe space for both genre favorites and new guns with something to prove. One and all are free to experiment in bizarre and, sometimes, brilliant ideas.

Now a whopping eight films deep, and with filmmakers as eclectic as Mike Flanagan, Scott Derrickson, Adam Wingard, Chloe Okuno, Alberto Marini, Simon Barrett, and the Radio Silence team among its ranks, V/H/S has become an annual tradition where veterans and newcomers alike try their hand at a found-footage setup with limited means but boundless ambition. Some shorts are great, others are bad, but it’s a pleasure just figuring out which is which. – DC 

22. The Omen

There are so many great pieces to the the Omen franchise that it’s sometimes easy to forget they are usually greater than the series’ total sum. Jerry Goldsmith’s satanic choir and musical stylings? Iconic. That final shot of little Damien, the Antichrist as a toddler, looking on at his foster father’s funeral while holding the hand of the POTUS? Fiendishly fun. Gregory Peck pouring his heart out in the scene where he discovers a 666 birthmark that better resembles a scab on his son? Works better than it should.

Yet that first Omen is a lot more kitschy than you probably remember and hasn’t aged nearly so well as its unholy influences of the previous decade named The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. And its direct sequels are better remembered for accidentally predicting the Final Destination franchise where comically elaborate death traps spring up for every extra who gives Damien Thorne a funny look. They never quite lived up to that foreboding score. With that said, the most recent entry, the unasked-for-prequel The First Omen (2024), is seriously underrated and arguably the best film in the series. Director Arkasha Stevenson gives the series its first sense of menace since the 1976 original, as well as perhaps its first touch of class by working in a potent and rage-filled metaphor for motherhood-under-duress in a post-Roe v. Wade world. It also features a titanic performance by Nell Tiger Free. – DC

21. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

So much of the groundbreaking power in 1974’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre seems derived by accident. Writer-director Tobe Hooper certainly lit upon a terrifying idea when he looked at a chainsaw at his local home improvement shop and went “what if?” But it’s the fact he shot that idea with college friends and other aspiring filmmakers in the dead of a Texan summer, with real animal skeletons and fetid flesh surrounding the film’s dinner table set from hell, which gives the picture its grotesque draw. The movie looks and feels evil, like a snuff joint captured by amateurs on 16mm.

None of the sequels or retreads have been able to recapture that queasy dark magic, but a few of them have had their charms, not least of which includes Hooper’s own direct sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). More of a spoof and meta-sendup of his own classic, the sequel is just brazenly subversive enough of fan expectation to seem radical in the 21st century. It also proved better than any of the more sincere attempts at slasher add-ons in this franchise. Still, the 2003 remake from producer Michael Bay, and which starred a perpetually sweat-dripped Jessica Biel, remains the one success of the Bay/Platinum Dunes exercise of remaking all the slasher classics in the mid-2000s. The movie works as a genuinely tense nightmare and also features a great performance in the subgenre by R. Lee Emry as a big man on a little cannibal hill.

Of course it will always be Gunner Hansen’s Leatherface swinging his motorized beauty like a prized hog in the Texas dew that elevates this whole series to the realm of unforgettable. – DC

20. Jaws

Once again we have a franchise defined by one of the greatest films ever made, horror or otherwise, and then a run of fairly terrible sequels. So the question becomes how bad are the sequels to weigh down the placement of a masterpiece like Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975)? In the case of Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987), they’re pretty abysmal—so much so that there is a counter-argument that they swing back to being highly watchable due to their wretchedness. In the third film, two Great Whites take out SeaWorld one water skier at a time! And in the fourth one, a fish stalks the Brody family from Massachusetts to the Bahamas, and looks faker with each attack. Also for some reason, Michael Caine is there… ?

So yes, as a franchise this borders on irredeemable. But as a piece of Hollywood history, it is unmissable. Jaws 2 (1978) even arguably influenced the slasher, and specifically the Friday the 13th movies, by setting a template of teenagers getting up to no good and being punished by a puritanical spirit of vengeance for their sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll (or yacht rock as the case may be here). No matter how you chew on it, Spielberg’s Jaws is such a tour de force that it can lift the rest of this lifeless leviathan high enough to crack the top 20 surface. – DC

19. Paranormal Activity

The first Paranormal Activity never gets enough credit. While far from the original found footage horror movie, this Oren Pell and Blumhouse Productions trailblazer built off the popularity of The Blair Witch Project (1999), and obscurity of Cannibal Holocaust (1980), by offering a proverbial closed-circuit ghost story that actually gave multiplex audiences the final scare they so craved. At a reported recommendation from Steven Spielberg, the final scene is a reshoot of poor possessed Katie (Katie Featherston) luring Micah (Micah Scott) downstairs, and then gutting him like a fish off-screen and throwing his body back toward the camera and coming to tell us “boo.”

