The Cherry Hill Chainsaw Massacre

Holy horror, you guys! In exactly 12 days from now, on Sunday, March 15, the horror genre is going to make history at the 98th Academy Awards ceremony, with a total of four horror films nabbing nominations, and not merely in the superficial categories this time. While 2026 does not represent the first year within the 21st century that the Academy has lifted its previously undisguised bias against the horror genre, it does represent a milestone therein. For the sake of transparency, I haven't yet seen any of the four horror films welcomed into the Academy this year, so this article will be an objective overview of the awards for which they've been nominated. Much like how many Americans naively assumed that racism had come to an end with the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States in 2008, I can more confidently assert that the Academy's long-standing bias against the horror genre, while slightly lifted in 2018 with the embrace of Jordan Peele...

Slow-building, sinister, and unapologetically bizarre, The Killing of a Sacred Deer , directed by Greek absurdist Yorgos Lanthimos from a screenplay co-written by him and Efthimis Filippou, puts an idiosyncratic spin on the eye-for-an-eye revenge horror narrative, with a trio of compelling lead performances counterbalancing the filmmakers' stilted dialogue. Unfortunately, a gallery of distinctly unreal characters breed a dreamlike, Twilight Zone -adjacent atmosphere that holds the viewer at arm's length and prevents the inevitable, nihilistic resolution from reaching its full heart-wrenching potential. The title, one of the more memorable and distinctive in modern horror, is technically derived from part of the story of the ancient Greek tragedy, Iphigenia in Aulis , by Euripides. However, within the context of the movie that bears its name, the "sacred deer" in question refers to a human being, specifically one of the three loved ones of a cardiac surgeon named Steve...

In 2008, Bryan Bertino, one of the most prominent and atmospherically masterful filmmakers working within the horror genre today, wrote and directed The Strangers , the greatest and most terrifying slasher film of the 2000s, an experience so traumatizing and grounded in the unpredictable laws of reality that it doesn't even feel like a slasher. Although the story is as basic and straightforward as can be -- a couple are terrorized in a summer home located conveniently in the middle of nowhere by a trio of masked, knife-wielding sadists -- it's the emphasis Bertino placed on the psychological anguish of his achingly relatable protagonists that marked his movie off from the abundance of other entries in the subgenre. The protagonists are sympathetic and intelligent, but not equipped to deal with such a nightmarish scenario that they did nothing to put themselves in, aside from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The killers are ruthless and horrifying, but not possessed o...