The 25 worst movie sequels of all time

The sports comedy Caddyshack II arrived eight long years after Caddyshack, which ESPN described as “perhaps the funniest sports movie ever made.” No one said that about the universally panned sequel starring Jackie Mason, Robert Stack, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Dyan Cannon, and Randy Quaid, the latter of whom is a red flag in most any movie. The New York Times wrote, “Caddyshack II is the kind of film that sends careers spiraling downward.” The sequel, in which many top comedians are upstaged by a dumb gopher puppet, won two Razzies and is considered one of the worst films of all time.

The 1973 caper film The Sting starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Arriving a decade later, The Sting II has a whole new cast: Jackie Gleason, Mac Davis, Teri Garr, Karl Malden, and Oliver Reed. What’s baffling is that the characters make references to events that happened in The Sting—indicating that The Sting II is intended as a direct sequel—yet character names and the actors who play them have inexplicably changed. Instead of Newman’s Henry Gondorff, we have Gleason’s Fargo Gondorff; instead of Redford’s Johnny Hooker, we have Davis’ Jake Hooker. Huh? Unsurprisingly, The Sting II has a 0 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Although Staying Alive—directed by Sylvester Stallone and starring John Travolta as former disco king Tony Manero—was a financial success, it was universally panned by critics for its lack of grittiness and realism. A more obvious problem was the release date, with the sequel coming a long six years after Saturday Night Fever. In that time, disco was barely staying alive and had been replaced by the exciting new music featured on MTV. Staying Alive and its soundtrack featuring songs by the Bee Gees and Frank Stallone seemed hopelessly stuck in the previous decade. The film has a 0 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, was nominated for three Razzies, and Entertainment Weekly crowned it the “Worst Sequel Ever” in 2006.

American distributors marketed Troll 2 as a sequel to 1986's Troll, but the two films have zero connection. Troll 2 is an Italian-American horror film directed by Claudio Fragasso (using the pseudonym Drake Floyd) about a vacationing family who discovers that the denizens of the town they’re visiting are goblins in disguise who want to transform people into plants to be eaten. Stick a pin in the asinine plot synopsis for a moment—did you notice that the movie features goblins and not a single troll? Troll 2 amassed a cult following for its camp value and unapologetic awfulness, but is still considered one of the worst films ever made. “Oh my God,” indeed.

Poltergeist III is one of those movies—due to budget limitations—that is mostly filmed in a single location. In this case, that location is Chicago’s John Hancock Center, where young Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) is staying with her aunt (Nancy Allen) and uncle (Tom Skerritt) in a high-rise where everyone in the movie seems to live, work, dine, shop, and socialize. Before long, Carol Anne’s demons on the other side return—usually in the building’s many mirrors and reflective surfaces—but psychic Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein) shows up to face Reverend Kane one last time.

If O’Rourke hadn’t sadly passed away in 1988 and the reshot ending didn’t have to utilize a stand-in actress, Poltergeist III would still be vastly inferior to the two Poltergeist movies that preceded it. The fact that audiences knew that the angelic-faced lead actress died and the studio still reshot the ending with a double and released the movie months after O’Rourke’s death made it an icky sequel that reeked of exploitation.

Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem is a direct sequel to the 2004 crossover film Alien Vs. Predator. The AVP sequel is the sixth film in the Alien franchise, the fourth film in the Predator franchise, and—for reasons apparent after viewing—the second and final film in the Alien Vs. Predator series. In AVPR, a Predator spaceship crashes near Gunnison, Colorado, and a Predator-Alien hybrid known as a Predalien escapes to a small town and causes havoc.

Although AVPR’s R rating is a return to form after AVP’s PG-13 rating, the increased gore and predator-on-alien violence is mostly lost on-screen because the murky movie seems shot by a camera with a layer of grime on the lens. The confusing plot and cardboard characters don’t motivate anyone to pay attention to the muddy visuals either. AVPR was nominated for two Razzies, including Worst Prequel or Sequel.

