A few years ago, I did a list of my Top Five Horror films, so I thought that this time that I would focus on something similar and that being sequels and prequels.
Annabelle Creation: Starting off the list is the sequel to a film that I didn’t think should have even been made into a film, but I got to say this made up for a lot of the problems that I had about the first film. The film starts off with a family heading back from church, in which their car breaks down and their daughter is killed after running into the road. After a few years the parents take in a group of orphans and a nun to stay and they start noticing weird things going on and we see that the focus targets one of the girls Janice, who has Polio making her a weaker target than the rest of the girls. During several nights, she is awoken by the sounds of somebody running around and finds her way into the daughter’s room, in which she finds the Annabelle doll locked in a hidden room and thus the doll targets her with one case throwing her from the first-floor landing to the ground floor, manages to keep her wheelchair bound. Later in the film the mother reveals what happened after their daughter had died they contacted mediums to communicate with their daughter in which they found notes around the house and then later got permission to have her spirit be transferred into a doll, that doll being Annabelle. But it turns out that whatever entered the doll wasn’t their daughter but in fact a demon that began terrorising the family, even attacking the mother. They got a priest to bless the hidden room and had bible verses to be wallpapered around the walls to reduce the influence and power from the doll. In the end, the remaining orphans and the nun get out alive, but when the police go to find where Janice is and it turns out she escaped and left the doll there. But a few years pass and we find her in a new orphanage and she is taken home by the Higgins, who give her a copy of the original Annabelle doll. But the film makes an interesting turn as it ends with the film wrapping up for the beginning of the first film. Overall, I liked this film a lot better than the first film as the first seemed to be a slight rip off from Rosemary’s Baby and the scares weren’t that good. However, with this the scares were a lot better, with the scariest being when the girl is taken into the barn by a mysterious figure and is where she gets possessed by the doll.
Ouija: Origin of Evil: Another prequel from a recent film series, Ouija: Origin of Evil bring all the bad points for the first film and makes it a great film. The cast for the film is rather short since that it mainly focuses around a family of three, Alice, Lina and Doris, in which the mother is a medium that helps people connect with people who have passed but she is a charlatan. They then buy a Ouija board from a store and they decide to use it for their skits but it turns out that the daughter can channel spirits in which a dark force possesses her and it is during the final act to find out that their house used to belong to an evil Nazi scientist that tortured and killed people. They try to then kill the daughter by sewing her mouth so that the entity can’t speak, but during the process the mother dies and the only survivor being Lina get sent to a mental facility and then, like Annabelle Creation, the film ends with Lina being met by the lead from the first film. Overall, I like this film since that it built up a better story, the Doris being in contact with what appeared to be her father, who had died, but then the realisation that she has being used by the demonic being seemed to be rather sinister. Another thing that I liked about the film was that the films scares were dealt a lot better than the previous film.
Insidious Chapter 3: One of the things that I like about this film is that since it didn’t focus around the story of the original family from the first film since that their story was over and done with at the end, as well as Elise dying and being a spiritual guide for the Nether in both instalments. For this film, it is set years before the events of the first film, in which our main character Quinn trying to in contact with her mother, who had passed away (what a weird coincidence that all three prequels that I have picked have a revolving theme), and she goes to contact Elise but she says that she no longer does readings but she accepts this one but it goes pear-shaped in which a darker entity comes through and she stops the reading and tells her not to contact her mother again. But she ignores it and then a lot of bad things start happening to her, involving being hit by a car and breaking her leg. Then through the rest of the film her and her family start noticing weird things going on in their apartment including them seeing a ghost that is covered in goo. The family try to figure a way to get answers, first by getting a paranormal group to come in to find out the source of the problem, and then Elise comes into find out the problem and they manage to get rid of the evil entity with the help of the girl’s mother and all is right. This is then leads Elise to return to the paranormal investigations with the paranormal group and now is leading to a fourth instalment that is out next year, which I will be probably see. I like this film since that it shows Elise in a different light, knowing that she was sceptical about returning to do reading and the paranormal since that she had lost her husband and felt distant from the rest of the world. Another thing that I liked about this film was that with Quinn being confined is something that does make being scared, not being able to defend yourself from an unknown attacker.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday: For a franchise that has gotten a lot out of hand over the past few instalments, with one film seeing a copycat killer and then seeing Jason being resurrected (by accident), this is one of the goofier but good films from the series. The film focuses around Jason possessing people trying to resurrect himself since that it turns out that Jason in fact has a sister, Diana as well as a niece Jessica and she has a child and the only way that he can resurrect himself is by taking over the body of his family. So, the main worry of the film was Jason being incarnated through the baby, but it then turns out that the dead body of his sister is in the old Voorhees house were Robert Campbell had stashed the body in the house for a television show he was making about Jason Voorhees. A lot of the film is rather interesting since that it deals with Jessica & Steven trying to reconcile as well as a bounty hunter who is also after Jason and he also gives a lot of exposition about how to deal with Jason. In the end Jason gets reburned from his sister’s body and is then killed by his niece. One of the things that I really do like about this film is the amount of references to other horror franchises, from Halloween with mentioning of the old Myer’s place, a package addressed from Antarctica for a possible link to The Thing. It is a fun film to watch as well as being the lead in to the crossover for Freddy vs Jason.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors: Nightmare 3 is one of my favourite films from the Nightmare franchise, it is one of the better told films as well as having more of the most creative ways that people have died. The film also brings back Nancy, from the first film, in which she now works with children/teenagers who have been dealing with nightmares and Nancy finds out that Freddy is back killing teenagers in their dreams again. In the end of the film the teenagers that survive at the end manage to defeat Freddy again, but it came at a cost as Nancy dies, but to make sure that this doesn’t happen again Kristen dreams her into a perfect dream, and we don’t see her again until one of the comic book adaptations where she returns. The things that I do like about the film is the way that Freddy makes his kills in the film with some of them being rather creative and the two that come to my mind are Phillip who starts sleepwalking but what the people that see this happening don’t see is that Freddy is manipulating him by controlling him like a marionette with strings made from his veins and kills him by cutting his strings, making the residents thinking that he had jumped. The second kill that I like in the film was with Jennifer in which Freddy basically forces her to watch television shows with a cameo from Zsa Zsa Gabor, but the best was when Freddy grabs her and hurls her into the TV and we see her body stuck head first in the television with them also thinking that she had took her own life, somehow also lifting herself about 3 or 4 feet off the ground.
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