That change from the original version (where possessed Katie would’ve killed herself) also left the door open for a new found footage film nearly every Halloween thereafter. And while the sequels never achieved the level of verisimilitude of the first, most of them did a decent job of cultivating a sense of inescapable doom and dread in the audience, and finding new ways to make household objects terrifying. Whether it was invisible demons tinkering with 1990s swivel fans, 2010s Xbox One Kinects, or the timeless sight of “the best fucking Ouija Board I’ve ever seen” lighting itself on fire, the better Paranormal Activity flicks made mundane sinister. It also turned Jason Blum into an empire-builder. – DC

18. Child’s Play

It’s fair to wonder if Child’s Play ever would have become the decade-spanning phenomenon it is without Brad Dourif’s vocal performance. Despite playing a serial killer trapped inside the body of a cloyingly creepy children’s doll, there is as much cheer as fear in Dourif’s jolly line-readings. He brings an infectious joie de vivre to a guy who has to make do with a 12-inch plastic frame when he’s sneaking up on his prey. It’s ridiculous, but the performance is so giddy in its nefariousness that it is able to share the audience’s laugh while (usually) playing it straight.

It also carried the Chucky series across six movies (and a seventh if you include the Mark Hamill-led reboot). The original three movies are late ‘80s and early ‘90s VHS staples. Coming in at the tail-end of the slasher’s golden age, they were able to establish Chucky as a major fixture in the horror aisle at Blockbuster. And for the most part, they were consistently hammy successes that walked the line between camp and carnage. That has a lot to do with Dourif as well as Chucky’s creator, screenwriter Dan Mancini, providing a creative through-line.

Still, we would argue it is the fourth film where the series hit its peak, Ronny Yu’s hopelessly Y2K-drenched Bride of Chucky (1998). Introducing Jennifer Tilly as Chucky’s great love, Tiffany, and enough late ‘90s music video aesthetics to demand a nu-metal soundtrack, felt like a homecoming of sorts for Chucky’s trashy vibe—so much so later installments like Seed of Chucky (2004) desperately chased that high. They never reached it again, but to be honest, these movies, like the little ginger demon, never exactly intended to stand tall. They know what they are and wear it like doll-sized denim. – DC

17. Psycho

In 1960, Psycho changed everything. Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of the Robert Bloch novel set the stage for so much of horror to follow, specifically of the slasher variety. He transported the terror from Gothic European castles to a roadside motel and made that nice kid Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) into the definitive serial killer archetype onscreen. Between Bloch’s basic hook and the incredible direction by the Master of Suspense, Psycho belongs on this list even if every sequel was garbage.

But here’s the thing: only one Psycho sequel is garbage, and its garbage in the best possible way. Released 23 years after the original, Psycho II is an underrated and thoughtful successor, one that follows Norman as he tries to reenter society. Perkins steps behind the camera for Psycho III, a trashy movie that tries to strip away the prestige that had built up around the franchise, revealing the lurid heart within. That leaves only the dull made-for-TV prequel Psycho IV: The Beginning, which isn’t terrible, but rendered completely unnecessary by the show Bates Motel. A masterpiece, a noble follow-up, a sleazy experiment, and a disposable sequel; any franchise on this list would be proud to have such a record. – JG

16. Final Destination

All of the franchises on this list have incredible monsters. But none of them cut to the chase like Final Destination. The ultimate threat of Final Destination is Death itself, not embodied but no less personified, and no less relentless than Freddy or Jason or Chucky. What began as a spec script for The X-Files about mysterious deaths befalling the survivors of a plane crash has turned into one of the most inventive and consistently entertaining series in the genre.