One year after the phenomenal success of 1999's found-footage pioneer The Blair Witch Project, Artisan Entertainment rushed Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 into theaters to see if lightning would strike twice (spoiler alert: it did not). The meta sequel is about a group of fans who travel to Burkittsville, Maryland after seeing The Blair Witch Project and must face their own personal demons... and possibly the Blair Witch herself. The A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin describes Book Of Shadows as “atrociously written and acted and as scary as an episode of Frasier.” He continues, “The residents of Burkittsville, Maryland (the site of the original) sparked a mini-controversy last year by objecting to having their town depicted as a haven for supernatural mischief. They can take comfort in knowing that Book Of Shadows’ mercenary awfulness should kill off Blair Witch mania once and for all.”

I Know What You Did Last Summer is an effective teen slasher written by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson about how the lives of four teens are turned inside out after their car hits a fisherman and they make a joint decision to leave him for dead. In 1998's I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, the fisherman named Ben Willis (Muse Watson) is back and has orchestrated a needlessly complicated plan to lure survivors Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) to the Bahamas to get revenge. Along for the ride (and to add to the potential body count) is Julie’s friend Karla Wilson (Brandy), who is uniquely fixated on hooking up Julie with Will (Matthew Settle), who—spoiler alert—turns out to be the Fisherman’s son. Great eye, Karla!

What really sinks this otherwise routine slasher is the uncredited Jack Black as Titus Telesco, who works at the Resort That Dripped Blood. Titus has dreadlocks and is aggressively preoccupied with getting guests a boatload of weed. We’re not sure what Titus (or the filmmakers) were actually smoking, but this obnoxious, offensive supporting character should have been left on the cutting-room floor.

No matter what your opinion is about the Friday The 13th franchise, a “good” entry at a minimum has to feature inventive gore effects and kills, Jason Voorhees, and horny teens. Not only does Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning have a copycat Jason (worse: he’s a completely ordinary dude with no supernatural tendencies), the sequel came out during a time when censors were caving to pressure from parents’ groups about violence in horror films. The makers of Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning toned down the red stuff on-screen and chose to replace it with nudity and uncomfortable sex scenes between mentally ill patients at a halfway house. Great idea ... said no one. Unsurprisingly, the original Jason returned for Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.

The first Zoolander debuted in 2001 when people still cared about supermodels. Fifteen years later in Zoolander 2, Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) and Hans (Owen Wilson) are coerced into modeling again, in Rome, and get caught up in an international incident involving assassinated pop stars. The A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin writes, “The only real purpose of the film’s plot is to ensure that Zoolander is perpetually modeling his default expression of simian stupefaction near as many easily recognizable international landmarks and famous people as possible. Two movies in, Zoolander hasn’t found a way to expand upon its single joke that models are dumb and dumb is funny.” Zoolander 2 was nominated for several Razzies, with Kristen Wiig winning for Worst Supporting Actress.

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 is the sequel no one asked for to the 1999 comedy Baby Geniuses. In the follow-up featuring top billing by Oscar winner Jon Voight and Charles In Charge star Scott Baio, four toddlers who can communicate with each other via baby talk become the focus of a media mogul who wants to crack the infants’ language. The A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin writes, “At its best/worst, Superbabies’ hallucinatory idiocy inspires open-mouthed horror at what happens when an ill-conceived premise leads to even more jaw-droppingly misguided execution. Let other kids’ movies bother with slick special effects: Every aspect of Superbabies feels locked in the past, from Voight’s Hitler mustache to a Whoopi Goldberg cameo to the Fitzgeralds’ one-liners (provided by voiceover actor David Kaye), which traffic in slang and catchphrases 10 years past their cultural expiration date.” The box office bomb was nominated for several well-deserved Razzies.

