10 Horror Movie Prequels That Are Actually Worth Watching
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Prequels have a fundamental disadvantage because viewers already know how their stories end. They’re challenging to write because their narratives are restricted by whatever happened in the previous installment(s). Despite these obstacles, horror movie prequels are surprisingly common.
The broad purpose of virtually any horror prequel is to explain the origin of whatever evil was depicted in the original installment. This is a natural and obvious storyline. It explains why horror has more prequels than other genres.
Horror prequels are even becoming popular on television with shows like It: Welcome to Derry, Bates Motel, and the upcoming Crystal Lake.
Here are my top ten best horror prequels.
Warning: spoilers below.
10. Amityville II: The Possession (1982)
I rarely feature the wretched Amityville franchise on this site, but if there’s one installment worth watching, it’s this. Amityville II: The Possession is a prequel to The Amityville Horror. It depicts a heavily fictionalized version of the infamous real life Defeo massacre, with the family’s name changed to Montelli for legal reasons.
After the family moves into the notorious Amityville house, a demonic spirit gradually takes control of teenage Sonny (Jack Magner). The possessed teen seduces his jaw-droppingly beautiful sister Patricia (Diane Franklin) and they begin an incestuous relationship. The ish really hits the fan from there, with the demon demanding that Sonny kill Patricia and his entire family.
The murder sequences are genuinely chilling. Unfortunately, Amityville II devolves into an Exorcist ripoff in its final moments.
The first Amityville Horror is tame by today’s standards, but the prequel ups the ante with incest, rape, and child murder. It’s disturbingly effective in its best moments, but too uneven to rank higher on my horror movie prequels list.
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9. Prometheus (2012)
Prometheus is a prequel to Alien (1979) set over a century before the events of that film. It boasts a star studded cast with Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, and Guy Pearce. It’s one of the few prequels directed by the same person who helmed the original, in this case Ridley Scott.
The film is about a group of human scientists (and an android played by Fassbender) who explore a strange planet hoping to learn more about humanity’s origins. There’s a thin line between the ponderous and the profound, and this film leans toward heavy handed pretentiousness with the script’s biblical allusions and existential musings.
This is good movie that should have been better, considering the array of talent involved. Prometheus makes the bold, but perhaps foolhardy, choice to not feature the Xenomorph aliens that this franchise is known for. There’s still plenty of extraterrestrial carnage, though.
The cast gives strong performances, and the cinematography is great, but the pacing sometimes lags. It never reaches the intensity of the best Alien installments.
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8. The First Omen (2024)
The First Omen is set in the ’70s, a few years before the events in the original The Omen. Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) is a young nun who is the future mother of Damien, the antichrist.
The original movie established that Damien was adopted, but didn’t offer much info on his birth mother. The First Omen fills in that narrative gap and does a nice job emulating the creepy atmosphere of the first film. Some of its scenes are fun callbacks to events from The Omen. The film also brings back elements of the original’s ominous orchestral soundtrack.
I’m not convinced we really needed a movie dedicated to Damien’s mom, but, for what it’s worth, this is the best installment since the first. Out of six Omen movies, there’s really just two worth watching. For extra fun, I suggest watching this and the original back to back.
I wrote a full review back in 2024.
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7. Annabelle Creation (2017)
Annabelle Creation defies the odds by being much better than the first Annabelle movie. It’s one of the top installments in the Conjuring franchise. The main reason is that the characters are much more interesting than most movies of this ilk.
Many years before the events of the first film, a group of orphan girls are assigned to a new foster family. The bedridden mother had a young daughter, Annabelle, who died in a horrific Pet Sematary-style accident long ago. One of the girls, Janice (Talitha Bateman), finds the Annabelle doll inside a closet and unwittingly unleashes a shapeshifting demon.
Annabelle Creation is far more intense and creepy than its predecessor. It’s a significant improvement across the board and does a nice job enhancing the Conjuring franchise’s mythology. If you’re going to watch only one Annabelle movie, it should be this one.
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6. Orphan: First Kill (2022)
This twisted and deliciously demented prequel takes the story back to when the titular orphan was a patient at an Estonian mental institution under her real name, Leena. After a violent but successful escape attempt, Leena (Isabelle Furman) passes herself off as Esther, a missing American girl who happens to resemble her physically.
Her “mom”, Tricia (Julia Stiles) takes her on a plane to the U.S. She meets Tricia’s husband Allen (Rossif Sutherland) and brother Gunnar (Mathew Finlan). If you’ve seen the first Orphan, you know in broad strokes how this story is going to progress, but Orphan: First Kill is smarter and more innovative than it initially appears. There are huge plot twists as Esther realizes that she’s not the only secret sociopath in the family.
