O:9:"MagpieRSS":23:{s:6:"parser";i:0;s:12:"current_item";a:0:{}s:5:"items";a:10:{i:0;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:82:"‘The Batman’ and Beyond: Five Dark Superhero Horror Movies to Stream This Week";s:4:"link";s:131:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/the-batman-and-beyond-five-dark-superhero-horror-movies-to-stream-this-week/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 24 Apr 2022 03:52:21 +0000";s:8:"category";s:52:"Scream AwayBatmandarkHorrormoviesStreamSuperheroWeek";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=64152";s:11:"description";s:685:"Horror anthology films have the good fortune of hosting several stories. Audiences can find something to like even if the entire collection is not up to par. As for anthologies on the small screen, usually these series are limited to one story per episode. Focusing on only one plot at a time has its advantages; ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:18897:"
Horror anthology films have the good fortune of hosting several stories. Audiences can find something to like even if the entire collection is not up to par. As for anthologies on the small screen, usually these series are limited to one story per episode.
Focusing on only one plot at a time has its advantages; the full attention makes for better writing. Yet, variety also has value in anthology shows. A multi-storied episode, such as the following five, can keep the audience just as engaged, if not more entertained.
The Twilight Zone (1985-1989) Gramma/Personal Demons/Cold Reading
Unlike the original show, episodes of the 1980s Twilight Zone revival were divided into two or three segments during the first two seasons. Season Three then saw the series adapt a more standard format.
This episode from Season One kicks off with its strongest offering; Barret Oliver from The Neverending Story plays a boy deathly afraid of his ailing grandmother. As his mother leaves the house during a stormy night, Georgie stays behind with the namesake of “Gramma“. Stephen King‘s short story provides the basis for this creepy chapter. Without giving too much away, the opener accumulates a glut of dread without showing too much of the sickly woman who strikes fear into her grandson’s heart.
“Personal Demons” finds an aging TV writer (Martin Balsam) in distress when he sees demons wherever he goes. Of course they are invisible to everyone else. Showing too much of the creatures gradually dulls their effect, but this middle story is a creative way of inspiring someone who suffers from writer’s block.
The last tale steps away from horror and runs toward absurdity. Taking a page out of the War of the Worlds incident from 1938, the humorous and imaginative “Cold Reading” follows a 1940s radio show where everything read aloud materializes inside the studio.
Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction (1997-2002) House of Shadows/One Hand in the Till/Teasdale’s Motor Car/ The Vision/The Grave
The challenge of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction was determining the authenticity of five different stories. The series is not thoroughly horror, but the genre appeared in just about every episode. Even if a vignette was not exactly scary, it was at least weird.
The most suspenseful portion of this Season Four episode is served up first; a house-sitter experiences the scare of a lifetime in “House of Shadows“. The TV continues to switch to video of a man mixing concrete in a strange room. The sitter then recognizes the footage’s location.
“One Hand In the Till” features a case of astral projection; a father does the impossible to prevent his son from making a huge mistake. In “Teasdale’s Motor Car“, a man’s dream car becomes the source of his nightmares. “The Vision” is a classic case of someone trying to stop a portent coming to pass. Finally, “The Grave” is a low-key ghost story about a wronged dead man whose cemetery plot remains grass-free so long as his crooked wife and ex-partner are alive.
Of all the stories presented, host Jonathan Frakes claims only two are based on factual events. Both of these supposed incidents occurred sometime in the 1980s, according to the show.
Night Visions (2001) The Maze/Harmony
After being rerun on the now-defunct Chiller network, Night Visions slipped back into obscurity. Today it is unclear if the 2001 show will see the light of day again. It would be a shame to have an anthology of this caliber be forgotten.
Fox simply had no faith in Night Visions, and as a result, it was discarded without much afterthought. The Sci-Fi Channel briefly came to the rescue in the days before the Syfy rebranding; several stories were compiled into a standalone feature called Shadow Realm. This collection includes “The Maze” and “Harmony“, which originally aired together as one episode in 2002.
Tobe Hooper does something odd in “The Maze”, and it is not the kind of oddness he was known for. Hooper actually gave the protagonist, played by Thora Birch, a happy ending with no dark strings attached. Her character is a shy college student who is afraid to step outside her comfort zone. Yet, getting trapped in a frightening alternate world after entering a hedge maze on campus scares her into changing. Hooper and writer Steve Aspis take the road less traveled in Night Visions; they leave on a hopeful note rather than a bleak one.
Meanwhile, “Harmony” is the complete opposite of the previous short. Timothy Olyphant‘s car breaks down in a small town where music is forbidden. Rulebreakers are also unduly punished. When this outsider challenges the status quo and questions the townsfolks’ unusual beliefs, he gets the rudest awakening. The conclusion of this tale is an all-timer for Night Visions.
Two Twisted (2006) There’s Something About Kyanna/Finding Frank
Two Twisted is a sequel to the 1996 Australian anthology Twisted Tales, and it is produced by actor Bryan Brown. The stories in the 2006 show are paired up, with two to each episode. The premiere starts off with a seaside haunter called “There’s Something About Kyanna“.
Melissa George‘s character has moved into a secluded beach house along with her husband (Sandy Winton). The home, named Kyanna by its architect, has a secret underneath its beautiful exterior. Unbeknownst to its current occupants, this secret is why the house was on the market for so long.
The problem with having several standalone stories in one episode is the inevitable comparison. “There’s Something About Kyanna” is merely average when put up against something like “Finding Frank“, but scheduling it first helps smooth things over. The most glaring problem, though, is the underwhelming twist.
“Finding Frank” is definitely the better of the two segments. The title character (Garry McDonald) is set to retire from his security job, and on his last night, he is menaced by an unknown threat inside the building. The outcome is genuinely shocking.
Black Mirror (2011-2019) Black Museum
Black Mirror is a large reason why anthologies are in fashion again. While it is unclear if the series will return in the near future, creator Charlie Booker helped revolutionize how people view self-contained narratives on television today. For many, his work is the new gold standard.
Booker switched things up in the finale of Season Four by having a trio of sub-stories as well as a wraparound. In “Black Museum“, Letitia Wright‘s character has time to waste as her car recharges, so she takes a tour of a nearby medical museum. The tour guide (Douglas Hodge) presents his one and only guest with three bizarre cases, with each one more disturbing than the last.
The first exhibit relates to a doctor (Daniel Lapaine) who tested an experimental implant; the device allowed him to feel others’ sensations. The doctor eventually becomes addicted to pain — be it someone else’s or his own. From body horror to sadistic violence, this segment does everything in its power to make the viewer uneasy. The next story recalls a comatose mother and wife (Alexandra Roach) whose consciousness is transferred to a part of her husband’s brain (Aldis Hodge). While this tale comes across as lighthearted, it still works in a sad ending.
The final case criticizes those who find pleasure in other people’s misery. In this piece, a death row inmate’s holographic image (Babs Olusanmokun) is available for torture at the Black Museum. How everything then wraps up only reaffirms how pessimistic Black Mirror is.
Series of Frightsis a recurring column that mainly focuses on horror in television. Specifically, it takes a closer look at five episodes or stories — each one adhering to an overall theme — from different anthology series or the occasional movie made for TV. With anthologies becoming popular again, especially on television, now is the perfect time to see what this timeless mode of storytelling has to offer.
We wish to thank the writer of this short article for this awesome web content
";}s:7:"summary";s:685:"Horror anthology films have the good fortune of hosting several stories. Audiences can find something to like even if the entire collection is not up to par. As for anthologies on the small screen, usually these series are limited to one story per episode. Focusing on only one plot at a time has its advantages; ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:18897:"
Horror anthology films have the good fortune of hosting several stories. Audiences can find something to like even if the entire collection is not up to par. As for anthologies on the small screen, usually these series are limited to one story per episode.
Focusing on only one plot at a time has its advantages; the full attention makes for better writing. Yet, variety also has value in anthology shows. A multi-storied episode, such as the following five, can keep the audience just as engaged, if not more entertained.
The Twilight Zone (1985-1989) Gramma/Personal Demons/Cold Reading
Unlike the original show, episodes of the 1980s Twilight Zone revival were divided into two or three segments during the first two seasons. Season Three then saw the series adapt a more standard format.
This episode from Season One kicks off with its strongest offering; Barret Oliver from The Neverending Story plays a boy deathly afraid of his ailing grandmother. As his mother leaves the house during a stormy night, Georgie stays behind with the namesake of “Gramma“. Stephen King‘s short story provides the basis for this creepy chapter. Without giving too much away, the opener accumulates a glut of dread without showing too much of the sickly woman who strikes fear into her grandson’s heart.
