16 Horror Films Worth Getting Excited About In 2016

16. The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist

Most horror movies that spawn lots of sequels frankly don't deserve them. Paranormal Activity, for example, is a small story that completes itself by the end, so trying to stretch that into a series didn't work out all too well in critical and quality terms.

This phenomenon of making an epic, 10 year journey out of an 80 minute standalone film is extremely common in the genre, and it almost always results in diminishing returns.

Having said that, The Conjuring actually has a lot of potential to become a truly consistent franchise, and it can avoid this issue by making itself an anthology that explores a brand new paranormal case every time. The only through line will be that the Warrens are always there investigating, so James Wan doesn't have to figure out some needlessly complicated mythology.

That seems to be the direction he's going in with part two, which follows the real life case of the Enfield Poltergeist that occurred in Enfield, England in the 1970s. The cast is an entirely new set of people aside from Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who return as the Warrens.

The main reason to be excited is that unlike all those sequels that abandon much of the behind the scenes talent, director James Wan and both screenwriters from the original are back on board, meaning this could realistically be as good as the first one.