Esther is one of my favorite underrated horror villains. Isabelle Furman does a great job playing her. In First Kill, she’s in her twenties playing a thirtysomething woman who is pretending to be a 10 year old child. How many actors could pull that off?
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5. Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)
Paranormal Activity 3 is one of the earliest modern analog horror films. It was released a year before the original V/H/S. Most of the movie is ostensibly a series of videotapes recorded in 1988 when the sisters from the first two movies were little girls. It explores the sisters’ early experiences with “Tobi”, the demon that has terrorized their family for years.
The then-fresh idea of using a VHS format set this movie apart and prevented it from becoming a stale retread of its two predecessors. Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn’t make enough effort to make the footage look grainy and aged.
Katie and Kristi’s parents must have bought a hell of an expensive camera for the footage to look and sound this good. The “1988 home movies” looks suspiciously like they were filmed with 21st century technology.
Still, Paranormal Activity 3 is easily the creepiest sequel in the franchise. It adds context to a story that was quite thin up to this point. The series was never this effective again.
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4. Final Destination 5 (2011)
I hesitated to include this movie, since it’s a secret prequel, but it’s been 15 years since it was released, so the expiration date on spoilers has probably expired at this point. Final Destination 5 begins with a deadly bridge disaster and ends by taking the story full circle back to the plane crash from the original.
After surviving the bridge collapse, Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) and his love interest Molly (Emma Bell) try to evade death’s design, with the usual results. This movie has the most mean-spirited ending of the entire franchise, and that’s saying a lot!
Final Destination 5 is a bounce back for the series after the awful fourth installment. It’s bolstered by the return of Tony Todd as Bludworth, who was absent from the third and fourth installments. As usual, he’s the only one who actually understands what’s going on.
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3. Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)
Ouija: Origin of Evil is about Alice (Elizabeth Reaser), a single mom who pays her bills by pretending to be a spiritual medium. She enlists her daughters, teen Lina (Annalise Basso) and Lina’s younger sister, Doris (Lulu Wilson), in her scam. They use cheap parlor tricks to convince clients that they are being contacted by spirits.
The family’s activities accidentally attract an actual spirit. All hell breaks loose when the entity possesses Doris.
The prequel to the critically derided but commercially successful Ouija would be #1 on this list if my sole criteria was superiority to the original. Origin of Evil is one of the first films directed by Mike Flanagan. He had nothing to do with the original movie, but his work easily surpasses it here.
Even early in his career, Flanagan had a knack for creating compelling characters that we actually care about. He makes Alice sympathetic despite that she’s a con artist and a fraud. This movie is also surprisingly scary. Lulu Wilson is amazingly effective at playing a menacing evil character. I would go so far as to compare her to Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
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2. Prey (2022)
Prey is a prequel to Predator, the gloriously entertaining Arnold Schwarzenegger movie about an extraterrestrial creature who travels to Earth to hunt humans for fun.
This time, the alien bounty hunter visits us during colonial times, where he encounters Native warriors and French colonists. This seems like a colossal mismatch: a heavily armed warrior with otherworldly technology against people with crude 18th century weapons.
The Predator does indeed have an easy time killing most of the people that he encounters. But he finds formidable opponents in a group of Comanche warriors, led by Naru (Amber Midthunder), who discovers the alien’s secret Achilles’ heel.
Prey makes an effort to develop its characters, a rarity for this series. It features a sexy, star-making performance by Amber Midthunder. After languishing in mediocrity for three decades, the Predator franchise finally finds its way again in one of the best horror movie prequels ever made.
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1. Pearl (2022)
Pearl is set in 1918 amidst World War I and the influenza pandemic. Roughly six decades before she crossed paths with a gang of pornographic filmmakers in X (2022), Pearl, played again and brilliantly by Mia Goth, is a naive farmgirl living with her German immigrant parents on their Texas farm.
She struggles with her toxic relationship with her mother, profound boredom with small-town life, and the gnawing realization that something is missing inside of her. Her mental instability and lack of emotional intelligence take her down a bleak path.
This is, to my knowledge, the only horror movie that depicts someone having a sexual encounter with a scarecrow. Take that as you will.
Pearl is a darkly amusing depiction of a young sociopath who is determined to achieve the life she wants, no matter how many people she has to kill to get it. It was followed by a third installment, Maxxxine, but do yourself a favor and forget that movie exists.
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What Other Franchises Should Have Prequels?
This is surprisingly difficult to answer. Along with the franchises mentioned above, there have been prequels for numerous others: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Purge, Tremors, etc.
Other series like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Saw have plenty of flashback segments that explain their villains’ back stories. That doesn’t leave much of a narrative gap for a feature length prequel to explore. One might even consider Saw X a prequel, but it’s better defined as a midquel, since it takes place after the first movie.
An Evil Dead prequel would be interesting. How about a story about the origin of the Deadites? I’d watch that.