Both that inventiveness and that entertainment most often appears in the form of the franchise’s signature draw, its delightful kill sequences. Every film, from the defining second entry and the recent Final Destination: Bloodlines to the misguided, misstated fourth entry The Final Destination, features intricate Rube Goldberg-like sequences of slaughter. We viewers get to watch as spilled spaghetti, a kids soccer ball, or a lucky penny become harbingers of grisly doom, leading to bloody, funny, and unexpected death scenes. And like Denny’s, the monster of this movie’s business is always open. – JG

15. Saw

No series better captured the cruelty of mid-2000s horror like Saw. What began as a shot-on-the-cheap calling card by plucky first-time filmmakers James Wan and Leigh Whannell exploded into a true stomach-churning phenomenon, with a new gross-out sequel arriving every October. Fans at the time lined up to watch, excited to see how the Jigsaw killer John Kramer (Tobin Bell) would dismember his victims this time around.

Fun as the geek show effects are, real Saw fans know that the true pleasure of the franchise is its insane plotting. The franchise completely committed to Kramer’s terminal disease, letting him die off in Saw III. It further opened Saw IV with his autopsy. Instead of bringing Jigsaw back as a zombie, the series keeps Kramer around through a series of increasingly byzantine flashbacks, twisting the narrative like its in a torture device of Jigsaw’s making. No matter if it’s a splatter fest or it’s a convoluted procedural, Saw is always a pleasure to watch thanks to Bell’s committed take as Kramer. – JG

14. Predator

If this list had a prize for “most improvement,” it very likely would go to the Predator series. The original 1987 movie from director John McTiernan is of course a staple of ‘80s action cinema, one which famously turned Arnold Schwarzenegger into the proverbial final girl of a slasher flick. Here stands the lone survivor who must stand up to a far more powerful monster that killed all her friends. Awesome. Even so, for most of Predator’s existence as a franchise, it’s been marked by unremarkable if not outright awful sequels like Predator 2 (1990), the Alien vs. Predator flicks in the 2000s, and the ghastly 2018 reboot, The Predator.

Then came Dan Trachtenberg. The writer and director of 10 Cloverfield has almost single-handedly reinvigorated the franchise with its best films in 30 years, if not ever. 2022’s Prey is better than it had any right to be as a streaming release. Luckily Trachtenberg pursued the tantalizing fan dream of setting a beloved, pulpy genre concepts in the ancient past: in this case during the early 18th century when a young Comanche woman (Amber Midthunder) defies the expectations of her tribe and also early French fur trappers by standing up to the beast from the stars. Trachtenberg then pivoted again by extrapolating on the idea in an animated film, Predator: Killer of Killers, that hopped between different centuries and protagonists to tell a larger, mythology-building tale about the Yautja species’ predations on Earth.

All of which leaves us giddy about the prospect of the same filmmaker pivoting again, this time to the distant future, and now throwing into the mix Elle Fanning as a chatty Kathy android. The game really has never looked so plentiful. – DC 

13. Universal’s The Wolf Man Series

Of all the many sequels and spinoffs Universal Pictures made to their famous monster movies of the 1930s and ‘40s, the Wolf Man remained the one creature played by a single actor: Lon Chaney Jr. That might also be why Chaney’s Wolf Man is a personal favorite of the Universal Monsters. A poor, hapless schmuck who just wanted to be reconciled with his distant father (Claude Rains), Larry Talbot instead gets bitten by a werewolf and spends the next five movies begging for someone to put him out of his misery. They never do.

Obviously the 1941 Wolf Man is the best film in a run that coincided with World War II, and thus increasingly smaller budgets. Nonetheless, Chaney always brought a sense of pathos to the material that was absent from a number of other performances in Universal’s monster mash years. In fact, the first cinematic crossover ever, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), works pretty well as a direct Wolf Man sequel with lots of Jack Pierce’s furry makeup and solid character work from the likes of Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva, the Romani woman who reluctantly helps Talbot find a doctor they call Frankenstein. When the Wolf Man starts partying with Dracula as well, things get dicier, but it all ends well in one of the great horror comedies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), wherein the werewolf gets to save the day and take out Bela Lugosi’s long-in-the-fang vampire.

12. Insidious

Insidious may not be as flashy as James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s other franchise, Saw, nor Wan’s The Conjuring, but it’s no less satisfying. Insidious gives the duo a chance to do more with less, bringing their lore-building sensibilities to a more focused tale about a non-descript family, led by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne’s Josh and Renai Lambert, whose son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) gets targeted by a demon.

