The 12 Best Horror Prequels

If there is one thing that’s more maligned than an ”unnecessary” sequel, it is an “unnecessary” prequel! Horror (and DTV action, tbh) is the genre most likely to keep stacking up movie after movie, even after many might declare the well arid and dry. But if you aren’t a total hater, there are many delights to be found in the prequel bin.

First, though, is a bit of explanation about what you won’t find here: namely, Pearl or any of the Fear Street movies. Fear Street is a story told going further back in history with each chapter, so 1978 and 1666 are just the deliberate progression of the narrative and not backfilling details seemingly for the sake of it. In a similar spirit, Pearl is the middle entry in a trilogy that feels like the complete progression of a closed story. All three parts of Ti West’s Mia Goth trilogy also exist in distinct genres, going from slasher (X) to violent period semi-exploitation women’s picture (Pearl) to crime thriller (MaXXXine). So, putting high-concept concept character pieces alongside things like the eighth movie in a ’70s slasher franchise that just won’t die doesn’t quite feel fair to the rest of the prequel pack.

With all that in mind! Here are Vulture’s picks for 12 horror prequels that are either better than you thought, or better than they needed to be, or are just crazy enough to have a blast with on a Friday night.

Check out the 2020s giving us high-quality origin stories nobody asked for! The Omen is one of those horror classics that’s not quite The Exorcist or Psycho, but it’s still a pillar of the community. Damien is a hall-of-fame creepy kid, and that lady shouting “It’s all for you!” before plummeting to her death is an all time scary movie scene. Gregory Peck is there. It’s directed by Richard Donner. Great stuff. Then, as so many great horror movies do, it became an also-ran franchise — but a modest one with just four installments (not including a few halfhearted reboots attempts) — and it was left alone until 2024. Then we got The First Omen, which, on the heels of the nothingness that was Exorcist: The Beginning, felt like it was going to keep clobbering us over the head with more toothless revamped religious frights.

Incorrect! Director Arkasha Stevenson and star Nell Tiger Free came together for a grab-you-by-the-throat prequel that, yes, feels uncannily reminiscent of another movie from the same year, Immaculate, but when good Catholic horror actually comes around, why not double down? First Omen is mean and occasionally ghastly, and it’s more interested in invoking Zulawski’s Possession than it is watering things down to entice a broader audience. It’s hard to honor an iconic original while doing your own thing, but First Omen manages it.

The tenth Saw movie really pulled something off. Despite diminishing returns in the franchise from about number seven onward and a big hiatus during the 2010s — which was followed by a lame reboot — Saw X said “Jigsaw isn’t done yet!” And it was right. We’ve already covered how prequels are generally superfluous, but it’s the exciting exception we’re here to honor. And after so many, many movies that worked to build out John Kramer’s inconceivably vast empire of sadistic social justice warriors, finally getting to see how the guy turned into a dark angel of vengeance feels so right.

Right now you’re thinking Oh, but we already knew John Kramer had cancer and was radicalized by a broken healthcare system. And there, you’d only be half right. Kramer was radicalized by bad doctors but not just the ones in America. Turns out there was an entire experimental clinic run by evil Norwegians that really lit the rage fire under John’s ass, and X is the only Saw movie to date that makes him the central protagonist for the entire story. If there is one way to truly make an origin story feel earned, it’s having a side character that’s actually the main character for eight movies over the course of 20 years finally getting his story told in full.

This one is it, gang. The entire Mt. Rushmore of horror prequels all rolled into one movie. The prequel is, almost by definition, an extraneous format. You don’t need to establish how we got somewhere if we already went there and did all these things. Therefore, the prequel is fluff. It’s dessert. It’s second dessert, even less necessary than the dessert before it! So it’s almost always true that for a prequel to justify itself, it has to go crazy. (An exception being The First Purge, which genuinely feels like a meaningful contribution to the Purge-verse.) And no prequel goes crazier than Orphan: First Kill.

