Motion picture franchises have been around almost as long as movies themselves, because if audiences love a character, they’ll usually pay to see them again and again. And horror movie franchises have been taking advantage of this all along, making your favorite nightmare into a recurring menace, who refuses to leave you or their victims alone.
But the longer a horror movie franchise goes on, the harder it is to be consistent. Familiarity makes even the scariest monsters less scary, to the point that even the living embodiment of nightmares turned up in a music video with The Fat Boys. Lots of great horror movies were diminished by the lower quality of their sequels, but the best horror franchises keep going strong, either because the filmmakers find new and effective ways to keep it fresh, or because the good installments average out or, even better, outweigh the bad.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the whole horror genre to find the franchises (three films minimum!) that either never got bad, or never got so bad that we stopped screaming.
Behold, the best horror movie franchises ranked.
25. “Hellraiser”
Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser,” based on his 1986 novella “The Hellbound Heart,” is one of the grossest psychosexual nightmares that ever spawned an 11-film franchise. Those films tell story of a mysterious puzzle box that opens a gateway to a hell-like dimension, where pain and pleasure are indivisible, and which is overseen by gloriously mutilated monster priests called Cenobites. Their leader, Pinhead (Doug Bradley), has become one of the great horror icons, even though the “Hellraiser” franchise is wildly uneven. The six straight-to-video installments, released between 2000 and 2018, are almost unilaterally disappointing, having little to do with Barker’s vision, and reframing the series as a simplistic exploration of Catholic guilt. The great installments ensure that “Hellraiser” has a spot on the all-time list. The lousy ones keep it very low on that list.
24. “V/H/S”
Horror anthology movies are, by definition, almost always hit-and-miss. The long-running “V/H/S” franchise is no exception, but it hits often and it hits hard. Every short film in the series adheres, tidily or sloppily, to the found-footage horror genre, but with filmmakers like Timo Tjahjanto, Nacho Vigalondo, Scott Derrickson, Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett, Chloe Okuno and Flying Lotus given free reign to let their imaginations run wild, that limitation often leads to spectacular results. The “V/H/S” series has eight official installments so far — and also two spin-offs (“SiREN” and “Kids vs. Aliens”) — and it just keeps chugging along, with a new movie released every single year since 2021. It’s the little horror franchise that could, and usually does.
23. “Ginger Snaps”
Although released to very little fanfare in 2020, the first “Ginger Snaps” soon jumped onto every respectable list of the best werewolf movies ever made. It’s easy to see why. The richly-realized coming of age horror movie starred Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins as teen Canadian goth sisters who have to grow up quickly when one of them is bitten by a werewolf. It’s a spectacularly-written and performed werewolf movie, a spot-on exploration of sisterhood and a scary, funny allegory for the physical horrors of puberty. Over the course of two more films, “Ginger Snaps” spread out in ambitious directions, tackling lycanthropy as an elaborate metaphor for addiction and substance abuse, and finally the complex colonial history of Canada itself. The original is still the best, but the whole trilogy deserves credit for expanding what the werewolf genre can be.
22. “Dracula”
Unless you work in the field of carpentry, the name “Hammer” is all-but synonymous with horror. Over multiple decades Hammer Film Productions brought the genre kicking and screaming into the second half of the 20th century, bringing sex and violence and bright red blood into the cinematic lexicon, redefining many of the classic monsters of yore. The first Hammer horror movie was 1957’s “The Curse of Frankenstein,” but its most iconic franchise stars the towering, seductive Christopher Lee as Count Dracula. There are nine films in Hammer’s “Dracula” series, some more respectable than others, but almost all of them are gaudy, horny, atmospheric thrillers. And the ones that aren’t are still kooky treats, like the oddball martial arts hybrid “The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires,” which features fight scenes directed by Chang Cheh, one of the most celebrated kung fu filmmakers who ever lived.
