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Even if Scream isn't your favorite horror movie franchise - yes it is. Sure, you may point to the originality of Season of the Witch or the new life New Nightmare breathed into the genre, but do either the Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street franchises as a whole compare to the median quality of the combined Screams? Folks, they do not. 

That's exactly what I told my editors when they requested I write up a list of my favorite horror movie franchises (ask me to pick a favorite child, why don't you?), to which they responded by reminding me of the scarcity of the job market these days. Eventually, we compromised. 

What I present to you now, rabid reader, is a list of my favorite horror franchises minus the still-undefeated masterwork of the late Wes Craven, which continues to put win after win on the big screen. To keep myself sane, I've broken up those favorites into four different categories that, I think, reflect the breadth of fright media: those being Classic, Modern, High-Budget, and Low. 

Let me know if you agree, except if you want to argue about Ghostface. I simply will not hear it.

Popverse Picks my favorite classic horror movie franchise: Universal Studios' The Invisible Man

I know that the image of a sunglass-wearing, bandage-covered man in a fedora and a trenchcoat is nearly as ubiquitous in the horrorsphere as, say, a man with a Transylvanian cape and widow's peak, but I still contend that the Invisible Man is the most underrated of all the Universal Monsters. Did you know that, in 1933, the first Invisible Man movie invented what we now call greenscreen technology? Or that the follow-up film, The Invisible Man Returns, introduced the world to an actor named Vincent Price?

When Blumhouse & Universal's 2020 Invisible Man reboot (starring Elizabeth Moss) came out to wow both critics and horror fans alike, so many folks expressed their surprise that a film franchise almost a century old could still innovate in the horror field.

Let me tell you, I was not one of them.

Popverse Picks my favorite big-budget horror movie franchise: Alien

Oof, look. I know that the highs of the Alien franchise are so high, and that the lows of the Alien franchise are... well, Alien vs. Predator. And yet, even in the xenomorph's lowest moments, I still believed. Now that we're living in a post-Romulus world, folks like me are in the majority, and doesn't that sort of prove that my faith in the franchise was deserved all along?  

The xenomorph design alone is enough to keep these movies at the top of my list, especially considering that, in quite a few of the installments, it is created as an in-camera, practical effect (sorry Jason Vorhees, but the worst movies in your catalogue aren't justified by a cinematic interpretation of Wayne Gretzky's corpse). But add to that fact that Alien has spawned some of the best movie-to-comic stories in existence and perhaps my favorite of all horror games, and I'll be riding this roller coaster well into its next drop.

Popverse Picks my favorite low-budget horror movie franchise: Phantasm

At the very first New York Comic Con I attended as a journalist, I had the privilege of speaking with indie filmmaker Don Coscarelli. So yes, the fact that his horror franchise is, in part, due to some amount of bias, but even still, the Phantasm movies still stick out as one of the weirdest, most unsettling, and in terms of filmmaking, scrappiest scary series I've been witness to.

Not quite supernatural horror, not quite sci-fi, and not quite in-between, the Phantasm movies introduced a villain whose likeness has still not yet been achieved by horror moviemakers. To my earlier point, there are a host of modern slashers you can point to and say, "Well, that's Ghostface with extra steps," but Angus Scrimm's Tall Man? There's no one out there like him.

After all, you've seen plenty of killers wield some sort of gardening tool. How many have you seen employ a flying, drill-equipped silver orb?

Popverse Picks my favorite modern horror movie franchise: Talk to Me

"But Grant," you whine pathetically, "How can you consider Talk to Me a horror franchise?"

Because of the sequel, oh Ye of Little Faith.

Yes, a Talk to Me 2 has been confirmed as in the works from A24, with the original's directing team of Danny and Michael Philippou behind the camera. And why wouldn't there be a followup to their 2022 film? It was the first movie in a very long time to put a spin on teen horror, making the young adults at its center feel much more relevant than, I hate to say it, even Scream 6's cast of meddling kids.

Huh. Reading back over this, I realized I just made the case for a franchise with the possibility to outdo the Ghostface Gang. That kind of screws up my whole premise, doesn't it?

Don't tell my editors.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." We couldn't agree more, which is why we've cobbled together a couple pieces to send a chill up your spine. Join Popverse as we explore:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.