Flick Critique: Worst scary movies

With Halloween coming up right around the corner, rather than focus on the films that are considered landmark films in the horror genre, it may be more entertaining to focus on the films that do the complete opposite. Scary movies can traumatize anyone if they are done right. However, it is so easy to get a horror movie wrong that it leaves audiences bored and utterly disappointed. Here are horror movies where the scariest part about them is that someone had the audacity to make the film and share it with audiences. Fair warning: most of these movies are sequels that failed to live up to the expectations of their original film.

First off on the list are the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” sequels. Needless to say, the first adaptation, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was never the forerunner for a “Best Picture” Academy Award. Nonetheless, its sequels somehow managed to play up something already cheesy to just downright cringey and unbearable. “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” is nonsensical, predictable and lazy all wrapped up into one. Additionally, while there is a third movie to this series, “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer,” the title itself, combined with its 0 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, makes this movie’s spot on the list pretty self-explanatory.

Next is a space horror — the 1981 “Inseminoid.” A space alien impregnates a young woman, and she begins killing off her coworkers one by one. Not only does she kill them, she also ends up eating some of them. Overall, the movie just decided to rip off one of the most iconic sci-fi movies of all time, “Alien,” on a low budget and with poor writing and special effects. “Inseminoid” gives audiences a gory and sleazy copy not worth watching.

Third on the list is, coincidentally enough, “The Human Centipede III: The Final Sequence.” Although the main concept for all of these movies is downright stomach-churning, at least the first film was original and had a significant contribution in pop culture. The second movie exploits the first movie’s success, and the third one even more so, with almost two hours of depravity for the sake of shock value.

Last — and probably least — are “Piranha 3D” and “Piranha 3DD.”  These movies border the line between horror and comedy, being so bad they are actually funny. Both movies just switch drastically between a sex or nude scene to an extremely gory and bloody piranha attack, constantly leaving viewers confused and disappointed at the downfall from the one that started it all, the iconic “Piranha.”

Evidently, horror movies often get flack for their failed attempt at actually being scary. Evoking such a visceral reaction from audiences is almost an art. However, many movies fail to tackle this with actual skill. The individuals making these horror movies need to realize that jump scares and sloppy writing are not the way to go and that exploiting movies that work — or at least somewhat work — will not get them anywhere with audiences.