Beautiful Black Sheep: Top 5 Underrated Horror Franchise Outcasts
By Jeremy Dick
via Dimension
Every horror movie series has at least one entry that gets a lot of flak from its fans, but for these five “black sheep” films, I say those fans are all dead wrong.
Art is subjective. That’s why you’re always going to see negative opinions for any movie that comes out. When it comes to the various sequels in horror movie franchises, some fans can be especially critical.
Sometimes, the critics get it right — you’re not going to see the fourth Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie on this list. But, other times, I feel they couldn’t be any more wrong. Let’s look at the top five horror franchise “black sheep” movies which I feel don’t get the praise they deserve.
5. Hellraiser: Hellseeker
The first Hellraiser film is universally been by horror fans as one of the genre’s best. However, for most of the sequels, the fans aren’t as kind. For this series, there’s basically a small group of “black sheep” as opposed to just one film. And while I could agree with some of these odd sequels being shunned, one of them actually stands out much higher above the others.
I’m talking about the sixth movie in the series, Hellseeker. Not since the second movie had a sequel in the series felt so genuine. It even managed to bring back Ashley Laurence as Kirsty Cotton, working her into a confusing-yet-compelling new story. Pinhead is just as amazing as he always is, and the “twist” at the end is very well done.
It’s just not right to lump Hellseeker in with the likes of, say, Hellraiser: Revelations, because as I see it, it belongs right up there with the first two. And it’s definitely unfair to give it a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes (seriously, WTF?). As of now, it’s one of my favorites in the nine-film-long series.