Original Orphan was wild enough with that reveal ending, which made the announcement of a prequel feel totally bizarre, cause once you know the twist then what are we even here for? The answer is: Julia Stiles and backward-aged Isabelle Fuhrman, who reprised her role as the titular orphan — which she originated at 10 years old — a decade after the first movie, but her character is even younger. For those keeping score at home, that means Fuhrman at about 20 is playing someone presenting younger than 10.

The conceit alone was bonkers, and the in-camera trickery that the film pulled off to have Fuhrman practically playing a girl believably eight or nine was amazing. No assistive AI here! But even with that in mind, First Kill’s true revelation is Stiles playing an ice cold socialite (kind of?) grieving the loss of a daughter and just not quite able to be relieved after that “daughter” is discovered alone on a playground in Russia and returned home, years after her disappearance. Both actresses kick it into full throttle once buried truths are revealed, and Stiles frankly gives the performance of a lifetime off the entirely under-discussed Fuhrman. She’s ferocious, acerbic, bitchy, and hilarious, just like First Kill itself. This movie turns the prequel into an art form that becomes more than entertaining; it becomes essential.

Full stop: The First Purge rules. The Purge franchise rules, and even though the movies had been steadily building out lore since the first one debuted in 2013, breaking it all open with First Purge was such a satisfying contribution to the canon. An asset of this saga has always been the heart-on-its-sleeve ham-fisted nature of the messaging. These movies turned out to have chilling a prescience about them as to what happens when you let a rampant national gun obsession and the seeds of authoritarianism laced with religious zealotry spread into an unstoppable wildfire, and the American landscape felt like it had finally, officially (unfortunately!) caught up to the franchise with the arrival of President Trump and The First Purge shortly thereafter.

Taking the night of national catharsis back to where it all began — in a predominantly black area of New York — and officially revealing it for the culling of poor, infirm, and non-white people that Purge Night demonstrated itself to be over the first three movies felt like a confirmation of anything that was implied but not yet stated outright in the franchise.The action was a franchise-best. The ensemble was perfectly cast, (Y’lan Noel not becoming the next minted Marvel superstar after is a crime!) and the fact that the movie ends on a note of hope makes the rest of the Purge movies feel even darker than they did before, as the bloodshed just keeps going and going till we are purging Forever. If there’s a Most Necessary Prequel, it’s The First Purge.

The first Ouija movie was a real snooze, and much like the Annabelle Creation situation (see below), the potential franchise needed a sure-handed director to come in and perform a resurrection if any more juice was going to be squeezed out of the property. Enter a filmmaker who, at the time, had been making excellent small-budget horror like Oculus and Hush, and who was poised to become one of the biggest names in genre — whether it was film or TV. Mike Flanagan turned out a movie that basically erased Ouija from the record, and it was, in classic Flana-fashion, an affecting story of family and loss and the ties that bind us and children giving great performances in horror movies. Because if you can’t get Mike Flanagan, get Lulu Wilson. Lulu Wilson could also save your franchise.

Perhaps the most rare category of prequels is Franchise Savers. Annabelle was clearly made with franchise designs in mind, since it was already an extended universe movie off of The Conjuring’s closet of horrors. But Annabelle was also pretty lackluster, and if New Line wanted to keep this gravy train running it needed to do some triage with the follow up. Insert director David F. Sandberg, who was coming off the very successful Lights Out, and see if he can put some juice in your spooky doll movie. Spoiler: He did it! Creation is just a fun, good house of horrors movie with excellent child actors who finally imbue the evil vessel with all the menace she was meant to have. It’s not that deep! Creation just works. It piles on the jump scares, and clears the way for Annabelle Comes Home after, which is also better than the original movie. Way to save this one, team.

