The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Slasher Franchises Ranked By Average Rotten Tomatoes Score

The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Slasher Franchises, Ranked By Average Rotten Tomatoes Score

Some slasher flicks have launched phenomenally scary franchises… and others have created franchises that should never have seen the light of day.

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The slasher is one of the most popular horror subgenres in terms of launching franchises, because it’s easy to follow up a movie about a bunch of people getting killed by an iconic villain with an endless string of sequels about different bunches of people getting killed by the same villain. It’s easy to brand a horror franchise with a serial-killing antagonist like Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger.

Some of the most groundbreaking horror movies of all time have been slashers, while some of the worst efforts the genre has to offer have been cash-in sequels to those early trailblazers.

10 Best: Black Christmas (41.3%)

There have been three Black Christmas movies of varying quality. The 1974 original is a bona fide classic of yuletide terror. The 2006 loose remake, Black X-Mas, is a perfect example of a horror remake that loses the fun and fear factors of the source material.

The 2019 reboot, also titled Black Christmas, took a stab at some poignant themes of gender and women’s rights, but ultimately fell flat as another by-the-numbers update of a genre classic.

9 Worst: Halloween (37.4%)

John Carpenter laid the groundwork for the modern slasher with Halloween, his low-budget 1978 masterpiece about a masked killer who picks off sexually active babysitters on Halloween night, only to find his match in Laurie Strode, the quintessential final girl.

Unfortunately, the only sequel out of the 10 that followed that received any love from critics was the 2018 reboot, and even that movie is riddled with script problems.

8 Best: A Nightmare On Elm Street (49.5%)

Apart from maybe Inception, the most iconic cinematic incarnation of the dreamscape can be found in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Deftly moving between the real world and the dream world, Craven made the threat of Freddy Krueger a very real terror in the original movie.

Of course, as usual, the sequels (which Craven wanted to avoid before his producer forced him to leave the first one open-ended) have descended into standard horror fare that doesn’t live up to the legendary Nightmare name.

7 Worst: Saw (28.6%)

James Wan’s original Saw movie is one of the smartest horror films of the 21st century. With a low budget and limited locations, Wan made a horror movie that was driven by character and plot twists.

Unfortunately, the neverending barrage of sequels that followed has given audiences some of the dumbest horror films of the 21st century, dialing up the gore and dialing down the brains.

6 Best: Child’s Play (55.1%)

Centering around Chucky, a doll possessed by the spirit of a murderer, Child’s Play is one of the only horror franchises whose installments are more or less consistent in quality.

What has sustained the Child’s Play franchise through so many sequels and reboots is its pitch-black comic sensibility. These movies are about a doll that kills people; they need a healthy dose of dark humor.

5 Worst: Friday The 13th (28.6%)

While the first Friday the 13th movie revolved around Pamela Voorhees’ quest to avenge her son Jason’s death, the ensuing franchise’s main antagonist would be Jason himself.

Armed with a machete and wearing a hockey mask, Jason likes to prowl the woods and terrify vacationing teenagers. There have been so many Friday the 13th movies at this point that one of them even sent Jason to space.

4 Best: Psycho (62.75%)

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is widely regarded to be the first example of a slasher and one of the greatest movies ever made. A masterpiece of the thriller genre, Psycho constantly keeps the audience on their toes by subverting their expectations at every turn.

However, it was followed by a couple of sequels that Hitchcock had nothing to do with that didn’t come close to matching the original’s greatness, then Gus Van Sant helmed a shot-for-shot remake in color that was exactly as pointless as it sounds.

3 Worst: Silent Night, Deadly Night (32.8%)

While the first sequel went on to gain a cult following as a dark comedy due to an unintentionally hilarious performance by Eric Freeman, the Christmas-themed Silent Night, Deadly Night slasher franchise quickly died a death after the mildly popular original.

The increasingly dreadful sequels doubled down on making Christmas carols sound scary with creative subtitles like Better Watch Out! – these titles were a lot more creative than the movies themselves.

2 Best: Scream (65%)

With New Nightmare, Wes Craven brought a meta sensibility to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise as Freddy Krueger escapes from the movie world and terrorizes the actors from the original film. Later in the groovy, postmodern ‘90s, Craven took the self-awareness to the next level with Scream, a slasher that knows it’s a slasher and revolves around characters who are familiar with horror tropes.

Inspiring a slew of knockoffs and forcing horror cinema to transcend its well-trodden conventions, Scream changed the game. It was followed by three sequels, with another one on the way.

1 Worst: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (33.5%)

While Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a prime example of horror imagery being used to convey sharp allegories, its sequels have struggled to live up to its name. After Hooper tried something new with the darkly comic first sequel, subsequent filmmakers simply crammed Leatherface into cheap jump scares.

The original has a surprisingly restrained sensibility – its violence is relatively bloodless – but the sequels have missed the point and spent half their budgets on fake blood.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/horror-slasher-franchise-best-worst-rotten-tomatoes/

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