21. “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”
Tobe Hooper’s original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” remains one of the scariest movies ever made, a low budget nightmare with some of the most terrifying images in film history. The eight sequels and reboots that followed are all over the place, with strange tonal shifts that sometimes work and sometimes fall face-first into their own chainsaws. Hooper’s first sequel is a wild and darkly amusing reimagining of his own horrifying characters, and subsequent installments varied from high camp to extreme misery to damn near incompetence. At least they’re (almost) never boring. The highlights are very, very high, and only a couple of the lowlights are genuinely bad.
20. “The Conjuring”
In real-life, Ed and Lorraine Warren were controversial figures, self-described paranormal investigators who were usually considered con artists. In the “Conjuring” movies all of their supernatural adventures were 100% real, and although you could argue that it’s irresponsible to paint them in such a broadly heroic light, a lot of the movies are good. The Warrens take center stage in six of the “Conjuring” movies, and their breakout monsters Annabelle and The Nun each headline their own spinoff series, creating one of the few non-Marvel “cinematic universes” that actually struck pay dirt. It’s another hit-and-miss horror series, with only a few massive successes (including the most recent sequel, “The Conjuring: Last Rites”), but the majority of the films are reliable, above-average ghost stories with memorable characters and scares.
19. “Tales from the Crypt”
The adaptations of the classic E.C. horror comic “Tales from the Crypt” are best known for their undead master of scare-emonies, The Cryptkeeper, who debuted on the HBO television series and presented two feature-length, very entertaining feature films in the 1990s. But the franchise actually dates back further, with two excellent horror anthology films in the 1970s: “Tales from the Crypt” and “The Vault of Horror.” Scares abound in the early films, kitsch abounds in the 1990s movies (and the less said about the barely-released fifth film from 2002, “Ritual,” the better), but the highlight is Ernest Dickerson’s “Demon Knight,” an electrifying all-star monster movie with an iconic villain performance from Billy Zane, at his very Billy Zaniest.
18. “Hannibal Lecter”
The first adaptation of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter books, Michael Mann’s “Manhunter,” is one of the best serial killer movies ever made, starring a practically-perfect Brian Cox as everyone’s favorite cannibal — even though his name is inexplicably spelled “Lecktor”. But the film franchise didn’t take off until Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning classic “The Silence of the Lambs,” starring Anthony Hopkins as the iconic villain, who now has Katharine Hepburn’s accent. (One you hear it, you can’t unhear it!) Those first two films are proper classics, and the following films get steadily worse, with “Hannibal” going wildly Grand Guignol, “Red Dragon” generically rehashing “Manhunter,” and “Hannibal Rising”… existing. But Hopkins earns his icon status, and the first half of the franchise is chef’s kiss.
17. “A Nightmare on Elm Street”
Freddy Krueger is one of horror’s most memorable icons, which is pretty impressive since he’s been in some really stinky sequels over the years. The serial killer who attacks in your dreams, with a scarred face and knives for fingers, uses every surreal trick at his disposal to menace teenagers over nine motion pictures, getting increasingly goofy over the years, until Wes Craven came back for the mind bending “New Nightmare,” which brought Freddy into the “real” world, where he menaced the filmmakers behind the original movie. The original classic, the underrated second installment, the slightly overrated third installment, “New Nightmare,” and the crossover “Freddy vs. Jason” are all worthy films, but the others are a mixed bag at best — and the less said about the awful remake, the better (except that it wasn’t Jackie Earle Haley’s fault).
16. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”
The “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” franchise is an odd duck, in that there are no sequels whatsoever, just a series of remakes every couple of decades, updating the premise for a new generation. There are four official adaptations now, not including the countless knockoffs, and three of them are stone cold classics. Don Siegel’s brilliant 1956 original, about a small town where people were replaced by alien drones, spoke to contemporary anxieties about conformity and communism. Philip Kaufman’s also-brilliant 1978 remake updated the text to reflect anxieties about consumerism and pop psychiatry. Abel Ferrara’s underappreciated and freaky 1993 version “Body Snatchers” tackled American militarism. And although the 2007 version, “The Invasion,” was notoriously mangled in post-production, it still has disquieting things to say about modern politics and misogyny. Few horror franchises have remained as relevant as “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Which, unfortunately for all of us, is scary.