“Personal Demons” finds an aging TV writer (Martin Balsam) in distress when he sees demons wherever he goes. Of course they are invisible to everyone else. Showing too much of the creatures gradually dulls their effect, but this middle story is a creative way of inspiring someone who suffers from writer’s block.
The last tale steps away from horror and runs toward absurdity. Taking a page out of the War of the Worlds incident from 1938, the humorous and imaginative “Cold Reading” follows a 1940s radio show where everything read aloud materializes inside the studio.
Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction (1997-2002) House of Shadows/One Hand in the Till/Teasdale’s Motor Car/ The Vision/The Grave
The challenge of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction was determining the authenticity of five different stories. The series is not thoroughly horror, but the genre appeared in just about every episode. Even if a vignette was not exactly scary, it was at least weird.
The most suspenseful portion of this Season Four episode is served up first; a house-sitter experiences the scare of a lifetime in “House of Shadows“. The TV continues to switch to video of a man mixing concrete in a strange room. The sitter then recognizes the footage’s location.
“One Hand In the Till” features a case of astral projection; a father does the impossible to prevent his son from making a huge mistake. In “Teasdale’s Motor Car“, a man’s dream car becomes the source of his nightmares. “The Vision” is a classic case of someone trying to stop a portent coming to pass. Finally, “The Grave” is a low-key ghost story about a wronged dead man whose cemetery plot remains grass-free so long as his crooked wife and ex-partner are alive.
Of all the stories presented, host Jonathan Frakes claims only two are based on factual events. Both of these supposed incidents occurred sometime in the 1980s, according to the show.
Night Visions (2001) The Maze/Harmony
After being rerun on the now-defunct Chiller network, Night Visions slipped back into obscurity. Today it is unclear if the 2001 show will see the light of day again. It would be a shame to have an anthology of this caliber be forgotten.
Fox simply had no faith in Night Visions, and as a result, it was discarded without much afterthought. The Sci-Fi Channel briefly came to the rescue in the days before the Syfy rebranding; several stories were compiled into a standalone feature called Shadow Realm. This collection includes “The Maze” and “Harmony“, which originally aired together as one episode in 2002.
Tobe Hooper does something odd in “The Maze”, and it is not the kind of oddness he was known for. Hooper actually gave the protagonist, played by Thora Birch, a happy ending with no dark strings attached. Her character is a shy college student who is afraid to step outside her comfort zone. Yet, getting trapped in a frightening alternate world after entering a hedge maze on campus scares her into changing. Hooper and writer Steve Aspis take the road less traveled in Night Visions; they leave on a hopeful note rather than a bleak one.
Meanwhile, “Harmony” is the complete opposite of the previous short. Timothy Olyphant‘s car breaks down in a small town where music is forbidden. Rulebreakers are also unduly punished. When this outsider challenges the status quo and questions the townsfolks’ unusual beliefs, he gets the rudest awakening. The conclusion of this tale is an all-timer for Night Visions.
Two Twisted (2006) There’s Something About Kyanna/Finding Frank
Two Twisted is a sequel to the 1996 Australian anthology Twisted Tales, and it is produced by actor Bryan Brown. The stories in the 2006 show are paired up, with two to each episode. The premiere starts off with a seaside haunter called “There’s Something About Kyanna“.
Melissa George‘s character has moved into a secluded beach house along with her husband (Sandy Winton). The home, named Kyanna by its architect, has a secret underneath its beautiful exterior. Unbeknownst to its current occupants, this secret is why the house was on the market for so long.
The problem with having several standalone stories in one episode is the inevitable comparison. “There’s Something About Kyanna” is merely average when put up against something like “Finding Frank“, but scheduling it first helps smooth things over. The most glaring problem, though, is the underwhelming twist.
“Finding Frank” is definitely the better of the two segments. The title character (Garry McDonald) is set to retire from his security job, and on his last night, he is menaced by an unknown threat inside the building. The outcome is genuinely shocking.
Black Mirror (2011-2019) Black Museum
Black Mirror is a large reason why anthologies are in fashion again. While it is unclear if the series will return in the near future, creator Charlie Booker helped revolutionize how people view self-contained narratives on television today. For many, his work is the new gold standard.
Booker switched things up in the finale of Season Four by having a trio of sub-stories as well as a wraparound. In “Black Museum“, Letitia Wright‘s character has time to waste as her car recharges, so she takes a tour of a nearby medical museum. The tour guide (Douglas Hodge) presents his one and only guest with three bizarre cases, with each one more disturbing than the last.
The first exhibit relates to a doctor (Daniel Lapaine) who tested an experimental implant; the device allowed him to feel others’ sensations. The doctor eventually becomes addicted to pain — be it someone else’s or his own. From body horror to sadistic violence, this segment does everything in its power to make the viewer uneasy. The next story recalls a comatose mother and wife (Alexandra Roach) whose consciousness is transferred to a part of her husband’s brain (Aldis Hodge). While this tale comes across as lighthearted, it still works in a sad ending.
The final case criticizes those who find pleasure in other people’s misery. In this piece, a death row inmate’s holographic image (Babs Olusanmokun) is available for torture at the Black Museum. How everything then wraps up only reaffirms how pessimistic Black Mirror is.
Series of Frightsis a recurring column that mainly focuses on horror in television. Specifically, it takes a closer look at five episodes or stories — each one adhering to an overall theme — from different anthology series or the occasional movie made for TV. With anthologies becoming popular again, especially on television, now is the perfect time to see what this timeless mode of storytelling has to offer.
We wish to thank the writer of this short article for this awesome web content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1650772341;}i:1;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:112:"Nothing In ‘We’re All Going To The World’s Fair’ Is Scarier Than The Internet As It Really Is | Defector";s:4:"link";s:154:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/nothing-in-were-all-going-to-the-worlds-fair-is-scarier-than-the-internet-as-it-really-is-defector/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 24 Apr 2022 02:30:38 +0000";s:8:"category";s:44:"Scream AwayDefectorfairinternetScarierworlds";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=64129";s:11:"description";s:787:"We’re All Going To The World’s Fair is being marketed like a horror film, and if you come across this movie its branding and threateningly ambiguous title will likely make you think it is one. But it’s probably better for your expectations if you approach it as, like director Jane Schoenbrun says, “a movie about ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:9403:"
We’re All Going To The World’s Fair is being marketed like a horror film, and if you come across this movie its branding and threateningly ambiguous title will likely make you think it is one. But it’s probably better for your expectations if you approach it as, like director Jane Schoenbrun says, “a movie about someone who loves horror.” There are no jump scares, screechy music cues, blood and gore, or any of those maximalist elements that define most standard horror experiences. If you’re looking for that, you’ll likely come away disappointed. But viewers of this buzzy indie film might come away haunted, just the same, by the dangers that lurk within it.
Schoenbrun has traced the beginning of this film to the 2014 “Slenderman Stabbing” in suburban Milwaukee, in which a pair of 12-year-old girls attacked a friend because they said they believed the meme horror character Slenderman would kill their families if they didn’t. This statement from the local police chief in the midst of the moral panic this violence caused aptly describes the motivating anxiety underneath World’s Fair:
“The Internet has changed the way we live. It is full of information and wonderful sites that teach and entertain. The Internet can also be full of dark and wicked things.”
Casey, the film’s lead character played by newcomer Anna Cobb, actively seeks out that darkness and wickedness. The film begins with the high schooler, talking to a webcam in her bedroom, announcing that she’s going to take “The World’s Fair Challenge.” This involves saying “I want to go to the World’s Fair” three times, drawing blood from a finger, and watching a flashing video online. As Casey waits for “symptoms” from this challenge to manifest, we see through her eyes as she watches videos of other people who have taken the challenge, and who have documented disturbing and unnatural changes in their minds and bodies. While it gradually becomes clear to the viewer that this is a creepypasta-like community, in which people use horror mythology as a backbone for their artistic hobbies, it’s less clear if Casey herself understands the nature of what she’s participating in. As the film progresses, her videos get more and more intense: she dances robotically to a pop song and starts to scream madly in the middle of it; she smears glow-in-the-dark lotion on her face and destroys her childhood stuffed lemur before leaving the room and returning shocked and horrified, with no apparent memory of what she’s done; she mumbles threats of violence against herself and others while wandering a busy street on New Year’s Eve. Are we watching a theater kid’s inspired performance art? Or a true unraveling?
Casey’s a loner, to the extent that the viewer never sees her with another person—her father appears once, as an angry off-screen voice. She’s not a particularly known figure online, either, with her videos only getting at most a few hundred views. And though much of her life is left outside the frame, we’re shown more than enough to question her mental well-being. Cobb plays Casey with the familiar precociousness a kid possesses when they’ve seen a bunch of movies and want to emulate them, mixed with the awkwardness of a still-developing person. She has many standout scenes, but perhaps the most harrowing comes early on, after Casey has taken the challenge, when she describes why she did it. Not only has she always loved horror movies and wants to be in one, she says, but she hopes to recapture a feeling she had when she was younger and used to sleepwalk—this feeling of being able to see your body from a distance, like on a TV across the room, but not be able to control it, even to move out of the way of a car in the road.
