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Carrie: First Period (2026)

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50 years ago, director Brian De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen adapted the first published novel by Stephen King—a 1974 coming-of-age odyssey with a supernatural horror twist named after its eponymous antihero, Carrie —into what would become, fittingly enough, only the first-ever adaptation of a Stephen King novel . Boasting a pair of career-defining and Oscar-nominated performances from Sissy Spacek as Carrie White and Piper Laurie as her Bible-thumping, abusive mother, Margaret, the result, although slightly diminished by a campy undertone, remains the definitive interpretation of King's story that set the template for every bullied high school revenge film that followed in its wake.  Since then, there have been two added cinematic adaptations: a made-for-TV remake in 2002 written by Bryan Fuller and directed by David Carson, and a big-budget theatrical remake in 2013 co-written by original author Lawrence D. Cohen and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and directed by Kimberly P...

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

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On the rainy night of October 30, 1978, 21-year-old Michael Myers escaped from Smith's Grove Warren County Sanitarium, where he had spent the previous 15 years of his life after murdering his 17-year-old sister, Judith, at the age of six, and made his way back to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois in the stolen car of his psychiatrist, Sam Loomis. The next day, on Halloween, he managed to track down his now-17-year-old sister, Laurie Strode, who was only a baby when he murdered their older sister and she was subsequently adopted by the Strode family. After killing her two best friends, Annie Brackett and Lynda Van Der Klok, along with Lynda's boyfriend, Bob Simms, Michael pursued Laurie and subjected her to a night of trauma that would forever alter the course of her life, but thanks to the miraculously timed intervention of Dr. Loomis, who intuitively knew that his former patient was the personification of pure, unadulterated evil, Laurie was able to survive the night. Ment...

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

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The introductory intertitles for Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 , the meta sequel to Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez's groundbreaking 1999 supernatural horror phenomenon, The Blair Witch Project , read, "The following is a fictionalized reenactment of events that occurred after the release of The Blair Witch Project. It is based on public records, local Maryland TV broadcasts and hundreds of hours of taped interviews. To protect the privacy of certain individuals, some names have been changed." Right off the bat, co-writers Joe Berlinger (who pulls double duty as director) and Dick Beebe's attempt to replicate the verisimilitude of Myrick and Sanchez's low-budget masterpiece and deceive viewers into believing that what they're about to see is based on factual events is eye-rolling in its transparent phoniness. This isn't the only instance in which the filmmakers borrow liberally from their predecessor, which they must have loved so intensely seeing as th...