FD 5 is true prequel innovation. After three sequels of entertaining lather, rinse, repeat on the original premise of trying and failing to cheat Death’s game, Final 5 starts off like the rest. A terrifying premonition of mass death that catalyzes a group of friends to realize they escaped fate and now have to outrun its swinging scythe, and then they all die anyway in wildly elaborate scenes of freakish “happenstance” that do things like scare an entire generation away from driving behind log trucks for the rest of their lives. Final Destination 5 follows the formula by satisfying your desire to see people perish in incomprehensible situations, but then in the very final run it unveils itself as the beginning of it all! 

Normally, prequels are out there flying their origin story flags to bring back the franchise fans and capitalize on SEO. But not FD 5! This is a secret prequel with a strong ensemble cast that really delivers on the payoff. It even has a tie-in music video where one of its stars, Miles Fisher (a.k.a. the guy who does uncanny Tom Cruise deep fakes), performs his catchy bop “New Romance” as Zack Morris in Bayside High with the FD 5 main cast on hand and people getting Final Destination’d to death the entire time. Five stars!

The thing about the Paranormal Activity franchise is it is extremely franchise friendly. Low budget; plays on very routine and visceral fears about being killed in your home; doesn’t require any kind of acting on ensemble for marketing. It’s a sequel-making dream. And it also has the distinction of the second and third movies both being prequels, but for our purposes here, we’re going to lobby for Paranormal Activity 3. This is the one that goes back almost 20 years before the events of the first film to give the backstory of our original protagonist, Katie. (The boyfriend in the first Paranormal is unquestionably the film’s primary antagonist — gaslighting bastard!) Paranormal Activity (2007) touched on a dark presence that has been with Katie since she was a little girl, which seems to have resurfaced in her life now as an adult, so Paranormal 3 shows us how it all began with her “imaginary friend.” This movie is just straight up terrifying. Great stuff. Found footage at its best.

With all due respect to Kate Beckinsale — actor, action star, impeccable Instagram presence — Rise of the Lycans is actually the Underworld franchise at its very best. Beckinsale could put on the pleather a dozen times as Selene and it would probably always be worth the time to watch her look cool and shoot guns and flash the fangs, but Rise of the Lycans makes you wish there could have been a parallel franchise put on the shoulders of its star Rhona Mitra, who should have been carrying at least three ongoing blue collar action franchises by now.

There’s also something about this movie, tucked between Underworld: Evolution and Underworld: Endless War, that feels like the series as it was meant to be. Without the flashier Beckinsale out front, there’s a more muscular, DTV fantasy vibe to the movie in Lycans, which is really what Underworld is at its core. These movies feel like Michelle Rodriguez. They feel like Kristanna Loken. They feel like … Rhona Mitra, and that is said with the highest praise. And clearly, the proof is in the pudding, with this prequel generating the second highest Rotten Tomatoes score of the franchise at a gleaming 29 percent! Michael Sheen’s werewolf Lucian also gets the featured placement he deserves, and of course is just going all out for the role. The prequel gods were looking out for us on this one.

Vacancy is one of those under-rated titles where those who’ve seen it know it’s a treasure of 2000s horror, but it didn’t become a cultural touchpoint the way its kind of spiritual companion from that same year, The Strangers, did. “Because you were home,” was the ultimate ethos of an era defined by senseless mutilation in horror — encapsulated into a single pithy line — and that was basically the thesis of Vacancy, too. Sorry, gang, but you were just unlucky enough to stop at this terror motel. But even lesser known than Vacancy is the prequel that would follow just one year later, Vacancy: The First Cut.

Is this movie generally unlikable people making poor choices? It’s a slasher from the aughts, so yes, but it also features one of the sneakily best final girl turns of the decade. There are notes of Sharni Vinson’s iconic You’re Next heroine in Agnes Bruckner’s lead character, and after seeing her sufficiently terrorized, it’s a thrill to watch her start uncorking on some villains. In addition to Vinson, Bruckner is giving a little bit of Sophia Bush in The Hitcher for First Cut, and that’s basically like saying she should be given a gold medal.

