The awful “Exorcist: Believer,” in which Ellen Burstyn returns to battle the same demon again like she’s Rocky Balboa, has been making angry movie-goers’ heads spin.
The Post called the debacle an “artless bore,” adding that “the power of Christ compels me to give ‘The Exorcist: Believer’ one star.”
But it’s not the first horror follow-up to be brutally killed by both critics and audiences.
Not even the first one in the “Exorcist” franchise. Movie history is littered with heinous chapters that make you wonder if the filmmakers themselves were possessed by Satan.
Here are 10 of the rock-bottom worst sequels that are scary for all the wrong reasons.
“Jaws: The Revenge”
Some of the fourth “Jaws” film’s many achievements include: scoring a zero percent on RottenTomatoes, receiving zero stars from Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert and landing on Empire magazine’s “50 Worst Movies” list.
The 1987 clunker is laughable from the start as the now-dead Martin Brody’s (Roy Scheider) son is decapitated and killed by the finned fiend. Brody’s kid gawks at his missing arm, shouts like a banshee and then is humorously gobbled up while a children’s choir sings a Christmas carol.
“It came for him,” his mother says to their surviving son who works as a — wait for it — marine biologist. “It waited all this time and it came for him.” It, ma’am, is a shark.
“Leprechaun 4: In Space”
The pot ‘o gold has gone into orbit. The eight-film “Leprechaun” series — which gave a pre-“Friends” Jennifer Aniston her start back in 1993 — has never taken itself particularly seriously. Not only has it given us 2000’s “Leprechaun in The Hood,” but also 2003’s “Leprechaun Back to Tha Hood.”
But even for this cinematic bucket of blarney, sending a mythical Irish murderer to a distant planet in 1996’s nonsensical “In Space” is next level loony. At the start, our title monster plans to marry a nearly-naked alien princess named Zarina to become her world’s king, and it only gets worse and weirder from there.
There’s a jokester on staff at Hulu, where the film is available to stream. Its description on the platform reads: “The sinister sprite brings terror to outer space in this horrific sequel.” Horrific is right.
“Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan”
First there’s the title. A slasher flick shouldn’t make you think fondly of Miss Piggy (“The Muppets Take Manhattan” came out five years prior).
The bigger problem? Most of the not-even-remotely-scary 1989 movie takes place not in New York, but on a dumb boat.
The SS Lazarus is sailing to New York City and the passengers are a high school biology class on a field trip, a stuffy tweed-suit-wearing chaperone and, naturally, Jason Voorhees. The ski-masked killer torments the teens on this absurd oceanic journey for an intolerable hour before we dock at the South Street Seaport, where Jason emerges from the water like a frustrated mermaid.
“Exorcist II: The Heretic”
Before “Believer,” there was “Heretic,” the first sequel to William Friedkin’s Best Picture Oscar-nominated “The Exorcist.” But, unlike the iconic 1973 original, this one wasn’t horrifying — it was hilarious.
Laughter reportedly broke out at the New York premiere in 1977, and the novel’s author William Peter Blatty said, “You’d think we were watching ‘The Producers’!”
Even though it had a starry cast in Linda Blair (the original Regan), Richard Burton and James Earl Jones, critics loathed it. The Chicago Tribune’s Gene Siskel called it “ the worst major motion picture I’ve seen in almost eight years on the job.”
“Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2”
Of course money-grubbing Hollywood had to release a sequel to “The Blair Witch Project.” They just couldn’t help themselves.
The original 1999 found-footage indie only cost $750,000 to make and grossed a whopping $248 million worldwide. They surely wanted another boffo return on their investment. But the filmmakers couldn’t replicate the magic of the first “Witch.”
In his zero-star review of the misguidedly meta sequel, in which a group of “Blair Witch” fans set out to reenact the movie, Post critic Lou Lumenick wrote, “[director Joe] Berlinger wasn’t content to kill the golden goose, he also had to dismember it. ‘Blair Witch,’ R.I.P.”
“Troll 2”
You’d be forgiven for thinking there is a troll in “Troll 2.” But no, there are no trolls here — only goblins. Or, as this abysmal script calls them, “the little people of the night.”
To capitalize on the success of the first “Troll” film, Epic Productions titled their movie “Troll 2” even though it has zero connection to the earlier creature feature. The insanity didn’t stop there. As the leading man, they cast George Hardy, a dentist with no professional acting experience. After the film’s release, the star returned to crowns and cavities.
In one scene in this wreck, a teenager in the woods named Arnold (Darren Ewing) approaches the goblins — wearing some of the worst masks you have ever seen onscreen — and says, “Let me give you some advice, dwarfs. Get out of here or you’re going to be in a lot of trouble!” One of the creatures then hurls a wooden spear into his chest. You will hurl the remote at your TV.
“I Still Know What You Did Last Summer“
Even the title sounds exhausted.
The first sequel to the popular freaky teen movie “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Still” brought back those oh-so-1990s stars Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt and sent ‘em off to the Bahamas for some dull tropes and recycled plot devices.
In his one-star review, Roger Ebert wrote, “The movie’s R rating mentions ‘intense terror violence and gore,’ but only its publicity team could consider it intense or terrifying. Gore it has.”
“An American Werewolf in Paris”
Here wolves, there wolves, everywhere wolves. That hairy, snarling beast crossed the English Channel to France in this loathed follow-up to the 1981 cult classic “An American Werewolf in London.”
Critics were dismayed that the second film, which hit theaters in 1997, had none of the original’s charm and was marred by ugly CGI.
Remember, “London” won an Oscar for its practical special effects. “Paris,” on the other paw, was nominated for the Worst Sequel award at the 1997 Stinkers Bad Movies Awards, but lost to “Speed 2: Cruise Control.”
“Poltergeist III”
Forget “do not go into the light” — do not go into the theater.
The final movie in the “Poltergeist” trilogy has become infamous for a wonky choice it makes — the repeated shouting of the characters’ names. On “At The Movies,” Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel gave the 1988 flick two thumbs down and said they were annoyed by hearing “Carol Anne!” screamed over and over again. So were audiences.
There’s even a Reddit thread called “Carol Anne’s name is spoken 121 f–king times in ‘Poltergeist III’.” Replied one user, “Play the Carol Anne drinking game at your own risk.”
“A Nightmare On Elm Street”
This rancid reboot about dangerous dreams was so boring it put critics to sleep.
While being woefully predictable, the 2010 snooze-fest starring Rooney Mara also turned poor old Freddy Krueger into a pest.
Post critic Kyle Smith wrote, “That Freddy appeared only for a few minutes in the original was an asset in suspense terms (see also: the shark in ‘Jaws’), but this time he’s everywhere — and he won’t shut up. ‘Your mouth says no but your body says yes,’ he says, and ‘Now it’s time to play’ and ‘Now let me take a stab!’. If I’d been feeling deprived of lame one-liners, I would have stayed home and watched Bill Maher.”
This content was originally published here.
