The Cherry Hill Chainsaw Massacre

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...

In his introduction for his review of Rick Rosenthal's Halloween 2 , Roger Ebert memorably bemoaned, "It's a little sad to witness a fall from greatness, and that's what we get in Halloween II ." That exact sentiment can all too easily and distressingly be applied to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 , Tobe Hooper's 1986 sequel to his own 1974 groundbreaking teen slasher masterpiece. Halloween 2 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 share a few things in common: both are 1980s sequels to 1970s slasher landmarks, both increase the graphic displays of their villains' carnage, neither comes close to living up to the suspense, horror, and artistry of their predecessors, and most astonishingly, both sequels are at least co-directed by the same director as the originals. It's profoundly upsetting and more than a little disconcerting to consider the fact that Tobe Hooper, the director and co-writer of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , is once again seated in the director...

When one observes the second part of the title, 10 Cloverfield Lane , their mind immediately wanders back to Matt Reeves' 2008 sci-fi found-footage horror film, Cloverfield , in which a small group of friends spends a single night fleeing the streets of New York City after a horde of aliens crash-lands in a nearby ocean and destroys everything in their sight. Eight years later, a sequel of sorts was released, but upon first glance, there doesn't appear to be much of a connection between Reeves' action-heavy monster movie and the decidedly quieter, more restrained, and mystery-driven chamber thriller devised by Josh Campbell, Matt Stuecken, and Damien Chazelle. The reason is obvious: 10 Cloverfield Lane originated from a spec script by Campbell and Stuecken titled The Cellar . It began its life as an original, standalone psychological horror film. During production, however, the filmmakers noticed core similarities to Cloverfield and decided to make it what producer J.J. Abr...