If you simply must make a prequel for reasons of either ruthless capitalism or strange blind passion — but you don’t have a good movie to make — then at least go bug-fuck crazy with the time you’ve got. And ending up with a franchise entry that fans can refer back to as “the incest one” is a cracking way to go. The Montelli family is just a bunch of ordinary Americans. A mom, a dad, their two little kids, and their oldest daughter with her husb … oh, no. Wait. Sorry. That young man furtively touching the eldest daughter is not her husband! It is, despite all appearances to the contrary, her older brother! But don’t gaslight yourself. If you hit play on Amityville II and start worrying that it’s just you and you’re weirdly projecting a sexual relationship onto the two grown Montelli children when they couldn’t possibly be involved like that, we assure you they can. And they will. Just give it time!

The Possession is flat out bonkers, which makes it a top prequel, and a very suitable entry in a loooooong-running franchise that only exists to be bananas at this point. There are more than 20 of these movies, including Amityville Dollhouse and Amityville: It’s About Time, which is literally about an evil clock. Possession tells the story of the original sin murders committed in the infamous house that will eventually be bought by the Lutz family, but first you have to go through some brother fucking and demonic invasion.

We can hear your skepticism coming through on this one, but you are wrong! Psycho IV is actually a worthwhile extension of the overly stretched story of Norman Bates, because it gives him closure while filling out the backstory of an iconic film character whose psychology is so tangled that he actually kind of deserves the chance to tell his own story. Which is exactly what he does! Quite literally! First of all, more movies should be structured around a talk-radio show. Watching CCH Pounder as “Talk of the Town” host Fran Ambrose — chain smoking on the mic in a blue room — is a kind of cinema gold. (It’s also all the proof of concept we need that she should have her own podcast now.) Fran is doing an episode on matricidal killers, and Normal calls in under the pseudonym Ed to give some insight on the crime he feels the episode lacks. This leads to him, while making an anniversary dinner for his wife, explaining in detail why he became a mother killer and what it was like growing up in the Oedipally charged iron grip of Norma Bates.

The dinner prep and talk radio constructs coming together is almost whimsical, and Anthony Perkins is giving genuine pathos as he recounts the traumas that lead him to become a serial killer and mom murderer. Fran genuinely wants him to feel heard, and to stop him from killing again, and it all makes for a dynamic that is … sincerely heartfelt? Not to excuse a guy who has a massive trail of women’s bodies behind him, but there’s always been a tragedy about Norman, so you really find yourself rooting for him in this talk therapy session that is filled with past murders. Henry Thomas turns out to be perfect as a young Norman stand-in for Perkins, and Olivia Hussey as his mother is simply feasting on the role.

The whole movie would be worth it for her alone, but another, deeper quality to The Beginning is how the film fits within Perkins’s life just a few years before his death from AIDS. Is that a heavy burden to throw on Psycho IV when the actor was largely relegated to paycheck roles? Perhaps. But the context of Norman Bates as a formative figure in queer horror making a parallel to the life of the closeted gay actor who played him makes this movie feel more substantial. Norman was a man living under a suffocating veil of secrecy who was so mutated by sexual repression that he became a monster, and the reveal later of Perkins’s own queerness has since informed consideration of the role as a coded performance filled with hidden meaning.

The Beginning is the first time we get to see Norman being honest about his true self in full, grappling with the agony of what’s locked away deep inside himself and how it has destroyed everyone around him. Perkins was sexually abused by his own mother, reportedly sought psychological treatment to fix his homosexuality, and didn’t disclose his AIDS diagnosis until just weeks before his death — which came after a tabloid reported it first. It’s somehow satisfying, knowing all this, to watch Norman declare himself publicly and finally purge what’s eaten him alive from the inside for so long. Perkins never got to do the same, but the character that defined him in the public eye finally got to burn all the trauma that had trapped him to the ground. Again, is this Psycho IV?! Sure. But horror is funny that way. It can be everything or nothing depending on how you read it, just a good time with a slasher or a metaphor for our deepest, most soul-breaking societal fears. And Psycho IV can be both if you want it to.