The first true feature-length movie sequel is widely considered by film historians to be 1916’s The Fall of a Nation, a follow-up to the hyper-controversial D. W. Griffith classic The Birth of a Nation. However, it wasn’t until around the 1970s, driven by the rise of blockbuster filmmaking following the release of Steven Spielberg‘s Jaws in 1975, that sequels really started to become a widespread commercial trend in the movie industry.
But while many of the greatest feature films in history have been sequels, cinephiles tend to agree that it’s not exactly common for a sequel to live up to its predecessor. It’s one thing for a sequel to be disappointing, however, and a wholly different thing for it to be an absolutely atrocious movie. Indeed, for every Godfather Part II or Return of the King, the world is subjected to at least a few sequels worthy of being counted among the worst films ever made.
10
‘Staying Alive’ (1983)
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Image via Paramount Pictures</figure>
Directed by John Badham, 1977’s Saturday Night Fever was a major critical and commercial success, popularizing disco music around the world and launching John Travolta into true international superstardom. The film was such a hit that a sequel soon made itself inevitable. Alas, that ended up being one of the most slapped-together sequels in film history, Sylvester Stallone‘s Staying Alive.
Staying Alive stripped away all of the gritty social realism and weighty dark tone that made Saturday Night Fever such a success.
With a well-earned 0% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, Staying Alive stripped away all of the gritty social realism and weighty dark tone that made Saturday Night Fever such a success, instead delivering a follow-up so sanitized and clichéd that it ends up feeling immensely bland. With the lack of any good music and Stallone’s direction completely misunderstanding what made the original film work, it’s no wonder Staying Alive turned out as poorly as it did.
9
‘Highlander II: The Quickening’ (1991)
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Image via InterStar</p></figure>
Back in 1986, Russell Mulcahy‘s Highlander was an unfortunate commercial failure and received somewhat mixed reviews, but a home video release allowed the film to become one of the biggest cult classics of the ’80s. With that sleeper-hit cult success and a desire to expand the world of the movie came plans to make sequel, which tragically ended up manifesting in the form of Highlander II: The Quickening.
It’s easily one of the worst movie sequels with the most terrible writing. Fans of the original hate it because it dismantles, contradicts, and actively retcons the lore of Highlander, while regular movie-watchers who encounter the terrible fate of experiencing Highlander II hate its nonsensical plot, its uneven tone, and its B-grade absurdity.
8
‘BloodRayne 2: Deliverance’ (2007)
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Image via Event Film</figure>
No conversation about terrible cinema can ever be complete without at least a mention of Uwe Boll, generally considered one of the worst filmmakers in the history of cinema. His first movie adaptation of the BloodRayne video game franchise was already bad enough, featuring Ben Kingsley delivering one of the worst phoned-in performances ever delivered by a great actor, but the direct-to-DVD sequel Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance somehow managed to be even worse.
It’s some strange kind of vampire-Western hybrid that feels every bit as cheap as you’d expect from a straight-to-video Uwe Boll film, and then some. A recast lead, flimsy cardboard sets, entirely lifeless fight choreography, and a disregard for the video games that would be insulting if it weren’t so unsurprising, all make BloodRayne 2 more painfully boring than it is insultingly awful.
7
‘Home Alone 4’ (2002)
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Image via ABC</figure>
After the tremendous success of Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, it became all the more of a tragedy just how terrible Home Alone 3 was. However, no one could have possibly been ready for the made-for-television disasterpiece that is Home Alone 4. The first film in the series without any contributions from John Hughes, the creator of the franchise, it’s one of the worst family movies in film history.
Home Alone 4 commits the cardinal sin that, not coincidentally, many of the worst sequels in film history commit: bringing back the original characters without any of the actual heart, logic, nostalgia, or cast members of the original. The result is a complete destruction of everything that makes the first two Home Alone movies true Christmas classics, including a bastardized version of Kevin McCallister that comes across not as a charismatic yet mischievous boy, but more of a brat with a grating personality.
6
‘I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer’ (2006)
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Image via Sony Pictures Home Entertainment</figure>
The original slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer by Jim Gillespie has never exactly been the most highly-praised of teen slashers, but it had more than enough charm to become a cult classic and helped revitalize the genre alongside Scream. On the other hand, its sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, is one of the worst horror movies ever made. However, the straight-to-video threequel I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer is on a tier of awfulness all of its own.
It’s the absolute bottom of the barrel of the slasher genre of horror, abandoning almost everything that gave the franchise its identity. There’s zero connection to the original cast or characters, the story is ludicrous at best, and the visuals and editing that characterized many of the worst straight-to-video movies of the 2000s are particularly egregious here.
Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely
different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you
would be having within a week.
You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts
works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war
so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting
you.
- You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within
about five minutes and has never stopped. - This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every
single person in your life would be. - The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you
do with things you love. - The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the
arguments are about to start all over again.
You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where
somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth
rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.
- You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something
enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it. - This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly
alarming, and it has good reasons for that. - Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all,
which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes. - Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make
that argument.
You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one
where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of
it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.
- You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a
grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that. - Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly
1980 with no sign of resolution. - The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score
and the look of a used and dented galaxy. - You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good
time.
You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the
argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in
space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.
- You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major
franchise still willing to say the future might be better. - The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that
makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else. - Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is
appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar. - You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you
will always find somebody willing to have it.
5
‘Son of the Mask’ (2005)
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Image via Warner Bros. Pictures</figure>
On top of helping further enshrine Jim Carrey as one of the biggest comedic stars of ’90s cinema, The Mask has stood the test of time as one of the greatest comic book movies of the 20th century. After the original plans for a sequel fell through when Carrey rejected to reprise his role, however, what we got instead was Son of the Mask. Alas, the whole thing is an affront to the Seventh Art itself.
The reasons why Son of the Mask is one of the worst family movies of the 2000s are almost too many to count. It’s not just Carrey’s absence that hurts the experience: this soulless sequel takes the cartoonish charm and energy of the original and transforms it into a nightmare of bad visual effects and unfunny jokes. It’s too unsettling and crude for children, yet too infantile for any self-respecting adult to enjoy.
4
‘Jaws: The Revenge’ (1987)
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Image Via Universal Studios</figure>
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws completely revolutionized not only horror thrillers, but Hollywood cinema as a whole. As soon as the concept of blockbuster filmmaking came around, the industry was never the same again. With it, however, came the unintended consequence of cash-grab sequels like Jaws: The Revenge, easily one of the worst horror movies in film history.
As mediocre as Jaws 2 is and as terrible as Jaws 3-D is, nothing compares to Jaws: The Revenge, an entirely nonsensical and absurdly silly piece of survival horror that’s best left unwatched. While many logic-defying sequels throughout history have endured as so-bad-they’re-good classics, Jaws: The Revenge doesn’t even have the decency to be anything more than dull and boring.
3
‘Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate’ (2024)
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Image via Peacock</figure>
The original Megamind was a reasonable critical and financial success for DreamWorks, but it wouldn’t be until the film started to gain a cult following in subsequent years that the studio realized the potential of a follow-up. Thus came the idea for Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate to serve as a pilot film for Peacock’s Megamind Rules!, but much to fans’ chagrin, it ended up being one of the worst animated movies of all time.
It’s not just the disrespect of the film being little more than a glorified extended episode of the show, nor is it just the fact that it was so cheaply produced that it’s visually repulsive at best. It’s the complete erasure of the original voice cast, the insulting contradictions of pre-established lore, the childish humor that should appeal to no one over the age of five, and the absolutely bizarre character choices.
2
‘365 Days: This Day’ (2022)
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Image via Netflix</figure>
Upon release, the Polish erotic thriller 365 Days enshrined itself as perhaps the single worst erotic thriller of the 21st century. Its threequel, The Next 365 Days, is somehow even worse. But it’s the middle chapter in the trilogy, 365 Days: This Day, that has the strongest claim to the title of “worst romantic movie in film history.” It’s an absolute disaster in virtually every single way that an erotic drama can be.
While the original film is bad enough for how it romanticizes Stockholm syndrome, kidnapping, and sexual abuse, This Day makes the premise endlessly worse both ethically and narratively. There is practically no plot, the whole movie consisting of nothing but poorly-shot soft-core sex scenes to the beat of overused licensed pop songs.
1
‘Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2’ (2004)
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Image via Sony Pictures Releasing</figure>
Though critics hated Bob Clark‘s Baby Geniuses, the film was a financial success. As such, a sequel was inevitable. When it came out, though, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 was not only universally panned by critics, it also failed to make back even half of its budget and has long been remembered by many as the single worst sequel in the history of cinema.
Indeed, Baby Geniuses 2 is one of those movies that are terrible from start to finish, an absolute disaster whose 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is arguably a bit too generous. The CGI for the babies’ lip-syncing lends the film a horrifying uncanny valley quality, the plot makes next to no sense, and the humor is so agonizingly unfunny that even toddlers should find it a bit too infantile for their taste.
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