It’s important to note here that Schoenbrun is trans, and Casey’s monologue stands out quite distinctly as a description of possible dysphoria. In fact the entirety of the movie, to me at least, echoes what is at least anecdotally a common experience for young trans people of a certain generation, from before they fully understood themselves. It stems from that hard-to-verbalize feeling that something about your life is a little wrong, and needs to change. The internet beckons as a universe through which you can remake yourself or find yourself or lose yourself, with endless paths leading to something else, perhaps something you’ve been craving without being able to name. That’s why Casey takes the challenge.
But the inherent freedom of the internet is also a danger, as every step carries the threat that you can go too deep, at too young an age. (Sites like Youtube have practically made this their business model.) For Casey, that threat is personified by a lonely man in his 50s named JLB, played by Michael J. Rogers, into whose perspective the film sometimes teleports. We’re first introduced to him one night when Casey, who can’t sleep, unlocks her father’s shed, examines a gun he owns, and then lays down while watching an ASMR sleep video projected onto the wall. When that video ends, another one autoplays, showing a classic horror-movie message made by JLB warning Casey she’s in danger. He and Casey then videochat with each other, his face hidden to her, where he knowingly plays the role of supernatural expert to further Casey’s experience with the challenge and within the community. He presses her to keep making videos “so I know you’re OK.” If an older man initiating contact with a high school girl isn’t creepy enough in its implications, then a later shot of JLB watching Casey’s dance video with his pants around his ankles on the toilet hammers home that the threat here is something realer and more familiar than any kind of demonic possession.
Without giving too much away, the film’s climax is invigorating because of how much it leaves ambiguous, and I’m left questioning who is or isn’t telling the truth. But more personally, I’m terrified by the mirror held up by Casey’s arc, reflecting my experience and that of so, so many others, who reached privately from our bedrooms out to the rest of the world, crossing in our search for answers those dark and wicked things. I’m thinking about how my early encounters with transness were sexualized, and therefore pathologized, building more unhappiness and shame instead of brokering understanding. You can find the good communities if you know where to look, but at that age you don’t know where to look. The path of least resistance, paved by the JLBs of the world, is to see yourself as a fetish, as a vessel for someone else’s fantasies, before seeing yourself as a person.
I believed for a while that things had gotten better since I was a kid, but it’s easy to imagine how bad things will get if people keep trying to legislate trans kids out of the real world, pushing them further online, where they think they can actually manage to exist. When my trans peers and I were young, we recognized the darkness and wickedness for what it was, absorbed it, and then either internalized or ignored it. In some cases, perhaps, we followed the trail for a while but managed to escape before the witch cooked and ate us. But in the scariest and most upsetting of cases, we let it become a warped replacement for reality, and more hours than not when I think about World’s Fair, I believe that’s what happened to Casey. In this movie, and on the internet, there are no horror-movie monsters. What’s actually out there in the darkness is much worse.
We want to give thanks to the writer of this short article for this amazing web content
";}s:7:"summary";s:787:"We’re All Going To The World’s Fair is being marketed like a horror film, and if you come across this movie its branding and threateningly ambiguous title will likely make you think it is one. But it’s probably better for your expectations if you approach it as, like director Jane Schoenbrun says, “a movie about ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:9403:"
We’re All Going To The World’s Fair is being marketed like a horror film, and if you come across this movie its branding and threateningly ambiguous title will likely make you think it is one. But it’s probably better for your expectations if you approach it as, like director Jane Schoenbrun says, “a movie about someone who loves horror.” There are no jump scares, screechy music cues, blood and gore, or any of those maximalist elements that define most standard horror experiences. If you’re looking for that, you’ll likely come away disappointed. But viewers of this buzzy indie film might come away haunted, just the same, by the dangers that lurk within it.
Schoenbrun has traced the beginning of this film to the 2014 “Slenderman Stabbing” in suburban Milwaukee, in which a pair of 12-year-old girls attacked a friend because they said they believed the meme horror character Slenderman would kill their families if they didn’t. This statement from the local police chief in the midst of the moral panic this violence caused aptly describes the motivating anxiety underneath World’s Fair:
“The Internet has changed the way we live. It is full of information and wonderful sites that teach and entertain. The Internet can also be full of dark and wicked things.”
Casey, the film’s lead character played by newcomer Anna Cobb, actively seeks out that darkness and wickedness. The film begins with the high schooler, talking to a webcam in her bedroom, announcing that she’s going to take “The World’s Fair Challenge.” This involves saying “I want to go to the World’s Fair” three times, drawing blood from a finger, and watching a flashing video online. As Casey waits for “symptoms” from this challenge to manifest, we see through her eyes as she watches videos of other people who have taken the challenge, and who have documented disturbing and unnatural changes in their minds and bodies. While it gradually becomes clear to the viewer that this is a creepypasta-like community, in which people use horror mythology as a backbone for their artistic hobbies, it’s less clear if Casey herself understands the nature of what she’s participating in. As the film progresses, her videos get more and more intense: she dances robotically to a pop song and starts to scream madly in the middle of it; she smears glow-in-the-dark lotion on her face and destroys her childhood stuffed lemur before leaving the room and returning shocked and horrified, with no apparent memory of what she’s done; she mumbles threats of violence against herself and others while wandering a busy street on New Year’s Eve. Are we watching a theater kid’s inspired performance art? Or a true unraveling?
Casey’s a loner, to the extent that the viewer never sees her with another person—her father appears once, as an angry off-screen voice. She’s not a particularly known figure online, either, with her videos only getting at most a few hundred views. And though much of her life is left outside the frame, we’re shown more than enough to question her mental well-being. Cobb plays Casey with the familiar precociousness a kid possesses when they’ve seen a bunch of movies and want to emulate them, mixed with the awkwardness of a still-developing person. She has many standout scenes, but perhaps the most harrowing comes early on, after Casey has taken the challenge, when she describes why she did it. Not only has she always loved horror movies and wants to be in one, she says, but she hopes to recapture a feeling she had when she was younger and used to sleepwalk—this feeling of being able to see your body from a distance, like on a TV across the room, but not be able to control it, even to move out of the way of a car in the road.
It’s important to note here that Schoenbrun is trans, and Casey’s monologue stands out quite distinctly as a description of possible dysphoria. In fact the entirety of the movie, to me at least, echoes what is at least anecdotally a common experience for young trans people of a certain generation, from before they fully understood themselves. It stems from that hard-to-verbalize feeling that something about your life is a little wrong, and needs to change. The internet beckons as a universe through which you can remake yourself or find yourself or lose yourself, with endless paths leading to something else, perhaps something you’ve been craving without being able to name. That’s why Casey takes the challenge.
But the inherent freedom of the internet is also a danger, as every step carries the threat that you can go too deep, at too young an age. (Sites like Youtube have practically made this their business model.) For Casey, that threat is personified by a lonely man in his 50s named JLB, played by Michael J. Rogers, into whose perspective the film sometimes teleports. We’re first introduced to him one night when Casey, who can’t sleep, unlocks her father’s shed, examines a gun he owns, and then lays down while watching an ASMR sleep video projected onto the wall. When that video ends, another one autoplays, showing a classic horror-movie message made by JLB warning Casey she’s in danger. He and Casey then videochat with each other, his face hidden to her, where he knowingly plays the role of supernatural expert to further Casey’s experience with the challenge and within the community. He presses her to keep making videos “so I know you’re OK.” If an older man initiating contact with a high school girl isn’t creepy enough in its implications, then a later shot of JLB watching Casey’s dance video with his pants around his ankles on the toilet hammers home that the threat here is something realer and more familiar than any kind of demonic possession.
Without giving too much away, the film’s climax is invigorating because of how much it leaves ambiguous, and I’m left questioning who is or isn’t telling the truth. But more personally, I’m terrified by the mirror held up by Casey’s arc, reflecting my experience and that of so, so many others, who reached privately from our bedrooms out to the rest of the world, crossing in our search for answers those dark and wicked things. I’m thinking about how my early encounters with transness were sexualized, and therefore pathologized, building more unhappiness and shame instead of brokering understanding. You can find the good communities if you know where to look, but at that age you don’t know where to look. The path of least resistance, paved by the JLBs of the world, is to see yourself as a fetish, as a vessel for someone else’s fantasies, before seeing yourself as a person.
