Some of the best movies of all time have been part of trilogies, and so they make it pretty plain to see how structuring a long-form story in such a way (in three separate parts) can be satisfying. Trilogies can also be linked thematically, so for present purposes, there doesn’t have to be an act 1, act 2, and act 3 for each respective movie sort of thing for something to be an example here.
However, the following examples do have to be within trilogies. So, not that Toy Story would qualify here, given it’s family-friendly, but if Toy Story was not for kids, it wouldn’t count as a trilogy, because there’s a fourth movie. And there’ll be more. Actually, with some of these trilogies, they might not stay trilogies, but for now, at the time of writing, they are. Or, if they belong to a larger franchise, then there are noteworthy things that keep them feeling separate from fourth, fifth, sixth, and so on movies (like a certain horror/comedy trilogy directed by that Spider-Man guy).
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The ‘Cornetto’ Trilogy (2004–2013)
The Cornetto trilogy is made up of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End, with the first being a zombie movie, the second being a buddy cop film, and the third being a sci-fi flick. Also, each movie functions as a parody of each of those respective genres, all the while doing those genres service in other ways. So, maybe they kind of ride the line between parody and homage.
Like a good many zombie movies, Shaun of the Dead is quite gruesome, and not all the violence is played for laughs, either. The same can be said for Hot Fuzz, which has a good many (and sometimes darkly funny) gruesome deaths. The World’s End is the least violent, but also the most upsetting on an emotional front, and honestly pretty depressing after its first act or so. On top of the violence, there’s a lot of bleeding coarse language ‘ere, guvnor. Best to make sure the little lads and lassies don’t hear such words, innit?
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‘Deadpool’ (2016–2024)
It’s a little difficult putting Deadpool here, because these movies aren’t supposed to be watched by young kids, but the sense of humor found in them is fairly broad and juvenile, so plenty of people who are “technically” too young would probably like Deadpool even more than the people who are actually old enough for them. That’s not to say you are immature if you like them, by any means, but if you were 17 in 2016, you might’ve got more enjoyment out of the first movie then than you would watching it now, at 27 (welcome to the club).
They’re all irreverent and have much more profanity than the majority of comic book movies out there, and the level of violence stays consistent… but Deadpool (2016) was cruder with its sexual content/humor than Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), and Deadpool 2 (2018) was probably cruder overall, too. The Mouse made the Merc with a Mouth clean up his act a little, even if there are still inappropriate verbal jokes, F-bombs, and all sorts of over-the-top acts of violence.
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‘Evil Dead’ (1981–1992)
There’s a wonderful sense of chaos found throughout the first three Evil Dead movies, all of them directed by Sam Raimi, and all of them starring Bruce Campbell. There have been two other Evil Dead movies released in the 21st century, sure, but Raimi’s Evil Dead films remain a trilogy, owing to them being his vision, and also because of the Campbell factor (hail to the king and all that).
With The Evil Dead (1981), you get a pretty intense and gruesome horror movie, and then Evil Dead 2 is also full-on and bloody, but there’s more comedy to be found. Army of Darkness rounds out the trilogy, and is admittedly one of the mildest R-rated movies ever (younger teens could easily watch it, and maybe some pre-teens, too, at least those who can handle most PG-13 stuff), but the Evil Dead trilogy earns its place within this particular ranking just for those first two blood-soaked movies.
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‘Re-Animator’ (1985–2003)
Unlike with the Evil Dead trilogy, the Re-Animator movies stay pretty heavy on violence throughout (but unfortunately, the trilogy isn’t as consistent as Raimi’s Evil Dead movies). Re-Animator (1985) is indeed about experiments to resurrect dead bodies, and the way such an endeavor inevitably spirals out of control and leads to all sorts of messy/bloody things happening.
It’s a zombie film, so that sort of thing is a given, but for its time, Re-Animator was almost as violent as zombie movies had ever gotten, matched perhaps only by Day of the Dead, which happened to come out the same year. That was once part of a loose trilogy, but George A. Romero’s Living Dead movies did keep going beyond film #3. Anyway, Bride of Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator keep the gory thing going, making the Re-Animator trilogy a notably grisly one overall.
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‘Clerks’ (1994–2022)
There’s a quote attributed to Jean-Luc Godard that goes: “All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.” Clerks doesn’t prove that’s untrue, but it does see Kevin Smith making the argument that also, sometimes all you need for a movie is a confined location and a great deal of creative/funny profanity. Clerks is just about people surviving a dead-end customer service job, with a seamless blend of pathos and raunchy comedy.
The first movie earns an R-rating, quite comfortably, for language alone, and almost got an NC-17 rating just because of how filthy the characters talked, which is quite impressive, when you think about it. Clerks 2 ups things by having more sexual imagery alongside equally profane language, and then Clerks 3, while technically gentler and not as dirty, still has plenty of swearing, and is also surprisingly depressing, which keeps the whole trilogy nice and not family-friendly right until the very end.
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‘Hanzo the Razor’ (1972–1974)
Easily the worst trilogy here, please do not watch any of the Hanzo the Razor movies. You probably haven’t heard of them before, unless you’re really into samurai movies and you’ve dug this deep into the whole (usually quite rewarding) genre. The three Hanzo the Razor films may seem enticing, on this front, because they all star Shintaro Katsu in the titular role, and he played the lead character of the Zatoichi series. That run of samurai movies totaled over two-dozen, and almost all of them were good, and some were even great.
You feel dirty after watching just one of these, let alone all three.
Admittedly, Hanzo the Razor is a different sort of thing, feeling more like it belongs to the exploitation genre than the samurai one, but it’s also the bad and just not very fun kind of B-grade exploitation thing. They’re sexually charged and violent (often at the same time, which is where the real unpleasantness comes from) movies, and even approaching them as subversive films about a villainous main character, they’re still just a bit much, and a bit miserable. You feel dirty after watching just one of these, let alone all three. This is the part where one might say “they’re only suitable for adult audiences,” but really, adults should steer well clear of these, too.
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‘X’ (2022–2024)
The first movie in the X trilogy is quite literally called X, and that’s a solid warning that the content you’ll get within is pretty close to X-rated. Okay, it was R-rated, but it was a pretty strong R-rating, and also, it’s called X because it’s about a group of people trying to make an adult film, and then they run into a pair of other people who (violently) object to that whole thing.
The more pleasant-sounding Pearl is the second film, and a prequel, and it keeps things intense violence and adult content-wise, but the alarming stuff does happen less frequently. Then MaXXXine descends fully into B-movie sleaze, not being the greatest of conclusions, but for present purposes, it’s got a lot in it that’s not family-friendly, to put it (way too) mildly, so that makes the whole trilogy adults-only and all.
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‘Terrifier’ (2016–2024)
For now, Terrifier is a trilogy, but there is a fourth movie planned, albeit without a set release date yet (at the time of writing), so it’s being included here. These are slasher movies that aim to push boundaries in terms of violence and taste, which is saying a lot, since the whole slasher sub-genre really highlights murder and usually high body counts, frequently more so than other kinds of horror movies.
The gimmick here is that the villain, Art the Clown, really has to make his victims feel the worst sort of pain imaginable before he kills them, and there’s a supernatural spin to things whereby he can keep people alive, somehow, for quite some time before they succumb to the sheer damage he’s inflicted (look no further than the most infamous sequence in Terrifier 2, in particular). If you’ve got a strong stomach, the series does improve and get more interesting the more it adds by way of fantasy/supernatural elements, but the level of blood and gore here is intense enough to, perhaps understandably, be a deterrent to a good many people, even some horror fans, in all likelihood.
