The Cherry Hill Chainsaw Massacre

In Frank Darabont's 2007 adaptation of Stephen King's sci-fi horror novella, The Mist , four of the primary protagonists gather in a storage room and discuss their diverging philosophies on human nature. Alone on the optimistic side is maternal teacher Amanda Dumfries (Laurie Holden), who rejects the notion that more than a few people will turn to the guidance of the conspicuously deranged, Bible-belt doomsayer, Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden). "People are basically good," she insists, "decent. My God, David, we're a civilized society." Movie-poster artist David Drayton's (Thomas Jane) viewpoint, on the other hand, is far more pragmatic and pessimistic. "Sure, as long as the machines are working and you can dial 911, but you take those things away, you throw people in the dark, you scare the shit out of them, no more rules, you'll see how primitive they get." On board with that theory are Dan Miller (Jeffrey DeMunn) and assistant manag...

In 1968, a pair of young nurses named Debbie (Morganna May) and Camilla (Amy Tipton) summoned the services of renowned demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) to cleanse their apartment of the supernatural phenomena that seemed to emanate from a vintage porcelain doll named Annabelle. Gifted to Debbie by her mother for her birthday, this doll began to demonstrate signs of possession in initially minor ways: a hand or leg switching to a different position, its head looking up instead of down. But then it began materializing in different rooms, moving around seemingly by itself. Once Camilla contacted a medium, they discovered that a seven-year-old girl named Annabelle Higgins had died in their apartment and desired to inhabit the doll as a means of making friends. Out of sheer sympathy owing to their compassionate professions, Debbie and Camilla granted permission to Annabelle's spirit to move into the doll. What started as unsettling but harmless gest...

Beginning in the early 2000s, the horror genre witnessed the boom of the remake. No property was considered too sacred to be given the contemporary treatment. Just ask Gus Van Sant, whose reverence for Alfred Hitchcock's seminal psychological slasher, Psycho , was so great that he felt compelled to produce a literal shot-for-shot rehash, changing only the actors and updating the time period in which the story was set. In fact, no subgenre was exhumed from the grave more vigorously than that of the slasher, particularly the teen slasher. By 2010, three out of the four most iconic monsters in horror had been brought back to the screen for a modern reinterpretation, each with a singular approach. First up in line was Leatherface. For his 2003 remake of Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel's trailblazing masterpiece, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , screenwriter Scott Kosar retraced the basic outline of his source material while filling it in with new details, none of which paled in comparison ...