10 Best Number 3s In Horror Movie History
Third Time Was Certainly The Charm For These Ten Horrors.
Sequels are a tricky business and the more that get made, the trickier they get. Very few film franchises survive the dreaded "third movie" with some of the best series of all time falling at the third hurdle. Godfather 3 anyone?
Horror often gets criticised for having too many sequels and that is not an unfair criticism. But a third go around is not always a death sentence in the genre
Whilst there are undoubtedly far more bad third horror movies than there are good ones, a few glimmers of hope do exist and we've taken the liberty of rounding up ten of them for your reading pleasure.
Some of these films carried on the momentum of the ones before it, some of them bounced back from awful second instalments, and some aren't as good as the movies that preceded them but are still good films that should not be overlooked.
With sequelitis running rampant in Hollywood at the moment, let's examine these ten shining examples of a third movie done right and try and find a cure for this most awful of diseases.
10. The Conjuring 2
Hold your horses! We can explain...
Despite its misleading name, The Conjuring 2 is actually the third instalment in the franchise. After the initial Conjuring film, a spin-off was released called Annabelle, which was about the evil doll featured in the first film.
The first proper Conjuring sequel arrived in 2016 and told a fictionalised version of the Enfield Poltergeist story, in which a ghost haunted a family living in a London council estate.
A third film bearing the Conjuring name was released in 2021, but that isn't as good, so we're going to ignore it.
The Conjuring 2 made just as much money and scored just as highly among the critics as the original. Fans were impressed that the sequel kept up the suspense and terror of the first without ever getting gimmicky or over-the-top
On the whole, The Conjuring 2 is a solid horror sequel that builds on the foundations of what came before it. It would be a lot higher on this list but, considering we've pushed our luck by even including it in the first place, tenth place will have to do.