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Jacob's Ladder (1990)

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One Sunday morning, I experienced the most terrifying and devastating nightmare my mind had ever conjured in my 27 years of existence. From what I can remember, I got into a car accident—which plays into my insecurity of driving—and died. At first, I hadn't yet realized that I was dead. I suddenly found myself in my house, listening to my father reminisce wistfully for the umpteenth time to my mother about a childhood photo in which he and I, as a baby, laid beside one another in bed, me staring into his eyes with a smile.  At some point, it dawned on me that he wasn't just rehashing a memory for the nostalgia of it; he was reminiscing about me as a baby because those memories are now all that he and my mom had left. All at once—like Malcolm Crowe in the ending of The Sixth Sense — a wave of devastating realization washed over me: I died in that crash, so now, I'll never even have the opportunity to get married or gift my parents a grandchild. Worse than that, I'm now t...
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Insidious (2011)

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"It's not the house that's haunted. It's your son." From the moment those words were first spoken by Lin Shaye in the trailer for Insidious , they formed one of the most memorable quotes in the history of modern horror. However, it isn't entirely accurate. The implication is that Insidious would offer a more original take on the haunted-house subgenre, and while it is accurate that the ghosts, demons, and parasites which plague the Lambert family are attached specifically to their oldest son rather than the houses they inhabit, the supernatural antics written by Leigh Whannell and directed by James Wan fall squarely in line with the tropes of your typical haunted-house excursion. On a purely conceptual level, the plot of Insidious adheres firmly to the standard blueprint of the haunted-house horror story.  Josh and Renai Lambert (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne), a married couple, move into a new home with their three young children: oldest son Dalton (Ty Simpki...
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Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)

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"Every 23rd spring, for 23 days, it gets to eat." So warns the opening white text against a black background, in case you forgot that those exact words were spoken aloud by psychic Jezelle Gay Hartman, played so affectingly by Patricia Belcher, just two years prior in Jeepers Creepers 1 .  Following this written line of basic exposition regarding the Creeper (Jonathan Breck), Jeepers Creepers 2 picks up on day 22, one day before it's forced to retreat into hibernation for another 23 years, on the farm of the Taggart family, which consists of father Jack (Ray Wise), oldest son Jackie Jr. (Luke Edwards), youngest son Billy (Shaun Fleming), and their dog, Mac. This introduction kicks off Jeepers Creepers 2 on a promising note, with returning writer-director Victor Salva creating an ominous atmosphere through setting, camera movement, and shallow depth of field. Cinematographer Don E. FauntLeRoy pans his camera slowly across the cornfield in broad daylight, painting the sunny...
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Jeepers Creepers (2001)

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In 1990, Coldwater, Michigan, siblings Ray and Marie Thornton witnessed Dennis DePue, who, moments earlier, had caught their attention after speeding past them, disposing of a blood-stained blanket behind an abandoned schoolhouse. Catching the pair spying on him, DePue got in his car and began tailgating them for two miles. After he drove off, Ray and Marie returned to the schoolhouse to investigate, discovering the blanket and reporting their findings to the police. The following day, DePue committed suicide during a shootout with police in Mississippi.  While Victor Salva has never confirmed whether the DePue case served as the framework for his supernatural horror film, Jeepers Creepers , he did say that the opening act was based on "a true story that I was told, only it was an elderly couple, and they went back to this pipe to see what he was throwing down there. I thought that was a tremendously brave thing to do, but I also remember, when I heard it, thinking 'If that wa...
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