I believed for a while that things had gotten better since I was a kid, but it’s easy to imagine how bad things will get if people keep trying to legislate trans kids out of the real world, pushing them further online, where they think they can actually manage to exist. When my trans peers and I were young, we recognized the darkness and wickedness for what it was, absorbed it, and then either internalized or ignored it. In some cases, perhaps, we followed the trail for a while but managed to escape before the witch cooked and ate us. But in the scariest and most upsetting of cases, we let it become a warped replacement for reality, and more hours than not when I think about World’s Fair, I believe that’s what happened to Casey. In this movie, and on the internet, there are no horror-movie monsters. What’s actually out there in the darkness is much worse.
We want to give thanks to the writer of this short article for this amazing web content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1650767438;}i:2;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:72:"10 Highest Grossing ’80s Slasher Movies (According to Box Office Mojo)";s:4:"link";s:123:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/10-highest-grossing-80s-slasher-movies-according-to-box-office-mojo/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 24 Apr 2022 01:09:06 +0000";s:8:"category";s:48:"Scream Away80sboxGrossingMojomoviesofficeSlasher";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=64100";s:11:"description";s:670:"For a genre that only really came into existence a few years before, slashers really managed to carve out a name for themselves in the 1980s. Every single year of the ’80s saw multiple slasher movies released and, while they all couldn’t reach the heights of Halloween, many of them actually made a lot of ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:29708:"
For a genre that only really came into existence a few years before, slashers really managed to carve out a name for themselves in the 1980s. Every single year of the ’80s saw multiple slasher movies released and, while they all couldn’t reach the heights of Halloween, many of them actually made a lot of money.
Related: Every Main Character In Halloween (1978), Ranked By Intelligence
As for what classifies as a slasher, aside from Box Office Mojo categorizing them as such, there’s generally a masked or scary character killing people, often in gory ways, throughout the runtime. Plenty of times the low grossing ones are still very good, but this batch of high grossing slashers largely features the big three: Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger.
10 A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Box Office: $25,504,513
When A Nightmare on Elm Street came out in 1984 Wes Craven managed to turn a nightmare he once had into a shared experience with millions, and the film wound up making millions as a result. Robert Englund’s well-received portrayal of Freddy Krueger was quite different from the other high grossing slashers of the ’80s in that it was very personality-based. Freddy doesn’t just stalk and slash, he has things to say.
Budgeted at $1.7 million (per AFI), A Nightmare on Elm Streetwould up grossing 15 times that amount domestically and made a cultural icon out of Freddy Krueger. New Line Cinema existed before A Nightmare on Elm Street, but the success of the film, and its sequels, lead to the studio rightly being referred to as “The house that Freddy built.”
9 Halloween II (1981)
Box Office: $25,533,818
Set on the same night as 1978’s Halloween, this sequel continues the Michael Myers murder saga. Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, but she spends most of the film recuperating in a hospital room (a story choice that 2021’s Halloween Kills repeats). John Carpenter’s booze-fueled writing process and general disinterest in the sequels, as detailed by Vulture, are well known, but money is money.
Related: 8 Best Kills Halloween II Kills, Ranked
While it didn’t match the original in reception or earnings, ultimately Halloween II‘s budget of $2.5 million (via AFI) was made back 10 times over, earning the studio a pretty penny. The other Halloween movies released in the ’80s delivered diminishing returns, but the franchise eventually rebounded and has Halloween Ends scheduled for release this October (per Screen Rant).
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
8 A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)
Box Office: $29,999,213
Opening less than a year after the first film debuted, this sequel actually managed to earn more at the box office than the original – a rare accomplishment. With a male lead in Mark Patton (an outlier for a slasher) and queer subtext, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is widely known as one of the gayest horror movies ever made. There’s even a documentary, 2019’s Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, about its homoeroticism.
This $2.5 million production (per AFI) went on to make 12 times the budget and cemented Freddy Krueger’s money-making value to New Line Cinema. Despite this film’s success, none of these characters reappear in any future installments, making this the sole film of the series with the only repeat character being Freddy himself.
7 Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Box Office: $32,980,880
Friday the 13th‘s fourth installment is largely known as the one with Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis, but die-hard fans also remember it for the return of make-up legend Tom Savini (previously from Friday the 13th). It was as popular with film critics as a machete to the face, but these movies aren’t made for the Siskel & Eberts of the world.
Despite the finality of the film’s title, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter proved to be far from the end. A sequel actually came out less than a year after this one opened, because when a movie makes 15 times its $2.2 million budget (via AFI) there will absolutely be another one.
6 Child’s Play (1988)
Box Office: $33,244,684
Chucky carves out a spot for himself on the list of highest-grossing slashers of the ’80s with the one and only Child’s Play movie released that decade. Of all ’80s slashers, the Child’s Play/Chucky series is the only one still building on the original continuity thanks to writer/director Don Mancini, who has been with the franchise since day one. The 2019 reboot is legally a separate beast, so it isn’t included.
In contrast to the rather tiny budgets of most slashers on this list, Child’s Play cost around $13 million to produce (per AFI). Even with that comparatively huge budget, it earned enough to kick off a seven movie and one TV series franchise that’s still chugging along today (Chucky S2 premieres later this year). The combination of the creepy doll and Brad Dourif’s foul-mouthed voice work turned out to have quite the staying power.
5 Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
Box Office: $34,581,519
Friday the 13th Part III is notable for being the sequel that gave Jason his hockey mask (as opposed to the silly sack he wore on his head previously). This is also the only time a director returned to do a second Friday the 13th film, so Steve Miner actually ended up being responsible for both bringing adult killer Jason in the mix as well as his iconic look.
Related: Ranking Every Friday The 12th Movie According To Rotten Tomatoes
Although Friday the 13th had already jumped the shark multiple times by this point, Part III managed to bounce back up to nearly $35 million after Part 2 topped out with just under $22 million. So, while the dated 3D effects are mostly just good for a laugh nowadays, the gimmick proved rather effective at the time.
4 Psycho II (1983)
Box Office: $34,725,000
Sequels might be commonplace today, but Psycho II coming out 23 years after Psycho was a trailblazer in that respect. Anthony Perkins and Vera Miles both returned from the 1960 Hitchcock classic, but some of the creative choices in regard to how Miles’ character was written might leave a bad aftertaste for fans of the original.
Related: 10 Movies & TV Scenes That Parody Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
While not a unique horror movie premise, on a $4 million budget (per AFI) Psycho II was able to ride that slasher craze and gross more than enough to justify 1986’s Psycho III. That installment proved to be less lucky, making well less than half of this while costing twice as much to produce, according to the AFI.
3 Friday the 13th (1980)
Box Office: $39,754,601
If there was any doubt about slashers being a profitable genre after 1978’s Halloween made an obscene amount of money, Friday the 13th laid those concerns to rest with a bloody arrow through Kevin Bacon’s throat. As far as gore and body counts go, Friday the 13th definitely set the standard for cheap and profitable slasher fare for years to come – and even features a somewhat sympathetic horror movie villain.
Produced for just $650,000 (via AFI), Sean Cunningham’s tale of camp counselors being graphically murdered went on to make over 61 times its budget. That’s a ridiculous return on investment that nobody could have ever predicted, but many tried to replicate.
2 A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Box Office: $44,793,222
A third film was inevitable after the success of the first two, but with Heather Langenkamp returning as Nancy and Wes Craven returning as a writer, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors had a couple of things working in its favor. Having a young Laurence Fishburne (or “Larry” as he’s credited here) didn’t hurt, either.
Even with an increased budget of about $4.5 million (per AFI), the film made 10 times its cost and managed to increase in gross from the previous film once again. No other horror franchise of the ’80s (or ever, really) displayed as much upward mobility.
1 A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
Box Office: $49,369,899
With the number one spot, A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Master is the fourth film from this franchise to place in the ranking of highest-grossing ’80s slashers. Turns out A Nightmare on Elm Street was able to increase in gross one last time, making it the unmatched king of horror franchise growth.
With a budget of $6.5 million (via AFI), this was the most expensive film to produce so far, but based on the huge success of the previous three it was almost a sure thing. Even though the fifth of the series crashed down to about 22 million the following year, New Line Cinema was already “The house that Freddy built” and nothing could take that away.
Next: 10 Freddy Krueger One-Liners That Have Aged Poorly
Next 10 Movies That Were Basically Just Ads, According To Reddit
About The Author
Adem Cohen (2 Articles Published)
Adem Cohen and his husband live in an Arizonian city with their pet(s). Adem has no desire for any social media presence, but he enjoys all the silly animal videos the internet has to offer. Also, he and his husband would like to visit Tokyo one day.
