The Cherry Hill Chainsaw Massacre

Our home is generally conceived as a sanctuary, a warm, comfortingly familiar bubble of security designed to protect us from the dangers and uncertainties of the outside world. As long as we lock our doors and windows, nobody else can infiltrate it, and if we've done nothing to earn the ire of others, why would anybody want to? Right? But what if we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, even if said "wrong place" is our very own home? What if we have done absolutely nothing wrong to anybody, but there just so happens to be a certain group of depraved individuals who thrive on causing pain and terror to the most innocent, unsuspecting human beings who have done nothing more than simply exist in their surrounding area? And they do it just because they can, because they enjoy it, because the selected targets were home.   That is the unnerving premise examined to its fullest, bleakest potential in writer-director Bryan Bertino's tense, nerve-racking, unrelent...

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 ...