The first movie combined haunted house scares with a general wholesomeness, not just from the Lambert family but also from a trio of ghost hunters, played by Lin Shaye, Angus Sampson, and Whannell. The premise worked well enough for a second film, but the lackluster prequels Chapter 3 and The Last Key quickly suggested it was spent. And yet, a late fourth entry, The Red Door, found new scares by revisiting the Lamberts, now older and in disarray. The Red Door makes for a perfect closer to the series. But given the fact that it made 10 times its budget, Blumhouse is surely working on yet another Insidious entry. – JG

11. Hannibal Lecter

It is easy to say there is only one good Hannibal Lecter movie, and it’s the one that picked up the Oscar for Best Picture (and everything else). Well, Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs is definitely the masterpiece in the bunch, and another case of the “first” movie being the best, but there are reasons to still enjoy other entries, including Ridley Scott’s ambitious follow-up, Hannibal (2001). Far more operatic—they even wrote a made up opera about Dante in it!—Hannibal is as vain and preening as Anthony Hopkins’ stylish cannibal. It’s also a Grand Guignol blast in places, and beautiful to feel in others. (Really, that “Vide Cor Meum” piece written by composer Patrick Cassidy is breathtaking.)

Hopkins was disengaged by the time Brett Ratner got around to going through the motions in Red Dragon (2002), and the less said about the Hannibal Rising (2007) prequel the better. But even just including the cinematic entries, there remain secrets up the doctor’s wine and blood-stained sleeves. And if you count Michael Mann’s underrated Manhunter (1986) as part of the franchise, even though it stars Brian Cox as a far more subdued Dr. Lektor than what Hopkins won an Oscar for a few years later, it turns out you have another stone-cold masterpiece in the franchise. – DC

10. The Exorcist

There are many folks out there who will tell you William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is still the scariest movie ever made. I’m one of them. What he achieved in 1973 by adding a documentarian, and agnostic, eye to a true-believing story of demonic possession made for one of the most emotionally violent and intense experiences you can have in a movie theater. It did author and screenwriter William Peter Blatty’s bouts of doubt and faith justice. What a shame none of that can be said for the disastrous sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). From start-to-finish an unmitigated catastrophe, Exorcist II might have ended Richard Burton’s career as a serious actor, and derailed young Linda Blair’s early success after a performance that was equal measures sinister and heartbreaking in the first movie.

All of which speaks poorly of Warner Bros. leadership at the time, because if they had simply waited a few years, Blatty would have delivered them a novel that makes for a great sequel. In fact, he still did, but few dared see it after the frivolities of Heretic. To this day, The Exorcist III (1990) is an underrated gem, and the only true follow-up to the ‘73 film. Written and directed by Blatty himself, the picture is far more Catholic, if that seems possible, and wide-eyed sincere in its conception of the powers of Heaven and Hell intruding in our daily lives. It retains a foreboding sense of dread though, as well as verisimilitude. That’s quite the achievement since George C. Scott is hamming it to high heaven as the detective originated by Lee J. Cobb in the first movie. The film also features an all-time jump scare.

There were more movies after The Exorcist III, including two different attempts at the same prequel story falling flat for wildly different reasons (though, to be clear, Paul Schrader’s failures are more interesting than Renny Harlin’s). But it is the first and “third” movie that make this franchise an unholy powerhouse. – DC

9. The Conjuring

When James Wan’s first Conjuring hit 12 years ago, folks believed it was based on a true story. Technically all of the mainline Conjuring films claim that to one degree or another, with the fun gimmick being that each installment is pulled from the “case files” of supposed paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. But by the time this year’s fourth and allegedly final mainline flick, The Conjuring: Last Rites, came out with a kaiju-sized Annabelle doll walking around, it’s safe to say the sense of historical grounding had worn off.

