Despite being a generally good year for the genre, 2021 also featured disappointing horror movies like Halloween Kills, The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It, and Candyman failed to live up to expectations. Horror is one of few genres that has unequivocally benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on the global box office. While blockbusters that were otherwise expected to be surefire hits struggled in almost every other genre, horror movies performed better than ever with viewers in 2021. However, critics have not been as kind to the genre since the year began, with several major disappointments.
2021 saw the release of numerous highly-anticipated horror movies and, as is inevitable when hype reaches fever pitch, some of these releases proved disappointing upon release. Some, like the slasher sequel Halloween Kills and the supernatural horror The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It, were huge hits at the box office despite earning middling reviews, while others were as financially underwhelming as they were creatively disappointing. This reinforces the notion that there were unfortunately many disappointing horror movies in 2021.
However, one thing that all of the movies featured here have in common is that these horror releases were expected to be some of the year’s better outings in the genre. From the much-delayed Halloween Kills to the unexpected franchise reboot Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, each of these horror movies had the potential to be a hit with critics and offer audiences a scary, inventive hit of genre filmmaking. Some were outright failures, like Netflix’s misjudged slasher There’s Someone Inside Your House, while others were perfectly passable but failed to live up to fan expectations, like the gory, but un-scary Candyman reboot. Regardless of the specifics, though, every title on this run-down did let down at least some of its audience.
Halloween Kills
2018’s Halloween reboot was an unexpected success story that left many reviewers surprised and delighted. Director David Gordon Green rebooted the complicated chronology of the Halloween franchise by erasing events that occurred after John Carpenter’s 1978 original Halloween, resulting in a streamlined slasher that satisfied both franchise fans and newcomers. However, the premise of setting the reboot’s sequel, Halloween Kills, later on in the same night was always going to be tricky to pull off, and leaving fan favorite final girl Laurie Strode stranded in a hospital bed for much of the action did not help matters. In its best scenes, Halloween Kills subverted familiar slasher cliches, but for the most part, the sequel felt a gorier retread of the ‘80s Halloween sequels. After the 2018 Halloween reboot proved such a breath of fresh air, Halloween Kills confirmed that Michael Myers was back to business as usual.
There’s Someone Inside Your House
Adapted from the hit novel of the same name, Netflix’s There’s Someone Inside Your House had all the ingredients of a huge hit. The teen slasher’s premise saw a group of high schoolers targeted by a masked killer who exposed their darkest secrets on social media after killing them, a blackly comic twist that could have proved timely and satirically sharp. Unfortunately, There’s Someone Inside Your House’s predictable killer reveal, its interminably slow pacing, surprisingly humorless script, and unforgivably bland kills made it a profound failure with critics. No amount of gore could elevate this disappointing effort, which wasted a game cast and interesting premise on a plot-hole-ridden story horror fans had little interest in.
Candyman
2021’s Candyman reboot is arguably the least disappointing movie of all the 2021 horror let-downs, and there is a lot to like about director Nia DaCosta’s stylish reboot of 1990’s Bernard Rose-directed original. However, critic Angelica Jade Bastién argued in her superb Vulture review, the slick visuals of 2021’s Candyman can’t make up for the movie’s lack of substance. The reboot turns the complex, terrifying villain of the original Candyman into a less complicated and less scary iteration of the character, easier to sympathize with and stripped of all his messy moral ambiguity. Borrowing from Nightmare On Elm Street couldn’t save Candyman, which is perfectly watchable and boasts a solid performance from Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, but could have been far darker and more daring.
Spiral: From the Book of Saw
An unexpected reboot, Spiral: From the Book of Saw sounded like an exciting prospect for many horror fans. The Saw series, which had been dormant for years before 2021, was set to be rebooted as a Se7en-style police procedural starring Chris Rock and Samuel L Jackson. Unfortunately, despite ample opportunity for the movie to take on problems with policing the way that the original Saw series satirized the for-profit healthcare industry, Spiral: From the Book of Saw lacks invention, originality, and anything approaching scares. Repeating a storyline from the Saw sequels left Spiral feeling lifeless and uninspired, despite Rock’s best attempts to salvage the doomed reboot with a spirited central turn.
Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin
Few horror fans expected the Paranormal Activity franchise to return in 2021. Unfortunately, an unexpected sequel announcement was the only surprise that the franchise had in store for fans. Fewer horror viewers were happy to see Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin when it arrived in October 2021, as the sequel added little to the series outside of a more stylish aesthetic. Eschewing the found footage origins that made the Paranormal Activity series famous, the dull Next of Kin was instead a fusion of mockumentary and folk horror that failed to take advantage of either sub-genre's tropes. Although better than Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, there is still no denying that Next of Kin was a waste of writer Christopher Landon’s considerable talents.
What Lies Below
Unlike many of the movies listed here, What Lies Below was not a victim of excessive hype. This horror could not blame its frosty reception on the burden of heightened expectations, since few genre fans were even aware that the domestic thriller/sci-fi horror hybrid existed until What Lies Below went viral thanks to its shocking ending. What Lies Below’s plodding plot followed a young woman who becomes convinced that her mother’s new beau is a little too good to be true, only for her to be proven right when he transpires to be an evil Lovecraftian fish-man attempting to breed human hybrids. As the above synopsis implies, What Lies Below’s wild ending made the movie a major viral hit upon release as viewers expecting a more conventional psychological thriller instead got a surreal monster movie. That said, the twist only occurs in the closing moments and, had What Lies Below taken itself less seriously, the whole movie could have been a campy delight, instead of a great ending to a terrible movie.
The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It
While original Conjuring creator James Wan was busy shocking audiences with the off-the-wall hit Malignant, the third entry into his blockbuster horror franchise failed to wow viewers despite scaring up serious box office returns. The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It’s attempts to fuse courtroom drama with supernatural horror were not a runaway success, but it was the third act's turn into fantasy territory that left viewers unimpressed with this one. Nowhere near as scary as the original Conjuring, The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It spend too much screen time on ambitious franchise lore and not enough on the simple, effective frights that made the first two movies soar. Thus, the third Conjuring movie joined Candyman and Halloween Kills as one of the year’s most disappointing horror movies.