15. “Tremors”
Ron Underwood’s “Tremors” is one of the best monster movies ever made, a rollicking horror-comedy about a small town, full of memorable characters, encountering a species of subterranean carnivores. And although all of its sequels went straight to video, somehow the quality never dropped very much. As the series progressed, and lovable survivalist Burt Gummer (Michael Gross) graduated from the comic relief to the protagonist, the films stayed true to their 1950s monster movie roots, and kept filling the frame with gonzo situations and likable casts. Even the worst “Tremors” movie is still a good movie, including the sixth installment, “A Cold Day in Hell,” which was literally supposed to be “Tremors in the Snow” but apparently they forgot the snow part. A hoot-and-a-half from beginning to end, that’s what “Tremors” is, and Burt Gummer is easily one of the greatest horror movie protagonists in movie history.
14. The Three Mothers
Dario Argento became one of the most celebrated horror filmmakers in history with his unforgettable gialli — an Italian horror genre which combines detective stories and operatic murders — but don’t let anyone tell you his greatest masterpiece, “Suspiria,” is a Giallo. Instead it’s a powerfully dreamlike supernatural thriller, which makes almost zero sense, about an evil witch manipulating a remote ballet academy. The second film in Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy, “Inferno,” is just as scary, although even more inexplicable. The third, “Mother of Tears,” didn’t make much of an impact, but when you factor in Luca Guadagnino’s ambitious and celebrated “Suspiria” remake, this series amounts to one of the most disturbing and surreal hallucinations you’re ever likely to see. Leave logic at the door, and try to remember where you keep your mind, since the Three Mothers movies might make you lose it.
13. “Halloween”
The original “Halloween” officially codified what we now call the slasher genre, and it’s as razor sharp and terrifying as it’s ever been. But it was supposed to be a standalone movie, and its overwhelming popularity demanded sequel after sequel. John Carpenter and the filmmakers who came in his wake often struggled to keep “Halloween” fresh, and while there were plenty of missteps along the way (“Halloween 6,” “Resurrection” and “Ends,” in particular) another great, or at least very efficient slasher was never more than a couple films away. Bonus points for the wild and woolly “Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” which caught hell for decades for abandoning the serial killer Michael Myers in favor of a goofy story about killer masks, and for Rob Zombie’s ambitious reboot, which caught hell for having a different perspective, and now finally gets credit for doing something emotionally complex with the long-stagnant franchise.
12. “Alien”
As with many of the best horror franchises, if we were judging them based purely on iconography, the “Alien” movies would be at the top of the list. But if we judge them based on overall quality, it’s hard to ignore that these films aren’t all created equal. Ridley Scott’s original “Alien” is a masterpiece of the sci-fi/horror genre, and James Cameron’s epic sequel adds pulse-pounding action and a (not necessarily well thought out) Vietnam War allegory into the mix. From then on the movies have mostly been mixed bags, with astounding visuals but sometimes laughable stories. “Alien 3” is the last film in the series that completely works, whether director David Fincher thinks so or not. All the others have elements worth recommending — except for “Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem,” which is so dimly lit you literally can’t see most of it — but they’re all trying to recapture the lost magic.
11. “The Living Dead”
Very few movies can claim to be as influential as George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” which changed the zombie genre forever and inspired countless knockoffs, some of which had pretty good franchises of their own. Romero’s first four follow-ups, “Dawn of the Dead,” “Day of the Dead” and “Land of the Dead,” are all exciting classics in their own right, using the metaphor of the walking dead to critique consumerism, militarism and class warfare. His found footage riff “Diary of the Dead” was a stumble, and doesn’t seem to understand what makes found footage movies work in the first place, but his underappreciated final installment “Survival of the Dead” asks poignant, hitherto unexplored questions about what these movies have to say about death itself. What do zombie movies have to say about the way we interpret and value death, and what does our eager dehumanization of the dead say about our collective moral compass? They’re always fascinating, these movies, and almost always great.
