Another reason I really dig horror movies is that they often result in entertaining, ambitious sequels.

I’m not talking about the dozens of Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th installments — though some of those are better than others. I mean fresh takes on familiar properties that allow filmmakers to stretch their wings within an established — and they hope profitable — space.

I’ve seen a half dozen of these already this year, and they’ve all been worthwhile.

I was never much of a Beetlejuice fan, but I enjoyed the homemade anarchic spirit that carried over to this year’s long-awaited (36 years!) sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. It packed a few too many things into its busy plot (director Tim Burton’s girlfriend, Monica Bellucci, for starters), but I’ll always show up for goth Winona Ryder.

A Quiet Place: Day One was a lovely third installment to a solid franchise, anchoring its tense set pieces with genuine emotion. Director Michael Sarnoski, previously known for the wonderful Pig, has a knack for giving dramatic heft to genre material.

Writer-director Arkasha Stevenson delivered a bracing post-Roe thriller in The First Omen, which tells the story of the woman who gave birth to little Damien. This is one of several films this year that used horror to reflect the real world assault on women’s bodies.

Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus returned that franchise to its horror roots, giving us a worthy heir to final girl/action hero Sigourney Weaver in Cailee Spaeny.

I credit Ti West’s 2022 film X with kickstarting my interest in horror. Its sequel, Pearl, was even better. This year, he closed out the trilogy with MaXXXine. While X was an homage to 70s slashers and Pearl to Technicolor musicals, MaXXXine is modeled on 80s erotic thrillers. It’s a great idea that works very well for about half the film’s runtime, but unfortunately this film is easily the weakest of the three. I still love the whole project.

Finally, I was mixed on 2022’s Smile, but found myself really loving its follow-up, Smile 2. Director Parker Finn ups his game, crafting a tense and provocative look at a pop star cursed by the Smile demon while she’s trying to stage a world tour. Great music, too (see today’s SOTD).