Absurd... but Plausible

Although everyone loves to make fun of the The Fast and the FuriousStarted as a film about undercover policing in the illegal street-racing community, this series has grown to encompass a number of different genres and become one of the most bankable franchises in the world. series for all their dumb movie titles, you have to figure the producers are in on the joke. After you've reached pinnacle dumb movie name with 2 Fast 2 Furious there's no reason to ever go back to grounded naming. But the Fast and Furious films aren't the only flicks with dumb names. You can always find some flick with a title that's just patently stupid. Sometimes creatives get a little too creative and the titles have to bear the brunt of their failure.

But what if those films not only had dumb names but also thrived because of them? What if they warranted a sequel? While it's easy to think that the sequel to Cradle 2 the Grave would be Cradle 3 the Grave (following the Ocean's SeriesAlthough the franchise began back in the days of the Rat Pack with the original Ocean's 11, the franchise truly gained prominence with the Clooney/Pitt-starring, Soderbergh-directed Ocean's reboot series from 2001. The daring criminals would go on to have several cool and stylish capers through the series, redefining the heist genre in the process. logic), that would likely be a stupid movie. Instead, let's look at six potential stupidly titled sequels (that I just devised right now) and how they'd actually work as real films:

I Still Remember What You Do a Decade Ago During that One Summer, You Know the One

Sequel for the I Know What You Did... Series

The I Know What You Did films came out at just the right time in late-1990s theaters. Building off the popularity of the first of the ScreamWhat started as a meta-commentary on slasher media became just another slasher series in its own right, the Scream series then reinvented itself as a meta-commentary on meta-commentary. and the resurrected Slasher genre, I Know What You Did Last Summer was a big hit despite not having any of the meta elements that made Scream a rousing shot in the arm for Slashers (and Slasher fans). With that said, the follow-ups, I Still Know and I'll Always Know, were so bad they were practically parodies of what came before. And the Amazon PrimeWhile Netflix might be the largest streaming seervice right now, other major contenders have come into the game. One of the biggest, and best funded, is Amazon Prime, the streaming-service add-on packing with free delivery and all kinds of other perks Amazon gives its members. And, with the backing of its corporate parent, this streaming service very well could become the market leader. series was so boring it didn't even make it past a single short season.

Thus, if we're going to resurrect this film franchise with a legacy sequel we should embrace the stupidity of it, the self-parody inherent in the whole franchise, and just go the route of Scary Movie and let the fourth film (and fifth part of the franchise) be a true parody. We can pick up with Julie James (presumably played by a game Jennifer Love Hewitt returning to the role), now a married housewife with the requisite 2.5 kids, living the tedious life in the suburbs. Book clubs, soccer games, PTA. She's bored of this life and, mistakenly, states she remembers when her life was scary and exciting and she (almost) wants that back. Suddenly the ladies of her book club are getting offed one-by-one by a guy with a hook for a hand (just like in the original). But she has to keep it all a secret because she's also running for PTA president and she doesn't want all these murders affecting her election chances. Can she balance it all -- family, kids, responsibilities, a murdering psychopath -- and be a success?

Ballistics 2: Ecks v Sever v Freddy v Jason v Ash

Sequel for Ballistics: Ecks v Sever and Freddy vs. Jason

Although it's doubtful anyone remembers Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, this is a movie that did, in fact, exist. It was a tedious, generic action film starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu and secret agents that had to fight each other, and then work together, for reason. It had none of the flourish or style you'd expect from an early 2000s shooty-shooty gun flick. Certainly horror sequel Freddy vs. Jason had more style to it, and that flick is a dreadful piece of shit. Why not mash both horrible "vs" movies together to create something even more ridiculous?

Now, Freddy vs. Jason did have a proposed sequel, one that would have looped in the Evil DeadStarted as a horror cheapie to get the foot in the door for three aspiring filmmakers -- Raimi, Tappert, and Campbell -- Evil Dead grew to have a life of its own, as well as launching the "splatstick" genre of horror-comedy. franchise. That script wasn't made into a movie but it was eventually used for the comic series Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, which then got its own sequel, Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors. What I propose is keeping all of this in continuity (and you can even make nods to the two Ecks vs. Sever games as well, because why not?) to make one truly horrid mess that, just maybe, rises to be something so stupidly brilliant it works.

In this film we have Freddy, trying to resurrect himself once more from the nightmare world. He uses the mind of FBI Agent Jeremiah Ecks as a hosting ground to bring himself back. Although never explored in the previous film, Ecks grew up on an Elm Street and that means he can be used as a host. So Freddy (a la Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge) starts to emerge into the real world via Ecks's body.

Meanwhile, DIA Agent Sever has been hot on the trail of the relics that could be used to once again bring back the undead killing machine Jason. Her search leads her to a cult that has been operating out of a S-Mart store... just as Ash gets transferred in to act as the new Assistant Manager. Suddenly Deadites are everywhere, summoned by the cult, Sever and Ash have to team up, and just as the fight gets going, it steps up further when the Freddy-controlled Ecks comes to the store to steal the artifacts for Freddy's own resurrection. It's a massive, monster melee with three agents (counting Ash) fighting for the fate of the world. Grab your boomsticks for a trashy good time.