More From Adem Cohen
We would love to thank the writer of this write-up for this amazing content
";}s:7:"summary";s:670:"For a genre that only really came into existence a few years before, slashers really managed to carve out a name for themselves in the 1980s. Every single year of the ’80s saw multiple slasher movies released and, while they all couldn’t reach the heights of Halloween, many of them actually made a lot of ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:29708:"
For a genre that only really came into existence a few years before, slashers really managed to carve out a name for themselves in the 1980s. Every single year of the ’80s saw multiple slasher movies released and, while they all couldn’t reach the heights of Halloween, many of them actually made a lot of money.
Related: Every Main Character In Halloween (1978), Ranked By Intelligence
As for what classifies as a slasher, aside from Box Office Mojo categorizing them as such, there’s generally a masked or scary character killing people, often in gory ways, throughout the runtime. Plenty of times the low grossing ones are still very good, but this batch of high grossing slashers largely features the big three: Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger.
10 A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Box Office: $25,504,513
When A Nightmare on Elm Street came out in 1984 Wes Craven managed to turn a nightmare he once had into a shared experience with millions, and the film wound up making millions as a result. Robert Englund’s well-received portrayal of Freddy Krueger was quite different from the other high grossing slashers of the ’80s in that it was very personality-based. Freddy doesn’t just stalk and slash, he has things to say.
Budgeted at $1.7 million (per AFI), A Nightmare on Elm Streetwould up grossing 15 times that amount domestically and made a cultural icon out of Freddy Krueger. New Line Cinema existed before A Nightmare on Elm Street, but the success of the film, and its sequels, lead to the studio rightly being referred to as “The house that Freddy built.”
9 Halloween II (1981)
Box Office: $25,533,818
Set on the same night as 1978’s Halloween, this sequel continues the Michael Myers murder saga. Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, but she spends most of the film recuperating in a hospital room (a story choice that 2021’s Halloween Kills repeats). John Carpenter’s booze-fueled writing process and general disinterest in the sequels, as detailed by Vulture, are well known, but money is money.
Related: 8 Best Kills Halloween II Kills, Ranked
While it didn’t match the original in reception or earnings, ultimately Halloween II‘s budget of $2.5 million (via AFI) was made back 10 times over, earning the studio a pretty penny. The other Halloween movies released in the ’80s delivered diminishing returns, but the franchise eventually rebounded and has Halloween Ends scheduled for release this October (per Screen Rant).
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
8 A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)
Box Office: $29,999,213
Opening less than a year after the first film debuted, this sequel actually managed to earn more at the box office than the original – a rare accomplishment. With a male lead in Mark Patton (an outlier for a slasher) and queer subtext, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is widely known as one of the gayest horror movies ever made. There’s even a documentary, 2019’s Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, about its homoeroticism.
This $2.5 million production (per AFI) went on to make 12 times the budget and cemented Freddy Krueger’s money-making value to New Line Cinema. Despite this film’s success, none of these characters reappear in any future installments, making this the sole film of the series with the only repeat character being Freddy himself.
7 Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Box Office: $32,980,880
Friday the 13th‘s fourth installment is largely known as the one with Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis, but die-hard fans also remember it for the return of make-up legend Tom Savini (previously from Friday the 13th). It was as popular with film critics as a machete to the face, but these movies aren’t made for the Siskel & Eberts of the world.
Despite the finality of the film’s title, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter proved to be far from the end. A sequel actually came out less than a year after this one opened, because when a movie makes 15 times its $2.2 million budget (via AFI) there will absolutely be another one.
6 Child’s Play (1988)
Box Office: $33,244,684
Chucky carves out a spot for himself on the list of highest-grossing slashers of the ’80s with the one and only Child’s Play movie released that decade. Of all ’80s slashers, the Child’s Play/Chucky series is the only one still building on the original continuity thanks to writer/director Don Mancini, who has been with the franchise since day one. The 2019 reboot is legally a separate beast, so it isn’t included.
In contrast to the rather tiny budgets of most slashers on this list, Child’s Play cost around $13 million to produce (per AFI). Even with that comparatively huge budget, it earned enough to kick off a seven movie and one TV series franchise that’s still chugging along today (Chucky S2 premieres later this year). The combination of the creepy doll and Brad Dourif’s foul-mouthed voice work turned out to have quite the staying power.
5 Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
Box Office: $34,581,519
Friday the 13th Part III is notable for being the sequel that gave Jason his hockey mask (as opposed to the silly sack he wore on his head previously). This is also the only time a director returned to do a second Friday the 13th film, so Steve Miner actually ended up being responsible for both bringing adult killer Jason in the mix as well as his iconic look.
Related: Ranking Every Friday The 12th Movie According To Rotten Tomatoes
Although Friday the 13th had already jumped the shark multiple times by this point, Part III managed to bounce back up to nearly $35 million after Part 2 topped out with just under $22 million. So, while the dated 3D effects are mostly just good for a laugh nowadays, the gimmick proved rather effective at the time.
4 Psycho II (1983)
Box Office: $34,725,000
Sequels might be commonplace today, but Psycho II coming out 23 years after Psycho was a trailblazer in that respect. Anthony Perkins and Vera Miles both returned from the 1960 Hitchcock classic, but some of the creative choices in regard to how Miles’ character was written might leave a bad aftertaste for fans of the original.
Related: 10 Movies & TV Scenes That Parody Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
While not a unique horror movie premise, on a $4 million budget (per AFI) Psycho II was able to ride that slasher craze and gross more than enough to justify 1986’s Psycho III. That installment proved to be less lucky, making well less than half of this while costing twice as much to produce, according to the AFI.
3 Friday the 13th (1980)
Box Office: $39,754,601
If there was any doubt about slashers being a profitable genre after 1978’s Halloween made an obscene amount of money, Friday the 13th laid those concerns to rest with a bloody arrow through Kevin Bacon’s throat. As far as gore and body counts go, Friday the 13th definitely set the standard for cheap and profitable slasher fare for years to come – and even features a somewhat sympathetic horror movie villain.
Produced for just $650,000 (via AFI), Sean Cunningham’s tale of camp counselors being graphically murdered went on to make over 61 times its budget. That’s a ridiculous return on investment that nobody could have ever predicted, but many tried to replicate.
2 A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Box Office: $44,793,222
A third film was inevitable after the success of the first two, but with Heather Langenkamp returning as Nancy and Wes Craven returning as a writer, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors had a couple of things working in its favor. Having a young Laurence Fishburne (or “Larry” as he’s credited here) didn’t hurt, either.
Even with an increased budget of about $4.5 million (per AFI), the film made 10 times its cost and managed to increase in gross from the previous film once again. No other horror franchise of the ’80s (or ever, really) displayed as much upward mobility.
1 A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
Box Office: $49,369,899
With the number one spot, A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Master is the fourth film from this franchise to place in the ranking of highest-grossing ’80s slashers. Turns out A Nightmare on Elm Street was able to increase in gross one last time, making it the unmatched king of horror franchise growth.
With a budget of $6.5 million (via AFI), this was the most expensive film to produce so far, but based on the huge success of the previous three it was almost a sure thing. Even though the fifth of the series crashed down to about 22 million the following year, New Line Cinema was already “The house that Freddy built” and nothing could take that away.
Next: 10 Freddy Krueger One-Liners That Have Aged Poorly
Next 10 Movies That Were Basically Just Ads, According To Reddit
About The Author
Adem Cohen (2 Articles Published)
Adem Cohen and his husband live in an Arizonian city with their pet(s). Adem has no desire for any social media presence, but he enjoys all the silly animal videos the internet has to offer. Also, he and his husband would like to visit Tokyo one day.
More From Adem Cohen
We would love to thank the writer of this write-up for this amazing content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1650762546;}i:3;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:48:"5 90s Horror Movies That Still Hold Up Perfectly";s:4:"link";s:104:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/5-90s-horror-movies-that-still-hold-up-perfectly/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 23 Apr 2022 23:46:07 +0000";s:8:"category";s:39:"Scream Away90sholdHorrormoviesPerfectly";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=64077";s:11:"description";s:637:"It almost goes without saying that the 1996 horror movie Scream aged well and that horror fans are still enjoying watching this film several decades after it first hit theaters. The movie has teens, the perfect location of Woodsboro, and Neve Campbell’s groundbreaking role as Sidney Prescott. While some ’90s horror movies feel incredibly awkward ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:16843:"
It almost goes without saying that the 1996 horror movie Scream aged well and that horror fans are still enjoying watching this film several decades after it first hit theaters. The movie has teens, the perfect location of Woodsboro, and Neve Campbell’s groundbreaking role as Sidney Prescott.
While some ’90s horror movies feel incredibly awkward and dated to watch, as some plotlines fall flat, characters seem boring, and filmmaking style can be corny, there are a few scary films from this time period that are still excellent.
GAMERANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
RELATED: 5 90s Horror Movie Twists That Stand The Test Of Time
Based on the 1988 book by Thomas Harris, the 1991 movie The Silence of the Lambs will always be a frightening movie watching experience. The characters are a study in contrasts, as Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and the iconic cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) play a game with each other throughout the entire movie.
The Silence of the Lambs still holds up today as Clarice interviews Hannibal to see if he can help her understand a serial killer named “Buffalo Bill.” Hannibal is a downright chilling and incredibly creepy character. The movie’s ending holds up better than almost any horror movie’s as Hannibal shares that he invited a friend over for dinner. Of course, fans know what that means…
The 1992 film Candyman is a woke horror movie about Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) who comes across the story of Candyman. The movie is as unsettling today as it was back then, and it holds up well. The 2021 direct sequel is also worth sitting down to watch.
It can be tricky to balance a story that needs backstory and explanations along with scary scenes and good characters, but this is something that Candyman excels at. As Helen gets deeper into the mystery, audiences are unable to look away. After a Black man who was born in the 1800s was tragically killed, his spirit became called the Candyman.
Scream 2 holds up as a horror sequel and also as a movie in its own right. There are several parts of this second film in the popular slasher franchise that still work: Sidney’s new life at college, her relationships with her peers, and her desire to escape the horrible things that occurred in Woodsboro while realizing that it might not be so simple.
From Cici Cooper’s (Sarah Michelle Geller) death scene to seeing Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) again, there’s a lot to enjoy about Scream 2. While it’s inevitable that some ’90s horror movies will feel a bit dated, this one still works, with as many scares and jokes as the rest of the franchise. It might not be the best movie in the whole franchise, but it’s one of the more entertaining scary films from this decade.
Amazon’s I Know What You Did Last Summer TV series feels lackluster when compared to the original 1998 movie, which is one of the best and most enjoyable ’90s horror movies. It has it all: a close friend group who drift apart, a love story, and an examination of what happens after a horrifying incident.
Jennifer Love Hewitt’s career-making role as Julie James saw her and her pals killing someone by accident after partying on the night of their high school graduation. The movie has tropes that horror fans like seeing: unexpected deaths, main characters with secrets, and the feeling that someone is watching, stalking, and waiting to kill. Julie also becomes depressed after being haunted by what she and her friends did, and the movie touches on how a “final girl” can get through the rest of her life. Ben Willis feels like a horror villain who can’t be killed as he shows up in the sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which was released in 1998.
The Faculty is a great teen science-fiction/horror movie and it’s also a film from this time period that holds up well.
When a group of teenagers discover that aliens have taken over the teachers at their school, audiences can’t help but laugh at this perfect concept. It seems amazing that a movie like this hadn’t been made before, as high schoolers are always complaining about their strict, rigid and tough teachers and wondering how they can get the time to pass faster so they can graduate. When people watch this movie today, they can see common themes that still make sense: teenagers struggling to seem cool and wondering what authority figures they should listen to and who they should ignore so they can be who they want and create the future that they’re looking for.
NEXT: 5 Nostalgic ’90s Kids Horror TV Shows
8 Meta Horror Movies To Watch If You Love The Scream Movies
Read Next
About The Author
Aya Tsintziras (131 Articles Published)
Aya Tsintziras is a freelance writer who writes about TV, movies, and has a particular interest in the horror genre. She has a Political Science degree from the University of Toronto and a Masters of Journalism from Ryerson University. She loves coffee, reading, working out, and watching TV. She lives in Toronto.
More
From Aya Tsintziras
We want to say thanks to the writer of this short article for this awesome material
";}s:7:"summary";s:637:"It almost goes without saying that the 1996 horror movie Scream aged well and that horror fans are still enjoying watching this film several decades after it first hit theaters. The movie has teens, the perfect location of Woodsboro, and Neve Campbell’s groundbreaking role as Sidney Prescott. While some ’90s horror movies feel incredibly awkward ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:16843:"
It almost goes without saying that the 1996 horror movie Scream aged well and that horror fans are still enjoying watching this film several decades after it first hit theaters. The movie has teens, the perfect location of Woodsboro, and Neve Campbell’s groundbreaking role as Sidney Prescott.
While some ’90s horror movies feel incredibly awkward and dated to watch, as some plotlines fall flat, characters seem boring, and filmmaking style can be corny, there are a few scary films from this time period that are still excellent.
GAMERANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
RELATED: 5 90s Horror Movie Twists That Stand The Test Of Time
Based on the 1988 book by Thomas Harris, the 1991 movie The Silence of the Lambs will always be a frightening movie watching experience. The characters are a study in contrasts, as Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and the iconic cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) play a game with each other throughout the entire movie.
The Silence of the Lambs still holds up today as Clarice interviews Hannibal to see if he can help her understand a serial killer named “Buffalo Bill.” Hannibal is a downright chilling and incredibly creepy character. The movie’s ending holds up better than almost any horror movie’s as Hannibal shares that he invited a friend over for dinner. Of course, fans know what that means…
The 1992 film Candyman is a woke horror movie about Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) who comes across the story of Candyman. The movie is as unsettling today as it was back then, and it holds up well. The 2021 direct sequel is also worth sitting down to watch.
It can be tricky to balance a story that needs backstory and explanations along with scary scenes and good characters, but this is something that Candyman excels at. As Helen gets deeper into the mystery, audiences are unable to look away. After a Black man who was born in the 1800s was tragically killed, his spirit became called the Candyman.
Scream 2 holds up as a horror sequel and also as a movie in its own right. There are several parts of this second film in the popular slasher franchise that still work: Sidney’s new life at college, her relationships with her peers, and her desire to escape the horrible things that occurred in Woodsboro while realizing that it might not be so simple.
From Cici Cooper’s (Sarah Michelle Geller) death scene to seeing Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) again, there’s a lot to enjoy about Scream 2. While it’s inevitable that some ’90s horror movies will feel a bit dated, this one still works, with as many scares and jokes as the rest of the franchise. It might not be the best movie in the whole franchise, but it’s one of the more entertaining scary films from this decade.
Amazon’s I Know What You Did Last Summer TV series feels lackluster when compared to the original 1998 movie, which is one of the best and most enjoyable ’90s horror movies. It has it all: a close friend group who drift apart, a love story, and an examination of what happens after a horrifying incident.
Jennifer Love Hewitt’s career-making role as Julie James saw her and her pals killing someone by accident after partying on the night of their high school graduation. The movie has tropes that horror fans like seeing: unexpected deaths, main characters with secrets, and the feeling that someone is watching, stalking, and waiting to kill. Julie also becomes depressed after being haunted by what she and her friends did, and the movie touches on how a “final girl” can get through the rest of her life. Ben Willis feels like a horror villain who can’t be killed as he shows up in the sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which was released in 1998.
The Faculty is a great teen science-fiction/horror movie and it’s also a film from this time period that holds up well.
When a group of teenagers discover that aliens have taken over the teachers at their school, audiences can’t help but laugh at this perfect concept. It seems amazing that a movie like this hadn’t been made before, as high schoolers are always complaining about their strict, rigid and tough teachers and wondering how they can get the time to pass faster so they can graduate. When people watch this movie today, they can see common themes that still make sense: teenagers struggling to seem cool and wondering what authority figures they should listen to and who they should ignore so they can be who they want and create the future that they’re looking for.
NEXT: 5 Nostalgic ’90s Kids Horror TV Shows
8 Meta Horror Movies To Watch If You Love The Scream Movies
Read Next
About The Author
Aya Tsintziras (131 Articles Published)
Aya Tsintziras is a freelance writer who writes about TV, movies, and has a particular interest in the horror genre. She has a Political Science degree from the University of Toronto and a Masters of Journalism from Ryerson University. She loves coffee, reading, working out, and watching TV. She lives in Toronto.
More
From Aya Tsintziras
We want to say thanks to the writer of this short article for this awesome material
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1650757567;}i:4;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:94:"7 Animated Movies That Actually Scared Us As Kids, From ‘Coraline’ to ‘Watership Down’";s:4:"link";s:137:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/7-animated-movies-that-actually-scared-us-as-kids-from-coraline-to-watership-down/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 23 Apr 2022 22:23:44 +0000";s:8:"category";s:52:"Scream AwayAnimatedCoralineKidsmoviesScaredWatership";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=64049";s:11:"description";s:776:"Everyone has those films from their childhood that they like to describe as “traumatizing: — films that terrified them or made them face themes and topics they maybe weren’t ready for at the time. Animated films in particular seem to be the most commonly cited when it comes to “childhood ruining” movies, and it’s no ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:28045:"
Everyone has those films from their childhood that they like to describe as “traumatizing: — films that terrified them or made them face themes and topics they maybe weren’t ready for at the time. Animated films in particular seem to be the most commonly cited when it comes to “childhood ruining” movies, and it’s no wonder why. Animation tends to get away with things live action is rarely able to, especially when it comes to creepy character or setting design, or even story beats — having an animated dog introduce the concept of death to your child seems to feel a bit more acceptable than having some random real life actor do it. As children grow older, these films tend to have a lasting impact on them, shaping the kind of interests they have and slowly morphing into something less terrifying and more nostalgic. Even so, looking back on these films is sure to bring some surprises, especially along the lines of “I can’t believe my parents let me watch this!”