Those first couple of Conjurings directed by Wan though? They were like a full-throated legal defense for the artistry of the jump scare. Wan indeed has an apparently limitless ability to find new and rewarding ways to say “boo,” and it always feels earned after minutes or hours of breathless tension. Part of that is Wan’s command of swooping and aggressive camera movements, but it is also the texture from lead performances by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who make their Hollywoodized Ed and Lorraine so damn lovable. The first two Conjuring movies are top notch “haunted house ride” cinema, and they have spawned a dizzying larger universe of six spinoff films, some of which are pure madcap ‘80s zaniness like Annabelle Comes Home (the one with a werewolf!). Not all Conjuring movies are created equal, but when you have as strong of an anchor as Wilson belting Elvis standards on a guitar, this basically becomes chiller comfort food. – DC 

8. Hammer’s Dracula Series

Bela Lugosi’s Dracula defined the popular image of the character and the vampire archetype in general. But it was the Christopher Lee version in Hammer’s cycle that standardized what a “Dracula” story is in pop culture. The blood would be bright red, the fangs pronounced and bared often, and the victims mostly young, nubile, heaving things who doth protest too much. It was a formula, but one that Lee himself gave a lot of class and stoic charm. The material handed to him might have been lascivious, but he made it illustrious, especially in the installments that paired him with Peter Cushing as cinema’s most virile Professor Van Helsing. When these two first crossed paths in the earliest installment, 1958’s Horror of Dracula, it was a veritable swashbuckler but with crucifixes.

Lee would go on to star in seven Hammer productions based around the undead count, and Hammer would produce a further two installments in the franchise absent Lee. But even when they’re quite terrible (see: 1970’s Scars of Dracula), there remains a camp charm. One of the better installments even leaned into that, turning Dracula A.D. 1972 into a cult classic for those who vibed on Christopher Lee’s vampire being transported to swinging ‘60s London (even if in real-life the party was already over) to feed on a bunch of shaggadelic hippies. Other installments actually improved on the formula from time to time, such as Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968) and Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), where the seductive vampire turns the youth of Victorian society against their stodgy, hypocritical parents. See, despite Lee’s oppressive formality as Dracula, he could be a swinger too.

7. Halloween

There is not a horror franchise with a more confusing or headache-inducing continuity than the Halloween films. Bless ‘em. As much of a “choose your own adventure” for fans’ head-canon as a straight-forward mythology you can learn, there are anywhere between five and seven ways you can follow the story after John Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece about an inexplicable evil they call “Michael Myers” and the babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) whom he stalks. In most variations, although not all, Laurie winds up being Michael’s long-lost baby sister. And in the original series of sequels—those which Whistle screenwriter Owen Egerton tells us are the “orphan trilogy” because no one wants to claim them anymore—Laurie’s own orphan daughter Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) is stalked by her big uncle, who she learns is possessed by an evil pagan cult.

There are also other continuities where Jamie was never born, and Michael came back decades later to have One. Last. Showdown. with Laurie. Thrice. There’s even the Rob Zombie remake where they share the same white trash family trauma demon that turns them into serial killers. Whatever iteration floats your boat, there is a version out there, and the truth is most of them have at least one decent sequel in their run—Halloween 4, H20, and the 2018 reboot, for those who are counting—and at least a couple of dogs. But even the conflicting and confounding failures give the whole thing a certain panache, all while springing from the granddaddy of perfect slasher movies. So as long as that Carpenter piano and synthesizer theme keeps blasting, we’ll keep watching what is the one slasher franchise that 40 years after the fact can still keep things spooky. – DC

6. A Nightmare on Elm Street

Halloween is probably the definitive slasher franchise of the 1970s and ‘80s, and Friday the 13th was the most popular during the era. But in terms of pound for pound creativity and innovation, the Nightmare on Elm Street flicks were the best ones. Originated by writer-director Wes Craven’s fascination with a story about the son of Hmong refugees who refused to go to sleep until he finally collapsed in exhaustion—and then promptly died—A Nightmare on Elm Street was a daring, low-budget ‘80s cut ’em up that strived for arthouse depth and psychology. 

We can quibble whether it got there, but it did create one of the greatest movie monsters of all time, a dream demon boogeyman named Freddy Krueger (played unforgettably by Robert Englund), as well as a definitive “final girl” who actually fights back against her tormentor, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp). Still, what made Freddy an idol of his age are the movies that came afterward. Craven infamously never cared for the sequels, even the best one which he wrote the first draft for (1987’s A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors), but it was their go-for-broke willingness to try new things, and producer Bob Shaye’s desire to build an empire at New Line Cinema, that made Freddy a rival to Jason. And as the sequels got more outlandish, they also became more visually audacious and occasionally wondrous in their dreamscapes. Somewhere around Nightmare 4 (1988), Freddy unfortunately became a court jester and a figure of comedy instead of horror, but most fans honestly seem to prefer that Happy Meal version.

