The instinct to cash in on a hit movie with a sequel is entirely understandable, but the least filmmakers can do is actually get what made the original good in the first place.
Here are seven dodgy sequels that ignore, misunderstand, retrospectively spoil and disrespect the first movie. Seriously, did they even even watch the original?
1. American Psycho 2
Not only does it miss the point of the original, it even goes so far as to retroactively make it worse by removing any ambiguity left at the end of Mary Harron's movie.
Mila Kunis stars as a young criminology student who really wants to get into the FBI training programme and begins to off her fellow students to ensure her spot. William Shatner co-stars as the tutor Kunis' character becomes obsessed with.
Not so much a satirical critique of capitalism then, more a silly serial-killer romp which promises to be "angrier, deadlier, sexier".
Seriously. If you thought there was anything sexy about American Psycho you should be questioning your life choices.
2. An American Werewolf in Paris
The much-despised 1997 sequel to John Landis's classic An American Werewolf in London situates itself as a sort of down-with-the-kids horror romance featuring 'cool' underground clubs and cutting-edge (bad) CGI.
Not only is it rubbish in its own right, it also lacks all the subtlety and grace of the original. Gone is the clever balance of horror and comedy, the lovingly created transformation effects and the wry contrasting of British and American sensibilities. American Werewolf in Paris desperately wants to be down with the kids and instead ends up down the pan.
3. Blair Witch: Book of Shadows
Seventy thousand found-footage films later, we can sometimes forget how much of a sensation The Blair Witch Project was. Built around the whole "is this real?" premise (a cunning marketing ploy that would be copied again and again) it made Heather Donahue's drippy nose the must-see event of 1999.
The 2000 sequel (made on a budget 250 times larger than the original) had no business calling itself a Blair Witch movie. Ditching the air of mystery and the found-footage format, this was just a bog standard – and not very good – horror movie lacking everything that made its predecessor stand out.
4. Kick-Ass 2
The very good-natured Kick-Ass saw weedy Aaron Taylor-Johnson standing up for what was right against social indifference. It was a comicbook movie gently teasing comicbook tropes and highlighting the negative aspects of vigilante justice.
Kick-Ass 2, on the other hand, was a mean-spirited superhero movie starring a newly pumped-up Taylor-Johnson, packed with – and fetishing – violence. It became the kind of film the original was taking the piss out of.
5. Jurassic World
Jurassic Park was a cool story about dinosaurs, certainly. But it was also a parable about how – no matter how hard we try – humanity will always be at the mercy of wild, uncontrollable nature.
But forget all that. In Jurassic World, we can totally control nature with genetically modified T-Rexes and trained raptors. It's the everyday sexism and bad aunties that you really have to watch out for.
6. Speed 2: Cruise Control
The original Speed was a nail-biting thriller in which a bus had to maintain its velocity on the notoriously busy freeways of Los Angeles.
The second was set on a leisurely cruise ship. Can you see the problem here?
7. REC 2
The genius of the original found-footage film was that you had no bloody clue what was going on for the entire duration. Residents are sealed into an apartment complex by the police and military after one of the tenants has some sort of episode and bites an officer. A very tense and scary sealed-space horror follows, with a WTF ending that left viewers reeling.
REC 2 takes place immediately after [REC] and provides answers to everything we saw in [REC]. It's a decent movie in its own right but sometimes it's just better not to know.
