The best horror prequels of all time

Within the larger Conjuring franchise, Annabelle: Creation is a prequel to a spin-off which was, in its own way, also a prequel, but one of the film’s great strengths is its refusal to wrap itself in a net of tangled continuity. Instead, David F. Sandberg’s origin story for the cursed doll emerges as a kind of dark rural fairy tale, the story of a group of orphan girls who stumble upon a malevolent presence and end up fighting for their lives. Sandberg’s steady horror hand means the scares are inventive, fun, and relentless, while a cast led by Lulu Wilson and Stephanie Sigman all turn in solid performances. You might show up because you know that creepy doll’s face by now, but by the end you’ll find plenty of other terrors in this prequel.

The fifth and (so far) final Final Destination film doesn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on its prequel status, only really unfurling that aspect of its story in the third act. The rest of the time, it plays by the understood Final Destination rules: A group of friends avert tragedy, then find Death stalking them one-by-one in increasingly elaborate disastrous scenarios. That means it’s all in the (pun intended) execution, and Final Destination 5 never dodges that responsibility, delivering witty and jaw-droppingly brutal death scenes, memorable characters, and a sense of fun to contrast the grim subject matter. It all works so well that the film just might be the strongest entry in the whole franchise.

The Omen begins with a newborn baby just beginning his eventual reign of terror as the Antichrist. You really wouldn’t think there was all that much prequel energy to squeeze out of a scenario like that, but The First Omen came along in the spring of 2024 and proved us all wrong. Beautiful, grim, and anchored by a devastatingly committed performance from Nell Tiger Free, the film gives us not just a vast and terrible Catholic Church conspiracy, but the truly human story of a young woman at its center who scrapes and claws her way to survival. Arkasha Stevenson directs the hell out of it, and the results are so good they could launch a franchise of their own.

The Purge movies created by writer/director James DeMonaco are not subtle by any means, but even by this franchise’s standards, The First Purge is a film that rams its brutal social commentary right to the forefront and never stops hammering it home with gunshots, blood, and mayhem. The origin story of the Purge, centered around one Staten Island neighborhood that’s been set up as a kind of test zone for the nationwide Purges to come, is all about the Haves and the Have Nots, how far politicians will go to get what they want, and how we as humans choose to wield our capacity for violence. It’s a film that wears its perspectives on its sleeve, but that doesn’t diminish the topical horror, or the gruesome fun.

Orphan is a movie about (spoiler alert for a 15-year-old film) a grown woman who looks like and pretends to be a little girl, scamming and killing her adoptive family. Orphan: First Kill is a prequel to that film starring the same actor, made more than a decade later, by which point star Isabelle Fuhrman had grown from child actor to adult actor. To say it sounds like a stretch would be putting it mildly, but Fuhrman, director William Brent Bell, and a supporting cast led by Julia Stiles make it work through camera tricks, body doubles, and sheer force of personality. The story of the killer Esther (Fuhrman) burning her way through her first American family, First Kill carves its own path despite a similar premise, and cements Fuhrman as one of horror’s finest performers.

Mike Flanagan is one of the most consistently fascinating horror creators working right now, so you know if he decided to take on a prequel to a relatively forgettable horror film, something special was about to happen. The origin story of the dark spirits that inhabit 2014's Ouija, Origin Of Evil sets itself apart through Flanagan’s emotional calling cards, wonderful performances from Elizabeth Reaser and Lulu Wilson (who also turned in great work in another prequel on this list, Annabelle: Creation), and a period aesthetic that’s somehow both warm and chilling. All the requisite connective tissue to the first film is there, of course, but it’s wrapped in Flanagan’s story of a family seeking some kind of solace in conversations with dead people, and that narrative is why it’s worth showing up.

Ti West and Mia Goth laid plenty of groundwork for the origins of the killer old lady Pearl (also played by Goth) in X, but even that sense of lingering backstory did nothing to prepare us for what Pearl would become. As ecstatic and dreamlike as X is gritty, with imagery driven by everything from The Wizard of Oz to Disney princesses, Pearl is a luminous, emotive nightmare that centers Goth in her rightful place as a horror icon that can do it all. She shines as both star and co-writer, throwing herself into both roles with abandon and vulnerability, crafting one of the best horror films of the 2020s so far along the way.

Set a couple of centuries before the events of Predator, there’s not all that much prequel connective tissue lurking in Prey, but it doesn’t matter. Starring Amber Midthunder as a Comanche warrior who must prove herself against a vicious alien menace, Prey strikes the same hunter vs. hunter tone as the original, then goes its own way. While John McTiernan’s Predator is a deconstruction of action movie machismo in the face of a superhuman threat, Dan Trachtenberg’s film is a nimble, intimate struggle that’s not just about proving you’re a hero, but making yourself the hero in the face of terrifying odds. That it never got a wide theatrical release remains arguably the biggest shame at the movies in 2022.

Ridley Scott’s Alien origin story certainly has its detractors who pick at the motivations of the characters and the sometimes overextended story, but there’s still so much in this movie to love that even the more straightforward Alien: Covenant can’t quite conjure. The original Alien is intimate, claustrophobic survival horror, and while Prometheus certainly retains some elements of that, it trades the cramped dirty space aesthetic for something more bombastic, more overtly violent, and more epic. It’s a beautifully crafted big swing of a movie, and even if you’re one of those detractors, you might find it holds up especially well on repeat viewings.

David Lynch’s feature-length follow-up to the legendary two-season original run of Twin Peaks is…well, it’s not Twin Peaks as you know it if you were watching the show in 1990. The oddball humor is largely absent, as is co-creator Mark Frost’s influence on the story. Fire Walk With Me, a prequel covering the last week of Laura Palmer’s (Sheryl Lee) life and Dale Cooper’s (Kyle MacLachlan) introduction to the strange forces surrounding her death, strips out much of the soap opera that made Twin Peaks feel like such a genre bender, and pushes forward as a dose of pure Lynchian nightmare fuel. It’s unsettling, it’s vicious, and it’s even oddly hopeful, which means that while it might not be the Twin Peaks follow-up fans expected at the time, it’s an essential piece of the saga.