The Cherry Hill Chainsaw Massacre

By 1996, the slasher subgenre had been all but played out. The concept of a hulking, implacable psychopath hidden beneath a mask and wielding a sharp weapon who terrorizes a group of young, unsuspecting tourists was popularized in 1974 by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre . Only a short four years later did John Carpenter and Debra Hill introduce the modern trope of equating sex with death in Halloween , crafting the enigmatic, definitive cinematic boogeyman who murders three sexually active teenaged women before failing to claim the life of the single, straitlaced virgin. Recognizing that this formula was a recipe for success, Victor Miller and Sean S. Cunningham combined all three elements -- teen sexuality, isolation, and graphic violence -- into a story that gathered a group of young would-be camp counselors in the foreboding, adult-free woods of Camp Crystal Lake, left them to their own devices, and unleashed upon them the wrath of a grieving mother in F...

Pregnancy. It can be a blessing, a nightmare, or something in-between. Not that I can attest to the reality of the situation given that I'm a man, but living in a society where women are naturally expected to procreate and feel grateful for the opportunity to bring a unique, whole life into existence, I can only imagine the immense pressure and conflicted emotions faced by every woman as soon as they learn they're with child. As if that wasn't terrifying enough, imagine being a young, expectant mother who just moved into a new apartment with your husband and realizing that your excessively friendly neighbors are part of a plot to get you impregnated by the Devil so that you can give birth to his only living son. Oh, and by the way, your own husband pimped you out to said Devil for the sake of advancing his career.  A quick word of caution for any woman either trying to have a baby or already in the process, I would avoid watching Rosemary's Baby until after you've ...

"Why are you doing this to us?" "Because you were home." One of the most direct, clinically chilling exchanges in the history of cinematic horror emanated from Bryan Bertino's 2008 home-invasion thriller, The Strangers , one of the most underrated horror films I've ever seen in my twenty-five, horror-obsessed years of life, as well as the greatest slasher film of the past two decades bar none. With a bare-bones script, a pair of powerhouse lead performances, a trio of ingenious masks, a low-key score, and minimal lighting that seemed to emanate from only a limited supply of natural sources (street lamps, a fireplace fire, headlights, etc.), Bertino crafted an exciting, suspenseful, and ultimately gut-wrenching exercise in primal terror that placed the emphasis on blood-curdling tension in place of gallons of graphic bloodshed. Even the devastating, true-to-life conclusion kept the physical violence off-screen and the suffering of the victims at the forefront...