My Favorite Horror: Franchises

A bit ago I said I was going to start doing some horror favorite lists, and it’s been a bit since I followed up. This is going to actually be a hard one for me. I am not anti franchise as a rule, though I do have my issues with over doing franchises, but rather I am picky and too many franchises have too many misses for me to really call them “top.” As a for instance the original Halloween is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I find a few of the entries to be pretty entertaining, the rest I find varying degrees of not good to straight up unwatchable. I cannot call it a top franchise because it’s just not for me. I would never bother anyone about it being a top one for them, but that’s where I am at.

So, now that I have bashed the concept of horror franchises, I want to be clear there are some good ones, and I get why people love them. I mean I am doing a list of ones I love. Just being honest that this list was a tad difficult for me and a much shorter list than others in this series of posts.

Of the Dead

I honestly haven’t seen the entire franchise and it does get a little… eh after the first two. Yes, I even think Day of the Dead falls into the dip. However, I love zombies and George Romero is the father of the modern zombie and really blessed the world with it. Night of the Living Dead was a great movie and marked a turn for our understanding of “zombies” from the old Haitian tradition. Dawn of the Dead is an incredible movie, and also an incredible indictment of society. I think that is something else Romero really gave us, not just a new monster but a new way to use that monster to make cultural critiques. And that is something that stands out even in the weaker entries. It’s been a hot minuet but I remember not being very impressed by Land of the Dead as a movie, but as a critique of capitalism and power it’s pretty top notch. And that’s what really sells this franchise for me. It’s the zombie franchise and even when it’s not great it is still saying something.

Scream 1-4

Yes, yes, I know that comes off as insufferable. However, I have actual reasons to object to Scream 6 and 7, and since I am not including those I may as well limit this to the “Wes Craven franchise.” Anyway. Scream was a great critique of the slasher franchise and right when we needed it. It was both scary and funny, and it did a good job not only calling out the rules of slashers that had gotten tired but also by subverting them. Which, by the way, is something I think has gotten lost over the years and popularity of the franchise. The meta commentary is fine on it’s own, but it also served as a basis for Craven to sometimes say “but” and then shake things up. Even the fact that the franchise was led by Sydney and not the killers was a huge thing. They are entertaining and well done movies and even the zaniness of Scream 3 is a lot of fun.

Friday the 13th

So after using Halloween as an example of why I struggle with franchises it’s a bit odd to include this one. Aside from the first movie and Final Chapter these movies aren’t great. Yes, I am even including the ones you love, sorry. They can be incredibly formulaic and frankly are a lot of what Scream was calling out. However, they are for the most part consistently entertaining in their own right. Whether it’s from “so bad it’s good” to “okay this isn’t great but is trying to do some things in a stale franchise” most (not all) of the movies are doing something I enjoy. Also shout out to Jason X a movie that I frankly think needs to be viewed through the “meta” lens.

– I have alluded to this before in my Widow’s Bay piece and really should actually write something about it LOL –

Of the big pre Scream franchises this is the one that for better or worse I consistently enjoy the most.

Saw

Oh boy, Saw. Saw was an incredible raw, gritty, movie that really combined crime thriller with horror so well and took it a lot further into horror than a lot of movies that attempt to combine the two are willing. I can still remember the end with that song and the visceral reaction I had to it. And then it became a franchise. Much like other entries on this list I am not going to defend the overall quality of the franchise. I simply cannot. The timeline is a freaking mess, I cannot stand the character of Hoffman, who is an important character in a lot of them. And I straight up hate one of the entries in this series. (Saw 3D is a misogynistic mess of a movie). However, they are entertaining. The traps getting larger than life I think reflects the overall dip in quality of the franchise but are… pretty fun in that weird way horror fans can find things amusing. These movies are also just baffling and hilariously over the top at times. Scott Patterson delivers some of the most bonkers performances throughout, and I adore him for it. They are campy, gross (complimentary), without the best plotlines. But also entertaining.

And occasionally there are people in the traps that really give the viewer a sort of catharsis. Looking at you Saw 6 and every Nazi who ended up in one of the traps.