The following is a list of some animated films that might have traumatized you as a child. Some spoilers ahead.
Coraline (2009)
While certainly the youngest film on the list, Coraline makes up for it in pure creepiness. Stop-motion animation is already known for sometimes being a little off-putting, and this film takes it to a whole new level. Characters with long gangly limbs and disproportionate bodies amble about strange dark houses and woods, all while ghosts and other creatures lurk in the shadows. The creepy look-alike doll of the main character is the cherry on top of this already hauntingly beautiful film.
The film follows Coraline, a young girl who has recently moved into a strange old house with her parents. Bored by the mundane life she leads and frustrated that her parents seemingly have no time for her, Coraline takes to exploring. Eventually she comes upon a strange small doorway, which leads to an alternate world filled with color, good food, and parents that are fun and interesting. However, as wonderful as this new world seems, Coraline eventually begins to realize that her “Other-Mother” is hiding a dark and sinister secret, and it’s only a matter of time before Coraline falls victim to her plans.
Coraline isn’t a film for the faint of heart; references to child death, depictions of body horror, and a main villain that’s as twisted as the hallways that she stalks all come together to turn this film into something that some might find “a bit too much.” Yet, Coraline maintains a level of wonder rarely seen in most films; as much as it’s animation and story send shivers down your spine, they also captivate and delight with dazzling movement, color, and concept.
COLLIDER VIDEO OF THE DAY
The Brave Little Toaster (1987)
Before Toy Story made its debut, The Brave Little Toaster featured the childhood household objects of a young boy, alive and waiting for their “Master” to return to his vacation home. While at first glance, a bunch of talking appliances and a baby blanket may not seem all that traumatizing, the adventure they “brave” in an attempt to hold onto the past is strange and troubling, to say the least.
Multiple near-death encounters ensue, including death-by-lightning storm, drowning in a river, quicksand, and even dismantling by a well-meaning appliance store owner. Despite being everyday objects, the fact that these characters walk and talk like people add a level of horror to the trials they endure. To top it all off, the group even ends up in a junkyard at one point and has to witness the destruction of countless singing cars… all while slowly approaching their own demise.
Did I mention that this movie is also a musical?
Whether you find this movie as traumatizing as others do, there’s no denying that a car singing about how worthless it’s become, moments before being crushed into a tiny cube of metal, is bound to have some lasting effects on the adolescent psyche.
All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989)
Don Bluth’s films always tend to have a sort of darkness to them; forests are destroyed, animals are experimented on, or, in the case of All Dogs Go To Heaven, it’s that all dogs (and everything, really) eventually die… and also that Hell is a real place that your dog might go to.
The main character of this film, Charlie B. Barkin (Burt Reynolds), is a conman and casino owner, recently sprung from the pound and ready with a new “leash” on life. Of course, this only lasts for a little bit as his former partner and co-owner of their casino, Carface (Vic Tayback), decides to have Charlie killed. While nothing is explicitly shown, watching the protagonist drunkenly dance on the end of a dock while a car comes barreling toward him until the screen explodes in wild color is traumatizing enough in itself. From there, the film only gets weirder — Charlie escapes from Heaven (which means he can never go back) and comes back to life only to meet Anne Marie (Judith Barsi), an orphan girl who can talk to animals. He plans to use her gift for money, obviously, and the ensuing shenanigans all end in a world of literal fire.
What sets this film apart from other children’s films today, other than the heavy drinking and gambling, is that the entirety of it revolves around death. Even in happier scenes, Charlie still wears the pocket watch that represents his life — should it ever stop ticking, he will die and, since he is no longer allowed into Heaven, his alternative is doggy Hell.
If you think that all Dog Hell involves is endless vet trips and no treats, a horrifying dream sequence filled with fire, brimstone, and the dog-devil himself will quickly change your mind.
RELATED: ‘Made in Abyss’ Anime Getting a Feature Adaptation So You Can Get Traumatized Again
The Secret of NIMH (1982)
Another Don Bluth film about animals in terrible situations, The Secret of NIMH, follows Mrs. Brisby (Elizabeth Hartman), a small mouse whose youngest child, Timmy (Ina Fried), is dying of pneumonia. In an attempt to save his life, Mrs. Brisby dares to go where few mice have gone before; first, into the lair of the Great Owl, who, while wise, is known to eat mice. The sequence, while beautifully animated, is dark and suspenseful; the world is a dangerous place for a small mouse, and this film does an incredible job of illustrating why.
The second place that Mrs. Brisby dares set foot in, however, is the main reason why this movie has left such a dark spot in the memories of so many children: the rats of NIMH, a curious group of highly intelligent rodents who have set up home beneath an old rosebush, are Mrs. Brisby’s last hope in saving her family. Within their tunnels, at the foot of their ancient leader, Mrs. Brisby learns about the truth of their existence — horrific animal experimentation — and of the tragic death of her husband, Jonathon.
While the film conjures forth a world of fantasy beneath our very feet, the reality of the animals’ hardships is bleak. The scenes reveal the rats’ tragic pasts in the labs of NIMH are startlingly disturbing — more than just rats sit in metal cages, waiting for whatever horrible experiments are to come. And the escape from the lab is equally terrifying.
It is difficult to rid the line “sucked down dark air vents to their deaths” from one’s mind.
Spirited Away (2001)
For many people, Spirited Away was their first foray into the world of Studio Ghibli, and it remains, to this day, one of the more well known films that the studio has created. The film received universal acclaim upon its release, even winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and The Walt Disney Company‘s acquisition of the film’s sales rights and subsequent U.S. release in 2002 only helped bolster its popularity in the West.
Yet, despite its charm and magic, Spirited Awayalso boasts a significant amount of strange, and sometimes downright disturbing imagery. If the multitudes of shadowy spirits that wander through the land that Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi, Daveigh Chase), the young protagonist of the film, has found herself lost in aren’t enough to give you goosebumps, perhaps the scene where Chihiro’s parents are turned into ravenous pigs will give you the chills your looking for. Chihiro’s jounrey to escape the spirit world and save her parents is fraught with other dangers, such as the infamous No-Face (Akio Nakamura, Bob Bergen), who eats everything (and everyone) in his path to the giant witch, Yubaba (Mari Natsuki, Suzanne Pleshette).
The film is a wonderful tale of growing up and remaining courageous in the face of adversity, but that doesn’t mean that every child watching it won’t have nightmares.
The Last Unicorn (1982)
One would think that a story about a unicorn would be filled with laughter and rainbows and things of similar caliber; however, The Last Unicorn came about in an age where dark fantasy was becoming popular, and the film reflects the sentiment. The Unicorn (Mia Farrow), who has no true name and who is the most beautiful thing in all the world, is alone, though she doesn’t know it. Away in her forest, she has no idea that the other unicorns of the world have vanished until a traveling butterfly reveals to her the truth. Confused and angered by their sudden disappearance, the Unicorn resolves to go and find the others herself.
Yet, this story is not one of adventure only; at its core, despite her travels and meetings of new friends, the story of the Unicorn is one of death and mortality. The Unicorn is immortal and, thus, cannot feel all the emotions that mortals can — she cannot regret, lest she live with it for eternity, and she is unable to comprehend death as anything but ugly.
So, when she is suddenly turned mortal by her new friend, Schmendrick the Magician (Alan Arkin), in an attempt to save her from what drove away the other unicorns, she has a bit of a crisis. She breaks down and reveals that she can feel her body dying all around her, suddenly stricken with the fact that the body she is in will wither away and die. While other children’s films have dealt with death before, and continue to do so, none have ever quite tackled one’s own imminent death — at least not in a way that feels so raw.
Watership Down (1978)
There isn’t much to say about Watership Downthat isn’t traumatizing.
On the surface, the story of a handful of rabbits traveling in search of a new home might seem fun and adventurous; in reality, why this movie was ever marketed to kids is a mystery to many people.