A made-for-TV sequel released 31 years after the acclaimed original directed by Alfred Hitchcock, The Birds II: Land’s End is as desperate as you’d expect. Tippi Hedren, the star of The Birds, has a minor role in the sequel as a different character. You’d think that after three decades the special effects for killer birds would have improved exponentially, yet the cheap visuals here seem even more amateur. In 2002, Hedren reportedly referred to making the movie as a “horrible experience.” Halloween II and Halloween: Resurrection director Rick Rosenthal helmed The Birds II, but he is credited as Alan Smithee—the pseudonym directors use when they want to disassociate themselves with a project that is, well, for the birds.

The 2000 satirical horror film American Psycho starring Christian Bale as Manhattan madman Patrick Bateman is based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name. The sequel, American Psycho 2, is not. Mila Kunis plays Rachael Newman, who, at age 12, saves her babysitter from a deadly date with Bateman (not played by Bale) by killing him with an ice pick. Six years later, Rachael is a criminology student who decides that murdering her classmates is the best way to further her career.

The A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin writes, “American Psycho 2 trades its predecessor’s sharp social satire for a mixture of dumbed-down irony, groan-inducing black comedy, and gratuitous bloodshed. Like the original film, Psycho 2 treats mass murder as a joke, with society’s indifference as the punchline, but the gag isn’t fresh or funny this time around.”

Ellis denounced the film years before its release and Kunis reportedly regrets doing it. She told MTV, “Please—somebody stop this. Write a petition. When I did the second one, I didn’t know it would be American Psycho 2. It was supposed to be a different project, and it was re-edited, but, ooh ... I don’t know. Bad.”

This ’80s-set prequel to Dumb And Dumber stars Derek Richardson and Eric Christian Olsen as the titular dummies Harry and Lloyd, respectively, replacing Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey from the original 1994 Farrelly Brothers film. Had the de-aging technology used on Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny been available for Dumb And Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, maybe the filmmakers could have kept Carrey and Daniels instead of replacing them with two pale imitations. Perhaps, also, Dumb And Dumberer would have been on par with the dumb-boy chatter and gross-out gags of the original and not been included on this list of worst sequels. But it wasn’t and they didn’t, and the one word to summarize the overwhelming critical consensus of this prequel is “lame.”

Batman & Robin is the second and, mercifully, last Batman movie directed by Joel Schumacher. The silly sequel is the fourth movie in the series started by Tim Burton with 1989’s Batman, and George Clooney is the third actor to play this incarnation of the character, following Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer. Holy inconsistency, Batman! In Batman & Robin, the dynamic duo (Clooney and Chris O’Donnell) must protect Gotham City from Mr. Freeze (a heavily accented Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Poison Ivy (a scene-chewing Uma Thurman) while running around town in Batsuits with nipples inexplicably built into the armor. The movie underperformed at the box office, critics trashed it, and the franchise got put on ice until Christopher Nolan rebooted it with Batman Begins.

The 1992 neo-noir erotic thriller Basic Instinct made a star out of Sharon Stone for her devilish performance as mystery author-turned-murderer Catherine Tramell, who hates wearing panties with a unique fury. Between then and 2006 when Basic Instinct 2 finally arrived in theaters, everyone speculated how much Stone would have to make to agree to the sequel (the answer: a whopping $13.6 million). The universally panned Basic Instinct 2 cost $70 million (including Stone’s salary) and only made $38.6 million worldwide. It did, however, clean up at the Razzies, winning Worst Picture, Worst Actress, Worst Prequel or Sequel, and Worst Screenplay. The A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin writes, “With Basic Instinct 2, Sharon Stone gave the world exactly what she thought it wanted–Boobies! Filthy talk! Gratuitous nudity! Sexual transgression up the wazoo! Catherine Tramell unrated and uncut!–only to find out that moviegoers don’t really want it anymore, and even if they did they’d probably opt for a younger, sleeker model with less baggage.”