10. “Friday the 13th”
Here’s the thing about the “Friday the 13th” movies: Only a couple of them are great, but every single installment is fun. From the original, serious early slashers to the goofy 3-D gimmick, from the self-aware sequel where Jason fought a young horror VFX artist, to the one with a copycat Jason, to the one where Jason gets struck by lightning and becomes a zombie, to the one where he basically fights Stephen King’s Carrie, to the one where he gets melted by New York City sewage, to the one where he leaps from body to body and likes to shave people against their will, to the sci-fi outer space spectacular, to the one where he fights Freddy Krueger, to the impressively effective remake which somehow makes the completely chaotic franchise feel like it was all planned out from the beginning. There’s a Jason Voorhees movie for everybody, and because very few of them want to be taken seriously, it’s okay to giggle and roll your eyes. The ultimate drive-in movie horror franchise.
9. “The Purge”
Like Romero’s zombie movies before them, James DeMonaco’s “Purge” franchise imagines Americans as a horde of mindless murderers. The difference is that, in “The Purge,” they don’t kill because they’re zombies, they kill because they’re allowed to. These incredibly cynical movies, about a near-future America where everyone is allowed to commit murder one night out of the year, say bleak but increasingly salient things about how the right wing moves the Overton Window further and further in the direction of fascism, until the final installment argues that completely legalized murder is what most of America wants. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more relevant horror franchise for the 21st century, and although the first film is — here’s a rarity— the worst of the bunch, they’re all spot-on with their depressing, terrifying social commentary.
8. “Phantasm”
It doesn’t get the respect of its more popular contemporaries, but pound-for-pound, Don Coscarelli’s “Phantasm” franchise is one of the most ambitious, bizarre, and artistically resonant horror series ever produced. What begins as a childlike nightmare about a funeral home managed by a giant, mysterious, all-powerful being who hails from another dimension, somehow evolves into a sprawling mythos that balances thrilling chainsaw duels and killer floating orbs with a poignant treatise on death and memory. It doesn’t make literal sense, so abandon all logic ye who enter here, but as a hybrid of David Lynchian dream metaphors and Sam Raimi-esque maximalism, the “Phantasm” movies are pure, fascinating cinema.
7. “Child’s Play”
It started out as a simple but effective anxiety nightmare about consumerism, in which the hot new toy of the season turns out to be a dangerous influence, because the doll is possessed by a serial killer. That was enough for three films, all of which are great fun and two of which are classics, but “Child’s Play” grew up and into one of the most ambitious horror franchises around. Almost always written and sometimes directed by Don Mancini, the franchise took a brilliant turn towards meta commentary in the hilarious “Bride of Chucky,” before tackling queerness and gender in the often-misunderstood “Seed of Chucky,” before going back to its scary roots in “Curse of Chucky” and then exploding into the surreal in “Cult of Chucky.” It turns out a franchise about a killer doll has a lot more flexibility than you could possibly imagine. Even the remake, the film made without Mancini’s involvement, is a successfully scary horror comedy. You can’t miss with “Child’s Play.”
6. “Saw”
The “Saw” movies are a weird contradiction, since at their core they are extremely simple movies. Serial killer puts his victims in elaborate death traps, forcing them to mutilate themselves if they have any hope of survival. Inventive, frightening, easy to replicate over and over again. But they’re also fiendishly complicated stories, a nesting doll of flashbacks and revelations, in which the only possible way to comprehend the first seven films in their entirely is to watch them all back to back and take copious notes. Although the later films weren’t always successful, “Saw X” returned to the series to its emotional core, in which people who have to learn a valuable lesson are forced to reevaluate their lives under extreme duress. Gory, unforgettable, ambitious horror filmmaking, and sometimes — especially in “Saw VI,” which focuses on the immorality of the American health care industry — timely and powerful.