Fortunately, the series remained ambitious enough that little gems like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) could spring from it. That movie is an extremely meta-commentary on the series by Craven in which he casts himself, Shaye, Englund, and most prominently Langenkamp as fictional versions of their real selves, and then has them haunted by a Freddy Krueger-shaped demon who’s escaped the screen like a murderous purple rose of Cairo. Also, once again, Freddy vs. Jason (2003) slaps for those who just enjoy a good monster mash once in a while. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s a Freddy movie that happens to feature Jason.

5. George Romero’s Living Dead Films

How influential is Night of the Living Dead (1968)? The movie essentially created the entire zombie subgenre despite the fact that director George R. Romero insisted that his flesh-eating, reanimated corpses were ghouls and not zombies. But it’s not just Romero’s revision to the lore that made zombies so popular today. It’s the way he uses flesh-eaters to comment upon society.

Once the casting of Black actor Duane Jones gave Night of the Living Dead political relevance, Romero found a way to combine horror and critique. Dawn of the Dead (1978) reanimates corpses as mindless mall-goers, Day of the Dead (1985) shows a military state crumble, and Land of the Dead (2005) features an uprising against the ruling class. Later sequels Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009) don’t have quite the same bite, but even they can’t diminish the way Romero changed horror forever. – JG

4. Evil Dead

The poster for the original Evil Dead (released in 1981) called the film the ultimate experience in gruelling terror. While that might have been a bit of hyperbole, it was definitely among the most visually dazzling and inventive to ever play the game. Famously made by a trio of school-day chums named Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell, the first movie had no budget, no safety guidelines, and seemingly no hope. But Raimi’s ability to make a camera tied to a piece of plywood terrifying when he ran through the woods with it over his head also made Evil Dead one of the foundational “video nasties” in extreme horror violence.

That legend only grew as the first couple of sequels got funnier, better funded, and yet no less ingenious in design. There are many who will tell you to this day that Evil Dead II (1987) is the best sequel ever made. While seeing Campbell go Elmur Fudd against his own possessed hand is classic, we prefer the time-traveling shenanigans of Army of Darkness (1992) ourselves. Each installment in the trilogy has its own flavor though, and they each work. So it seemed fairly blasphemous when Raimi and company announced they were producing remakes and spinoffs more than 20 years later. However, 2013’s Evil Dead reimagining from Fede Alvarez, and even 2023’s truly diabolical Evil Dead Rise, courtesy of Lee Cronin, each lived up to the promise of “grueling terror”—plus buckets of gore so maximalist that they are falling from the sky by the end of the Alvarez flick. – DC 

3. Universal’s Frankenstein Movie Series

It has been nearly a hundred years since James Whale first gave Boris Karloff his flattop in the 1931 adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. And to this day, when you say the word “Frankenstein,” it’s this singular design with the bolts in the neck that folks think about. That is a testament to makeup designer Jack Pierce, but it is also a tribute to the overall film Whale and Karloff made. Narratively it has almost nothing to do with Shelley’s book beyond the general conceit of a mad scientist bringing life to the sewn-together body parts of cadavers. Yet it captured the spirit of the source material better than any other adaptation to this day and features an all-time heartbreaking performance by Karloff as the Creature.

So imagine the shock it must have been when the direct sequel, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein, turned out to be even better. Directed by Whale at the height of his powers (not to mention creative control), the film has a visual grandeur decades ahead of its time, not to mention a deft mingling of horror and camp comedy. Karloff’s Monster is at last allowed to speak, the sets are massive, and the Creature’s mate is so visually striking thanks to actress Elsa Lanchester and Pierce’s idea of  glamour beauty makeup that she also left a 90-year impression despite only being onscreen for five minutes. It is the greatest horror sequel, but not the last good Frankenstein movie made by Universal. The next installment, 1939’s Son of Frankenstein, wastes Karloff’s final appearance as the Monster but features a deliciously broad turn by Bela Lugosi as the seedy “helper” Ygor. The German Expressionist-inspired set design is also haunting.