Jamie Kennedy—the actor who made the spirited speech about how sequels suck in Scream 2—is the leading man in Son Of The Mask, the Jim Carrey-less sequel to The Mask. The A.V. Club’s Scott Tobias writes, “The law of diminishing returns dictates that sequels to bad movies are the worst movies of all, because the producers are not only working to rebottle the original non-magic, they’re inevitably doomed to come up short.” Son Of The Mask was a box office bomb and critical failure nominated for seven Razzies, winning Worst Sequel or Prequel.

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace was such box office Kryptonite that it not only made the god-awful Superman III look OK by comparison, it ended Christopher Reeve’s on-screen run as the Man of Steel. Even with Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder back as Lex Luther and Lois Lane, respectively, the noble story about Superman’s crusade for nuclear disarmament gets radioactive when Luthor’s latest creation, Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow), arrives on-screen. The villain with the golden mane and killer tan looks like someone cut from Flash Gordon or a lost cosplayer at Comic-Con. Even when Superman and Lois take a flight on-screen like they did in Richard Donner’s original, the magic is completely gone and so is the chemistry between the two characters. The A.V. Club’s Keith Phipps writes, “Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, with a story dreamed up in part by Reeve, plays like the unholy union of a PSA and the WWF. Stirred by a schoolboy’s letter, Reeve decides to rid the world of nuclear weapons by tossing them in a giant net and throwing them at the Sun.” The cheap-looking sequel got nominated for two Razzies and was voted by Empire readers in 2011 as one of the 50 worst films ever made.

The 1996 live-action/animated sports comedy Space Jam teamed Michael Jordan with Bugs Bunny and scored at the box office. Over 20 years later, the stand-alone sequel Space Jam: A New Legacy teams LeBron James with Looney Tunes characters and underwhelmed at the box office. The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd writes, “Space Jam: A New Legacy takes almost nothing but wrong turns, all leading to a glittering CGI trash heap of cameos, pat life lessons, and stale Internet catchphrases. [The movie] is one big, witless commercial for Warner Bros. properties.” It won three Razzies: Worst Actor for James, Worst Screen Combo for James and “any Warner cartoon character (or Time-Warner product) he dribbles on,” and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel.

Scary Movie V is the first sequel in the Scary Movie spoof franchise that did not star Anna Faris or Regina Hall. As such, it is also the last sequel in the Scary Movie franchise. Without the previous movies’ funniest ladies, we’re left with Charlie Sheen, Simon Rex, and a bunch of B-listers doing silly cameos in a horror-comedy that tries to poke fun at horror movies such as Paranormal Activity, Sinister, and Insidious but is scarily devoid of any real laughs. Director Malcolm D. Lee reportedly said of the Razzie-nominated Scary Movie V, “It was just a bad movie. Believe me. Don’t bother going to see that movie. Or renting it, or anything. It’s not worth your time.” That settles it—the director’s cut of Scary Movie V is to cut all of it.

A sequel to the box office blockbuster Speed starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock was inevitable. Bullock returned for Speed 2: Cruise Control, but instead of a speeding bus and Keanu Reeves, we got a kind-of-fast ship and Jason Patric. The movie sank at the box office and won the Razzie for Worst Remake or Sequel. The A.V. Club’s Stephen Thompson writes, “Speed 2: Cruise Control somehow manages to fail in every way. Jason Patric is even less dynamic than Reeves in the blank-male-protagonist role, Willem Dafoe shows up to one-dimensionally terrorize a cruise ship, and, after helping out with 40 minutes of staggeringly dull exposition, Bullock is given little to do but shout in horror and be held hostage.”

