Here are six franchises that tried to reinvent themselves and flew completely off the rails in the process.

We are living in a uniquely bizarre period of time where, for better or worse, every piece of pop culture from the past few decades is getting constantly rebooted "for a new generation." On a good day, this means creative people putting an interesting spin on an old property, like 21 Jump Street or Batman Begins . On a bad day, it means making Batman Begins with Garfield instead of Batman, or crafting an elaborate backstory for Pac-Man involving political intrigue and state-sanctioned mass murder.

6 In Japan, Endless The Ring And The Grudge Sequels Culminated In A Ridiculous Crossover Movie

Back in the late '90s, a Japanese public information film called Ringu was released about the dangers of watching cursed VHS tapes haunted by pasty dead children. Around the same time, a Japanese film called Ju-On came out that also ended up being about curses and little girl ghosts. Both films were of course remade by Hollywood (titled The Ring and The Grudge, respectively) and enjoyed brief success as American horror franchises.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

But while America's obsession with remaking Japanese horror films disappeared in the mid 2000s, in their home country both films spawned a relentless barrage of ridiculous follow-ups, because painting a little girl white and telling her to croak at a camera is wildly inexpensive.

Between the two franchises, they would crank out 13 sequels, prequels and spin-offs in Japan alone. All of the good ideas long exhausted, they finally did a merger. Thus, Sadako Vs. Kayako:

NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Sadako Vs. Kayako: Dawn of Justice

It's the Japanese equivalent of Freddy Vs. Jason, only with a smaller costume budget and way more creepy wells. It tells the now classic story of some teenagers watching a cursed VHS tape, who then meet another teenager who is cursed because she lives in a haunted house. They get the admittedly awesome idea to team up and pit their respective curse ghosts against each other, but it does the complete opposite of work. Instead of destroying each other, the two ghosts join forces to become a fantastical super phantom and just fucking kill everybody.

NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

"Guys, be real. Is there a nude ghost kid on my neck?"

Unlike Freddy Vs. Jason, where both franchises had become ridiculous parodies of themselves even before they fought each other, Sadako Vs. Kayako is a complete tonal shift from either Ringu or Ju-On. While the original franchises were slow-burn horror films that gradually cranked up the creeps, the Ju-On vs. Ringu film is paced like a meth lab explosion.

They even reduce the amount of time you have left to live after watching the cursed VHS tape -- in the original, you have seven days to spread the curse or else suffer a death that can only be described as "embarrassing." In Sadako Vs. Kayako, you have two. The film is so eager to skip straight to ghost murder that they increased the speed of their curses by 350 percent. The film ends (SPOILER ALERT) with the two ghosts merging, proving that even in the afterlife the free market favors consolidation.