Depending who you talk to, the most terrifying thing a scary movie can do is continue after the end credits. For film critics in the late 20th century, “horror movie” and “sequel” amounted to verboten words as ghastly as “plague,” “terminal,” and “holiday special.” They were seen as tacky add-ons, engineered by studios desperate for quick profits built on diminishing returns. Even so, we wager if you poll real-life horror movie fans, they’ll have at least one sequel on the tip of their tongues that they argue surpassed the original. There are many others, too, that at least matched their forbears. And plenty more that didn’t, yet cumulatively created mythologies so rich, bloody, and diabolically nonsensical that entire fandoms and studio executives have dedicated lifetimes to untangling th

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