You probably are unaware that a Showgirls sequel exists, and we can’t blame you. MGM’s original Showgirls became a camp classic that redeemed itself on home video and has a large cult following. Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven is a small indie directed by and starring Rena Riffel, who plays Penny Slot in the 1995 original written by Joe Eszterhas. The sequel follows Penny as she journeys to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming a star on a dance television show. Although Showgirls 2 features some returning actors from the original movie such as Glenn Plummer and Greg Travis, the similarities end there. Showgirls is a glossy, high-budget drama that is unintentionally hilarious because its lead actress (Elizabeth Berkley) misunderstood the assignment and took her role way more seriously than the rest of the cast. Showgirls 2, by contrast, seems to have been filmed with a couple hundred dollars and a camcorder. It’s more of a surreal, experimental art film with loosely strung-together vignettes than a true sequel in the same league as the original. If Showgirls is a sold-out show at the Stardust, Showgirls 2 is a lounge act next to the buffet at a border casino.

If you thought the laughable 3D effects in Jaws 3-D were as low as the shark-movie franchise started by Steven Spielberg could sink, you never saw Jaws: The Revenge. Lorraine Gary returns as Ellen Brody, who believes that a new great white shark is targeting her family up and down the eastern coast of the United States. Released 12 years after the 1975 classic, Jaws: The Revenge features a mechanical shark that somehow looks even more fake than the problematic “Bruce” in the original. Someone thought it would be a great idea to have the rubbery shark roar like a large jungle cat in Jaws: The Revenge, further pushing plausibility to the limit since sharks have no vocal cords. Michael Caine, who plays Hoagie Newcombe in the sequel, was unable to pick up his Oscar for Hannah And Her Sisters because he was stuck in the Bahamas filming what is regarded as one of the worst films ever made. He later reportedly said, “I have never seen it [the film], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific!”

Grease 2 is a divisive movie that—more than any other sequel on this list—has its devoted fans that will blow up the comments section right after this article posts. The musical sequel starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield takes place two years after the events in Grease and continues the story about the T-Birds and Pink Ladies of Rydell High School in 1961. Although several actors—including Didi Conn as Frenchy—return from the original movie, the absence of Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta hurt the sequel’s box office tremendously. Musical numbers like “Cool Rider” and “Score Tonight” are spirited and have their fans, but they didn’t become radio hits like many of the songs in the original. Pfeiffer reportedly said to the Los Angeles Times, “That film was a good experience for me. It taught me a valuable lesson. Before it even came out the hype had started. Maxwell and I were being thrust down the public’s throat in huge full-page advertisements. There was no way we could live up to any of that and we didn’t. So the crash was very loud. But it did teach me not to have expectations.” Barry Diller of Paramount said that Grease 2 “on no level is as good as the first. The quality isn’t there.”

How do you follow up The Exorcist, which many people consider the scariest movie ever made? It shouldn’t have been Exorcist II: The Heretic, which just as many consider the worst sequel of all time. Linda Blair returns as Regan MacNeil, the possessed girl from the 1973 movie. In the sequel, directed by John Boorman, Regan discovers through hypnosis that an evil presence still lurks within her while a priest (Richard Burton) investigates the death of Regan’s exorcist (Max von Sydow). The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty wouldn’t touch this sequel with a 10-foot crucifix, nor would The Exorcist director William Friedkin. BBC film critic Mark Kermode said, “Exorcist II is demonstrably the worst film ever made. It took the greatest film ever made and trashed it in a way that was on one level farcically stupid and on another level absolutely unforgivable. Everyone involved in this, apart from Linda Blair, should be ashamed for all eternity.”

The Exorcist: Believer—David Gordon Green’s upcoming direct sequel to The Exorcist starring Ellen Burstyn—ignores the events of Exorcist II: The Heretic and all the subsequent Exorcist movies. Blair is rumored to have a cameo, too. If the new requel is decent and gets away with hitting the reset button, maybe audiences can pretend that the trippy Exorcist II: The Heretic and all of those locusts were just a fever dream. Or would that be “much too vulgar a display of power”? With regard to The Exorcist sequels and sequels in general, the devil really is in the details.