The series definitely declined after those first three entries, but we again remain champions of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), if not necessarily for Lugosi’s misjudged performance as the Monster. And Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is also a great classic, even if the titular monster is barely in it. A few of the other ‘40s films were major downgrades, but this is one of the genre’s most enduring legacies that starts and ends with a jolt of electricity. – DC

2. Scream

If we are judging franchises strictly in terms of consistency, from beginning to end there has not been a bad Scream movie yet across six entries in 29 years. That is a remarkable record and pretty much unmatched within the genre. There are definitely weaker entries on this list—we see you over there, Scream 3 (2000) and your baffling Jay and Silent Bob cameo—but ever since Drew Barrymore picked up a landline and heard “what’s your favorite scary movie?,” this series has been batting at least singles. And the 1996 movie from Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson that started it all is a massive home run.

Benefiting from razor-sharp writing and direction that was shrewd enough to acknowledge even their young teen audience was intimately familiar with the tropes and clichés of slasher movies after the last 20 years of drive-ins and slumber party rental bingers, Scream created a self-aware satire that not so much deconstructed the beats as unmasked them and then turned them around for maximum excitement. It also built a series where instead of the killer, it is the would-be victims who are the characters we followed from film to film. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette are to Scream what Han, Luke, and Leia were to Star Wars, and to see them grow both wearier and steelier every time they get a new phone call from the playfully cruel voice of Roger L. Jackson has become strangely comforting over the years.

The series has long worked due to changing with—or mocking—the times. 2011’s Scream 4 marked Craven’s final film, as well as a bit of a middle finger to the idea of remakes and reboots with the new ingenue set to replace Campbell’s Sidney Prescott turning out to be the killer who wanted to steal her life, All About Eve style. Yet, impressively, the series was still able to evolve for a new generation after Craven when horror wunderkinds Radio Silence became the creative force behind the camera, and the franchise lucked into hiring massive talents like Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, and future Oscar-winner Mikey Madison just months or years before they broke out. The NYC-based Scream VI is an especially satisfying slasher that makes good on the failed promise of Jason taking Manhattan back in ‘89.

If we are being honest, it all makes the fact that next year’s Scream 7 controversially parted ways with Barrera and Ortega, and is seemingly returning to the well with Ghostface going back to Woodsboro and stalking a long over-this-shit Sidney, a bit worrisome. But even if that one stumbles, six out of seven ain’t bad? – DC

1. Alien

It is unlikely that anyone reading this enjoys every one of the Alien movies. But chances are you remember each of them vividly, even if it’s been decades since you last saw an installment. That is because whether great, grotesque, or even disappointing, each film has an artistic purity and singularity to it that would make an Ian Holm android purr. All of the original four films in what 20th Century Fox previously marketed as the “Alien Quadrilogy” are helmed by a distinct and visceral auteur, and each left an indelible stamp on the star-beast we now call the “xenomorph” (including the fact it is called a xenomorph).

This began when Ridley Scott’s endlessly eerie haunted house in space, Alien (1979), gave way seven years after the fact to James Cameron’s relentless rollercoaster of an action-thriller, Aliens (1986). It remains contentious to this day which is superior—count me in the team Alien camp—but both are peak achievements in their directors’ oeuvres, as well as a showcase for Sigourney Weaver, whose Ellen Ripley became the rare performance in either an action movie or sequel to earn a lead Oscar nomination.

David Fincher’s Alien 3 (1992) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection (1997) are less unblemished in their legacies or charms—Fincher famously disowned the most nihilistic film in the series—but they too their admirers, and each is a bizarrely original spin on what is in essence still an old “monster on a spaceship” setup. I have come around to appreciating both, even as someone who remains lukewarm over what Fincher and company did to little Newt. Meanwhile Ridley Scott’s reinvention of the franchise in 2012, Prometheus, remains a fascinating, galaxy-sized swing: a beautiful, bold, and dazzling existential treatise drenched in body horror dread… that’s undone by an undercooked screenplay. But to quote Alien: Romulus director Fede Alvarez, “That’s a movie that clearly accomplished more than most movies ever do.”

Alvarez then went on to make the first genuinely nostalgic sequel in the whole series, which sought to create order out of the previous installments’ mysteries and chaos. But even Romulus features evocative atmosphere and performances, particularly from David Jonsson as an android named Andy. There is a ferocious artistic integrity that this series has maintained over half a century. It cannot all be for everyone, but there is something alluring, and nightmarish, for everyone who dares enter its darkest corner of space. Every film is a meal, and every meal a banquet, we love the Alien corps. – DC