16 Horror Films Worth Getting Excited About In 2016

2015 has been a solid year for horror, but 2016 looks like it might be even better.

After remaining dormant for a long time, a bunch of franchises you've probably missed will be returning to cinemas everywhere. What's especially exciting is that most of these new installments won't be reboots; they'll actually be proper sequels, picking up where the last movie left off regardless of how long ago it came out. It seems the industry might finally be getting over its obsession with remakes.

Then there are a couple of sequels to very recent movies slated for 2016, and their success is pretty up in the air. After all, how many part twos of big horror hits are as well received as the first one? Maybe they should have left well enough alone.

If you're holding out for something fresh, there are thankfully a fair amount of completely original stories to look forward to.

Every year, there's at least one original horror film that transcends the genre and that critics go wild for (The Babadook, It Follows), so is it possible to determine what 2016's will be? When looking at next year's lineup, the answer is clear.

Whether you're excited for the return of long forgotten characters or the introduction of new ones, these are the spooky films that should be on your radar for 2016.

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.