The Cherry Hill Chainsaw Massacre

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...

Stephen King is the most renowned horror author still living, his numerous works of literature having given birth to some of the most legendary horror films and their antagonists. Notably, his affinity for horror seems to almost invariably be rooted in the realm of the supernatural, whether it be a socially alienated teenage girl exploiting her dormant telekinesis to exact vengeance on the sadistic students who've bullied her her entire life, a recovering alcoholic patriarch becoming possessed by the spirits of the hotel in which he's taken a job as a winter caretaker, or an Indian burial ground that restores life to recently deceased pets with the caveat that they make their owners realize that "sometimes, dead is better." But sometime in 1966-1967, during his freshman year at the University of Maine, King began writing what would become his first-ever novel, and while it fit into the genre of horror, the cause was rooted entirely in the here and now. Even the most i...