I Assembled Mama

Prequel for I Dismember Mama

If anyone remembers I Dismember Mama it's mostly for the name. It's a grotesque and disturbing horror film that touches on a lot of awful subjects, predominantly violence towards women, and has rightly gone into a drawer where people can ignore it in pursuit of other horror fare. That's not to say it was a poorly made film, just that it's the kind of uncomfortable horror (right up there with I Spit On Your Grave) that people watch and then go, "why did I watch that?" It's not an experience you really want to have again.

Thus, let's make a prequel! In the original film (ignoring just about everything that happens after the first part of the first act), we have a very troubled man, Albert, who wants to kill his mother. Maybe she was abusive, maybe not, but there's no arguing that he was a disturbed and unstable guy. But maybe his troubles went back earlier, after his original mother died and he had to try and fill that gap in his life with a new mother figure. So he made one out of mannequins, old computer parts, and a lot of elbow grease. And then it went crazy and tried to kill him, pushing his already troubled mind right off the deep end. Turn about is fair play and this guy now gets tortured by the very thing he craved. It's like Making Mr. Right, but only slightly less awful.

Breakin' Out: Back to Breakin'

Sequel for the Breakin' Series

Speaking of films no one remembers (there are a lot of them on this list), the Breakin' series was composed of three films: the documentary Breakin' 'n' Enterin', the fictional Breakin', and the sequel with the most endlessly meme-able name ever, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. Beyond that meme-worthy name, though, no one really cares about the Breakin' films. They're very dated break dancing movies from the early 1980s. The only other notable fact was that Ice-T featured in the first film (and the preceding documentary). But we can't let the name go, right?

Thus we can do a new dance movie in the Breakin' universe. A group of kids, wrongly accused of a crime, get sent to prison and have to Prison Break their way out to freedom, and then collect the evidence they need via a series of Ocean's Eleven capers, with every stunt performed via the power of break dancing We could set this film in the 1980s to keep with the previous movies, or put it in modern times and have everyone around the break dancers comment, "why are they break dancing?" I think either solution would work, but just having it all boil down to "saving themselves through dance" is perfectly stupid and appropriately Breakin'.

FeardotCom: After the Bust

Sequel for FeardotCom

Released in 2002, FeardotCom was rightfully panned as a stupid, stupid movie. Described at the time as a "low-rent Se7en", it came out two-years too early to be compared unfavorably to Saw instead, but make no mistake, it's crap no matter what film it's set up next to. It's a bad torture porn film without any of the gusto to really sell the scared, built around dumb idea for a web site that wouldn't work in the real would and would fall apart if someone tried. It's like Web 3.0 and NFT tech except it crumbles in the face of reality... so exactly like that.

But let's say that in the world of FeardotCom the site was a success and the scares that came from it delighted the denizens of the Dark Web. With the original killer dead, someone else could buy the domain name, or make a .onion version of it. "After the Bust" is a good name for it as it both implies the bust that took down the original killer as well as alluding to the "dot com bubble" that popped in the 2000s and took out a ton of terrible Internet companies. It works on multiple levels.

So what's this new story? Ransomware and murder. Someone on the Dark Web buys Fear.com after the federal government lets it lapse, and the domain squatter that sat on it immediately after fails to re register. A new killer comes along and grabs the name so they can spread fear (dot com) across the web. The send phishing messages to prospective victims and harass them, using their own accounts against them. A time on Fear.com slowly ticks down, and unless the victim sends Bitcoin the killer will spread all their personal details around Online... and then kill them (because killing happened in the first film so we have to do that as well). It's a modern Web 3.0 update with all the hallmarks of our bullshit world, but also murder!

SCARS: Return to Chopping Mall

Sequel for Chopping Mall

And finally, here's a deep-cut reference that only people who lived in Northern Virginia will get. Chopping Mall is a silly horror film about automated bots at a shopping mall going crazy and killing people. When the film came out at the Fair Oaks Mall in Northern VA, just by happenstance, the SEARS sign on the mall (at the Sears store) partially burned out, making the sign say SCARS (and that lasted for years, mind you). Thus, for anyone who had a warped mind, SCARS and Chopping Mall became linked. So let's make it official.

It's been three decades since the carnage at the Park Plaza Mall and a new landlord has taken over the location, renovating the once-abandoned building in an attempt reopen and revitalize the mall. This, of course, despite the fact that malls are dying everywhere. And yet, once the mall opens, it thrives. How is that possible? A deal with the Devil. All that blood that was spilled in the mall decades earlier got the attention of Satan, and this new developer was able to negotiate a deal with the Dark One to make a ton of money on the property... so long as more souls are damned to Hell.

All it takes is a sacrifice here or there to keep the demons happy. It can all be blames on crazed killers or other freak accidents. But when one planned sacrifice fails to happen (due to meddling kids), Satan gets angry and sends his hordes of the damned to collect every soul in the mall at once, in a single night. Now, to survive the night and escape in the morning (when Satan's power wanes and the mall unlocks itself), a group of teens will have to band together to fight the demons despite their petty differences and various social cliques. The scars of the past will kill the future at the Chopping Mall.