6 Horror Movie Prequels That Don’t Suck
Horror movie franchises with sequels, reboots, and remakes are as old as 1936’s Dracula’s Daughter, featuring Gloria Holden in the titular role. But what about prequels, the series entries that jump back in time to set up the horror and take a deep dive into the lore that gives the audience a bit more story? Those are less common, and even rarer is an example of a truly great one.
For instance, we eventually got the origins of horror icons like Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter, but they weren’t exactly the most memorable films. There’s a craft to making a good prequel that gives audiences a reason to care and reignites our love for the classic that came before it.
The First Omen hits theaters on April 5 and tells the story of Damian and his birth mother, and how he ends up with the Thorn family. We’ve seen the stories in between and expanded with the Omen sequels and even the short-lived Damian series on AMC. The beginning of the story, though, has yet to be explored but will hopefully be fodder for a good movie.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at six horror prequels that not only expand the original story, but also carve out their own space as stellar entries in their respective franchises.
1. Prey
This entry is easily the biggest gap of time between the original and its prequel you’re going to find on this list. Prey takes place in the Northern Great Plains in 1719 and revolves around a young Comanche woman, Naru (Amber Midthunder). While striving to prove herself as a hunter, she finds herself having to protect her tribe from an unknown alien hunter who goes after humans for sport. All the while, she deals with French fur traders destroying the buffalo her people rely on.
Taking a step back from a number of the sci-fi elements the previous movies used and bringing it to the back-to-basics approach, Prey is easily the best Predator movie since the ’87 original. Much like Schwarzenegger’s Dutch, Naru uses her cunning and trap-making skills to deal with the Predator. What makes Prey so good is how involved you become with Naru and her people as before she’s thrown into stealthy combat with the walking weapon. Prey gets a lot of things right with the story and how it can really be as simple as “hunt or be hunted.”
It was released as a Hulu exclusive after premiering at San Diego Comic-Con. GameSpot sister site Metacritic gave the film a score of 71.
2. The First Purge
Set in the first year of the Purge experiment, which was centralized on Staten Island and only lasted for 12 hours, The First Purge explains the origins of the annual violence holiday and how it became law. In 2014, the country began suffering from intense unemployment, rising inflation, and a housing crisis that led to the New Founding Fathers of America political party seizing power.
Two years later, NFFA chief of staff Arlo Sabian (Patch Darragh) and sociologist Dr. May Updale (Marisa Tomei) announce an experiment that allows citizens to release their inner rage and dark desires in any way they want–including murder. The NFFA offers residents $5,000 to stay during the experiment, with additional compensation if they join the purge and survive. To monitor the experiment, the participants are equipped with contact lens cameras and tracking devices.
Instead of a single narrative, this prequel follows Sabian, Updale, a drug dealer named Skeletor (Rotimi Paul), rival drug dealer Dmitri (Y’lan Noel), his associate Isiah (Joivan Wade), and his family. Skeletor makes history with the first televised murder of the Purge, but the politics at the NFFA–and Updale’s betrayal–lead to the Purge becoming an annual event.
The Purge concept has always been political, but the roots are politically motivated which adds this layer of nuance to the killing and chaos. It’s not the strongest of the Purge entries, but the performances from Noel and Wade are a highlight in the series.
3. Pearl
Giving the prequel treatment to Ti West’s X trilogy (with the third entry, Maxxxine coming out later this year), Pearl whisks viewers back to when the homicidal elderly woman and would-be starlet was just a young girl. We see Pearl (Mia Goth) living with her oppressive parents on their farm in the American heartland. Her husband is away fighting enemies overseas in World War I, leaving her stranded and alone. She soon meets a projectionist (David Corenswet) and, as the two begin a torrid affair, she is inspired and becomes obsessed with becoming a movie star–at any cost.
Both X and Pearl were released in the same year, just months apart, giving us the motives for the dark deeds that Pearl enacts in X with Goth pulling double duty as Maxine and the elder Pearl. It’s possibly ironic in the prequel Pearl is seeking stardom but Goth has already found it with this character.
Pearl showed the horrific origins of the character and outdid the previous installment with Goth’s performance. You can feel her mania, her isolation, and desperation with every gargled and bestial cry. How she could even attempt to top this with Maxxxine has fans intensely curious.
4. Paranormal Activity 2
Paranormal Activity begins just two months before the first film, telling the story of Katie’s sister, Kristi. It also goes into why their family is cursed and how the curse is passed to Katie for the events of the first movie.
There’s a lot of story to go through with Kristi, her husband Daniel, their son Hunter, and their housekeeper Martine all being involved with the demons that haunt the house and Kristi’s bloodline. It’s all explained, though, and wraps up the mysteries of the previous movie, so when we finally get back to Katie and Micah, your stomach drops as you already know what lies ahead for them.
Paranormal Activity 2 dives in deeper and makes the first film better by revealing the unnerving ties of this family and the demon that haunts their bloodline. The final act of this prequel is still one of the best in the franchise.
The original ending of the first movie had Katie slitting her throat, but was replaced with a jumpscare towards the camera. This allowed a possessed Katie to find her sister, kill her and Daniel, and take Hunter to parts unknown. This is followed by Paranormal Activity 3, which takes us even farther back, about 20 years in the past with Katie and Kristi as children.
Made for $3 million, Paranormal Activity 2 went on to earn more than $175 million worldwide and solidified the fact that a new horror franchise had arrived.
5. Final Destination 5
Five movies into the Final Destination franchise, we got an entry with an ultimate twist that takes us back to the beginning of it all. Literally. The movie follows the overarching narrative of the earlier movies with friends trying to outrun and stave off Death, but failing for the most part as it always catches up to them.
In the case of Final Destination 5, we open up the movie with Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) saving lives on a suspension bridge after having visions of the disaster. For the rest of the movie, Sam and his girlfriend Molly (Emma Bell) have to outrun Death.
The last three minutes of the movie is where it all comes together. Sam and Molly seemingly have made it out alive, until we see Carter (Kerr Smith) and Alex (Devin Sawa) get into a fight from the first Final Destination movie and then the reveal of Sam’s ticket. We’re onboard Volée Airlines’ Flight 180 and the tragic opening of Final Destination with that plane exploding on take-off.
The movie was generally liked back in 2011 and became a creative, albeit cheesy, release for the 3D craze of the late 2000s. The bridge scene alone stands out as one of the best scenes in the franchise, and bringing it all back around makes this entry worth the journey.
This movie had been the last entry in the series, but another installment was just announced. Final Destination: Bloodlines will be released in 2026.
6. Cube Zero
Cube is the little franchise that could. Despite having only three installments, plus a Japanese remake back in 2021, the series became cult classics but never really reached beyond a certain niche fanbubble. Each movie focused on a series of random strangers who have to escape a seemingly impossibly-constructed prison.
The final entry of the franchise, Cube Zero, went back and actually told how the cube operates with the narrative going back and forth between inside and outside the cube. Two technicians, Eric (Zachary Bennett) and Dodd (David Huband), who work for an unknown and mysterious firm, run the cube while thinking the prisoners are willing participants. However, when Eric can’t find a consent file for one of them, he gets suspicious and tries to rescue the last two prisoners by himself.
It does not go well.
Seven years since the original Cube, Cube Zero ups the violence and trap stipulations from the earlier films. Much like Final Destination 5, the realization it’s a prequel comes in the final moments of the film. We see Eric coming out of brain surgery where he’s left feeble-minded very similar to how Kazan was in the first Cube film.
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