5. “28 Days Later”
It’s worth remembering that every single one of these franchise is either still ongoing, or could announce a new sequel/prequel/remake/reboot at any second, so their overall quality is subject to change over time. Heck, there’s a brand new installment in the “28 Days Later” series coming out in just a couple of months. But it’d have to be pretty terrible to seriously affect its ranking, since the first three films in the series are all amazing. Danny Boyle’s original revitalized the zombie genre, not just redefining it for a new generation but directly leading to zombies becoming the go-to horror monster of the new century so far. “28 Weeks Later” was a remarkable follow-up in its own right, but “28 Years Later” is an instant classic, a powerful new reimagining of the zombie apocalypse as a complex treatise on British national identity, and not always a favorable one. Stylistically bold, narratively challenging, and astoundingly intelligent, it’s hard to celebrate these movies enough.
4. “Final Destination”
The “Final Destination” movies are, in many ways, the horror genre in its most concentrated form. The premise is simple, and a perfect excuse to craft some of the most suspenseful scenes imaginable. A group of people narrowly avoid getting killed in a massive disaster, but they were supposed to die, so Death itself comes after them one-by-one, manipulating their surroundings in tiny ways that cascade into terrifying “accidents.” Anything in the “Final Destination” movies could be the instrument of your doom, from a coin that falls out of somebody’s pocket to a tiny little screw. Everything is terrifying, and there’s no escaping your killer, because we all gotta go sometime. There are six films in the franchise and five of them are expertly crafted supernatural suspense yarns, and even the worst one — “The Final Destination” (2009) — would be pretty good if it didn’t have so many other, better installments to compete with.
3. “Scream”
Wes Craven’s “Scream” was, quite famously, supposed to be the final nail in the slasher genre’s coffin, taking place in the “real” world where all the characters knew how scary movies worked, and could avoid getting killed just by following the “rules” (read: tropes). But it was more than a self-aware horror comedy, it was an impressively-realized, complex ensemble film, jam-packed with mature writing, fascinating characters and endless possibilities. Over time the commentary became secondary, and the “Scream” movies became more like an elaborate ongoing horror soap opera, where it’s always sweeps week and anyone could be written off — violently — at any time. It’s ironic that “Scream” wound up jumpstarting the genre it was all-but designed to kill, with irony no less, but most ironic of all is that it’s now one of the most sincere horror franchises still in operation.
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2. “The Evil Dead”
There are no bad “Evil Dead” movies. In fact, we’ll go one further: Every “Evil Dead” movie is, to one degree or another, genuinely great. Sam Raimi dragged a small company of filmmakers to a cabin in the woods, filmed a little, gory horror movie like there was no tomorrow, and emerged with a film so scary Stephen King went to bat for it at a time when that meant the world to every horror fan. Raimi then reinvented his own film with a quasi-remake that combined gory supernatural terror with “The Three Stooges,” and brought his hapless hero Ash (Bruce Campbell) back to medieval times in the spectacular horror adventure comedy “Army of Darkness.” And when the series came roaring back, Fede Alvarez reinvented the original again as a gory allegory for addiction recovery and intervention, and most recently, Lee Cronin brought the nightmare into the home with “Evil Dead Rise,” a film which turns your mother into your worst nightmare. They’re all incredibly entertaining, they’re usually very smart, and they’re all scary as hell.
1. The Universal Classic Monsters
The Universal Monsters have been the face of the horror genre, as a whole, for nearly 100 years. These classic versions of the literary creatures Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster and the Invisible Man — alongside original creations like the Gill-Man, the Wolf Man and the Mummy — defined sound-era horror filmmaking as exercises in uncomfortable empathy, making the audience sympathize with the beasts of our nightmares. They take place in gorgeous, often gothic worlds where all our favorite creatures dwelled together, uniting repeatedly in “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man,” “House of Frankenstein” and “House of Dracula” before they all faced their greatest nemeses: the comedy duo of Abbott and Costello. They’re not all great movies but they are collectively great, the stuff our darkest imagination is made of, fueling a variety of excellent remakes and reboots (John Badham’s “Dracula,” Stephen Sommer’s “The Mummy”) and yes, a few stinkers as well. But no Universal Monster movie has ever been bad enough to ruin these icons or undermine their characters and stories.
