Horror Requels: A Stab at Success or a Bloody Mess?
- Beanie White
- Jul 4, 2022
- 4 min read
Requels… Reoccurring nightmares, the same monsters and murderers that haunted your childhood sleepovers returning to take another stab at scaring you silly. The difference is that this time you’re all grown up and you’d like to think you’ve kicked that creeping fear of William Shatner masks or burnt-faced knife-handed guys in Where’s Wally-striped shirts. You haven’t, have you? No, me neither…
The “requel” floats somewhere between a remake, a sequel, and a reboot, taking integral plot points and infamous characters and slotting them into slightly different shapes. It also gives filmmakers the liberty of magically erasing misjudged story beats, for example, the whole “Laurie and Michael are siblings” offshoot from the earlier Halloween franchise.
I hadn’t seen the original Candyman (1992) or its 2021 Nia Da’Costa requel until recently when I watched the first to prepare for an outdoor viewing of the latter that was taking place the very next evening (note to self, no horror movie gives me more chills than the UK weather) … Although both convey similar messages, the requel centres the black community, whereas the OG chooses to focus on the community through the eyes of a white woman. This is a requel that has something to say, a new spin on an older partially outdated story whilst honouring the original with a cameo from the incomparable horror legend, Tony Todd (the guy has almost 250 acting credits, does he ever take a break??). I’m referencing Candyman (2021) as a positive example of how the idea of the requel fits within the horror genre.
The last few years have been stuffed with requels spawned from some of the most famous horror movies of all time. Earlier this year we saw the return of the Ghostface Killer/killers with Scream (2022), this movie keeps the self-aware satire of previous franchise entries but adds a gen-z kick with references to “elevated horror” and toxic fan culture. Netflix took a bloody good swing at the horror cult classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) with an updated vegan/hipster/TikTok generation iteration, in this version we still get Sally Hardesty (widely considered to be one of the very first final girls) but she slots into a smaller cameo role amongst a young cast and a storyline that plays around with the origins of the infamous Leatherface.
The combination of “legacy characters” and younger casts -usually peppered with attractive up-and-coming talent- are a sure way to pull in both new and old audiences. In my opinion, the ideal requel would pull on the nostalgia of past movies whilst having something new and exciting to say. A prime example would be David Gordon Green’s Halloween requels, comprising of Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills (2021) and the upcoming Halloween Ends (2022). This trilogy fully shifts the focus back to Jamie Lee Curtis and her definitive performance as Laurie Strode but underneath the heavy body count and the childlike monstrosity of Michael Myers, these are films that look at processing trauma and the complexity of intergenerational female relationships. It’s a mega shift from the portrayal of Laurie as a virginal high-schooler sexualised and preserved from danger by her innocence, to the khaki vest-clad combat boot wearing gun-toting woman of vengeance presented to us in Green’s movies. These are requels done absolutely right, nostalgia with a hearty gut punch of topicality, who doesn’t love a feminist twist (that’s a rhetorical question).
It could be argued that the very idea of a horror requel takes away from new and original horror content and a brief look at the horror box office top ten from 2021 would encourage this theory. Both Halloween Kills (2021) and Candyman (2021) feature, alongside the latest Conjuring movie, four sequels, and a reboot of the Resident Evil series. However, if you look further, numbers 10-20 are almost all original horrors including Antlers (2021), Titane (2021) and In the Earth (2021). Although requels, sequels and reboots will always bring in the most consistent audiences, providing recurring characters, killer villains, and a steady stream of crowd-pleasing jump scares, I believe that the horror genre has enough exciting creative voices and dedicated watchers to ensure that it doesn’t get pulled under with its own repetition.
The future of horror is bright… Or dark if you will… David Gordon Green’s final Halloween instalment promises an epic battle between two of the greatest horror legacy characters ever to bless our screens, Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. Interestingly enough, Green’s next project is another potential requel following on from The Exorcist (1973). Perhaps Mr Gordon Green is vying to become king of the requels… Chris Columbus is penning a Gremlins requel. Friday the 13th (1980) and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) are also set for requels/reboots over the next few years. BUT don’t fear (or do fear??) horror fans, if requels aren’t your thing, as concluded above, there is plenty of original horror creeping up to scare us s**tless. Alex Garland’s Rory Kinnear heavy, Men (2022), Jordan Peele and his eagerly anticipated third movie, Nope (2022), Black Phone (2022) an Ethan Hawke-led adaptation of a short story by Joe Hill, and Ari Aster’s Disappointment Blvd (2022) a supposedly 4 hour long nightmare comedy.
So fret not my horrible little voyeurs, there is something for every kind of horror fan and I am of the opinion that there always will be. Think of horror as the Final Girl, and we all know that Final Girls can’t be killed…
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