10 Movie Threequels That Redeemed Their Franchise

5. Paranormal Activity 3

Thor Ragnarok
Universal Pictures

Back in 2007 Oren Peli’s original bolt from the bedroom jolt-started the found footage genre and became a sleeper hit across the globe. An eagerness to cash in on this success spawned a sequel partly bogged down by trying to shoehorn in backstory but, for the most part, let down by not being very scary. Keeping faith in the franchise, execs at Paramount gave the nod for a third roll of the camera and we were gifted with one of the best horror sequels of all time.

Taking events back to the 1980s, when sisters Katie and Kristi first encountered the demon Tobi, newbie directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman use the constraints of the time period to expert effect, where the techiest this film gets is having a VHS camera on a cumbersome revolving tripod.

It’s this back to basics approach that spawns the franchise’s biggest jump scares and makes this one of those rare movies that you simply won’t want to watch alone in the house. The film went on to be the highest grossing entry in the series and breathed enough life in the horror franchise to spawn further - not quite as good - sequels.

Contributor
Contributor

Shaun is a former contributor for a number of Future Publishing titles and more recently worked as a staffer at Imagine Publishing. He can now be found banking in the daytime and writing a variety of articles for What Culture, namely around his favourite topics of film, retro gaming, music, TV and, when he's feeling clever, literature.