As stated before, the film follows a group of rabbits as they travel across the land searching for a new home, after their old home is destroyed by humans. The simplicity of the story ends there. Terrifying visions of rivers of blood plague one of the group’s members during the journey and many of the group never even make it to the fabled “Watership Down,” picked off by various predators, people, and even cars. The film comes to a head in a final battle between warring rabbit factions (yes, a battle) and the animators pull no punches; blood and spit fly as rabbits rip each other to bits, killing each other and leaving behind little rabbit corpses to litter the land. When a dog is added into the mix, literally killing rabbits on screen, everything becomes a bit hectic, to say the least.
The film ends with one of the main characters dying and going to the rabbit afterlife to meet God, and it is rather shocking to think that this is one of the tamest parts of the movie.
‘Perfect Blue’: How Satoshi Kon’s Anime Classic Still Resonates Nearly 25 Years Later
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We want to say thanks to the writer of this write-up for this incredible content
";}s:7:"summary";s:776:"Everyone has those films from their childhood that they like to describe as “traumatizing: — films that terrified them or made them face themes and topics they maybe weren’t ready for at the time. Animated films in particular seem to be the most commonly cited when it comes to “childhood ruining” movies, and it’s no ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:28045:"
Everyone has those films from their childhood that they like to describe as “traumatizing: — films that terrified them or made them face themes and topics they maybe weren’t ready for at the time. Animated films in particular seem to be the most commonly cited when it comes to “childhood ruining” movies, and it’s no wonder why. Animation tends to get away with things live action is rarely able to, especially when it comes to creepy character or setting design, or even story beats — having an animated dog introduce the concept of death to your child seems to feel a bit more acceptable than having some random real life actor do it. As children grow older, these films tend to have a lasting impact on them, shaping the kind of interests they have and slowly morphing into something less terrifying and more nostalgic. Even so, looking back on these films is sure to bring some surprises, especially along the lines of “I can’t believe my parents let me watch this!”
The following is a list of some animated films that might have traumatized you as a child. Some spoilers ahead.
Coraline (2009)
While certainly the youngest film on the list, Coraline makes up for it in pure creepiness. Stop-motion animation is already known for sometimes being a little off-putting, and this film takes it to a whole new level. Characters with long gangly limbs and disproportionate bodies amble about strange dark houses and woods, all while ghosts and other creatures lurk in the shadows. The creepy look-alike doll of the main character is the cherry on top of this already hauntingly beautiful film.
The film follows Coraline, a young girl who has recently moved into a strange old house with her parents. Bored by the mundane life she leads and frustrated that her parents seemingly have no time for her, Coraline takes to exploring. Eventually she comes upon a strange small doorway, which leads to an alternate world filled with color, good food, and parents that are fun and interesting. However, as wonderful as this new world seems, Coraline eventually begins to realize that her “Other-Mother” is hiding a dark and sinister secret, and it’s only a matter of time before Coraline falls victim to her plans.
Coraline isn’t a film for the faint of heart; references to child death, depictions of body horror, and a main villain that’s as twisted as the hallways that she stalks all come together to turn this film into something that some might find “a bit too much.” Yet, Coraline maintains a level of wonder rarely seen in most films; as much as it’s animation and story send shivers down your spine, they also captivate and delight with dazzling movement, color, and concept.
COLLIDER VIDEO OF THE DAY
The Brave Little Toaster (1987)
Before Toy Story made its debut, The Brave Little Toaster featured the childhood household objects of a young boy, alive and waiting for their “Master” to return to his vacation home. While at first glance, a bunch of talking appliances and a baby blanket may not seem all that traumatizing, the adventure they “brave” in an attempt to hold onto the past is strange and troubling, to say the least.
Multiple near-death encounters ensue, including death-by-lightning storm, drowning in a river, quicksand, and even dismantling by a well-meaning appliance store owner. Despite being everyday objects, the fact that these characters walk and talk like people add a level of horror to the trials they endure. To top it all off, the group even ends up in a junkyard at one point and has to witness the destruction of countless singing cars… all while slowly approaching their own demise.
Did I mention that this movie is also a musical?
Whether you find this movie as traumatizing as others do, there’s no denying that a car singing about how worthless it’s become, moments before being crushed into a tiny cube of metal, is bound to have some lasting effects on the adolescent psyche.
All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989)
Don Bluth’s films always tend to have a sort of darkness to them; forests are destroyed, animals are experimented on, or, in the case of All Dogs Go To Heaven, it’s that all dogs (and everything, really) eventually die… and also that Hell is a real place that your dog might go to.
The main character of this film, Charlie B. Barkin (Burt Reynolds), is a conman and casino owner, recently sprung from the pound and ready with a new “leash” on life. Of course, this only lasts for a little bit as his former partner and co-owner of their casino, Carface (Vic Tayback), decides to have Charlie killed. While nothing is explicitly shown, watching the protagonist drunkenly dance on the end of a dock while a car comes barreling toward him until the screen explodes in wild color is traumatizing enough in itself. From there, the film only gets weirder — Charlie escapes from Heaven (which means he can never go back) and comes back to life only to meet Anne Marie (Judith Barsi), an orphan girl who can talk to animals. He plans to use her gift for money, obviously, and the ensuing shenanigans all end in a world of literal fire.
What sets this film apart from other children’s films today, other than the heavy drinking and gambling, is that the entirety of it revolves around death. Even in happier scenes, Charlie still wears the pocket watch that represents his life — should it ever stop ticking, he will die and, since he is no longer allowed into Heaven, his alternative is doggy Hell.
If you think that all Dog Hell involves is endless vet trips and no treats, a horrifying dream sequence filled with fire, brimstone, and the dog-devil himself will quickly change your mind.
RELATED: ‘Made in Abyss’ Anime Getting a Feature Adaptation So You Can Get Traumatized Again
The Secret of NIMH (1982)
Another Don Bluth film about animals in terrible situations, The Secret of NIMH, follows Mrs. Brisby (Elizabeth Hartman), a small mouse whose youngest child, Timmy (Ina Fried), is dying of pneumonia. In an attempt to save his life, Mrs. Brisby dares to go where few mice have gone before; first, into the lair of the Great Owl, who, while wise, is known to eat mice. The sequence, while beautifully animated, is dark and suspenseful; the world is a dangerous place for a small mouse, and this film does an incredible job of illustrating why.
The second place that Mrs. Brisby dares set foot in, however, is the main reason why this movie has left such a dark spot in the memories of so many children: the rats of NIMH, a curious group of highly intelligent rodents who have set up home beneath an old rosebush, are Mrs. Brisby’s last hope in saving her family. Within their tunnels, at the foot of their ancient leader, Mrs. Brisby learns about the truth of their existence — horrific animal experimentation — and of the tragic death of her husband, Jonathon.
While the film conjures forth a world of fantasy beneath our very feet, the reality of the animals’ hardships is bleak. The scenes reveal the rats’ tragic pasts in the labs of NIMH are startlingly disturbing — more than just rats sit in metal cages, waiting for whatever horrible experiments are to come. And the escape from the lab is equally terrifying.
It is difficult to rid the line “sucked down dark air vents to their deaths” from one’s mind.
Spirited Away (2001)
For many people, Spirited Away was their first foray into the world of Studio Ghibli, and it remains, to this day, one of the more well known films that the studio has created. The film received universal acclaim upon its release, even winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and The Walt Disney Company‘s acquisition of the film’s sales rights and subsequent U.S. release in 2002 only helped bolster its popularity in the West.
Yet, despite its charm and magic, Spirited Awayalso boasts a significant amount of strange, and sometimes downright disturbing imagery. If the multitudes of shadowy spirits that wander through the land that Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi, Daveigh Chase), the young protagonist of the film, has found herself lost in aren’t enough to give you goosebumps, perhaps the scene where Chihiro’s parents are turned into ravenous pigs will give you the chills your looking for. Chihiro’s jounrey to escape the spirit world and save her parents is fraught with other dangers, such as the infamous No-Face (Akio Nakamura, Bob Bergen), who eats everything (and everyone) in his path to the giant witch, Yubaba (Mari Natsuki, Suzanne Pleshette).
The film is a wonderful tale of growing up and remaining courageous in the face of adversity, but that doesn’t mean that every child watching it won’t have nightmares.
The Last Unicorn (1982)
One would think that a story about a unicorn would be filled with laughter and rainbows and things of similar caliber; however, The Last Unicorn came about in an age where dark fantasy was becoming popular, and the film reflects the sentiment. The Unicorn (Mia Farrow), who has no true name and who is the most beautiful thing in all the world, is alone, though she doesn’t know it. Away in her forest, she has no idea that the other unicorns of the world have vanished until a traveling butterfly reveals to her the truth. Confused and angered by their sudden disappearance, the Unicorn resolves to go and find the others herself.
Yet, this story is not one of adventure only; at its core, despite her travels and meetings of new friends, the story of the Unicorn is one of death and mortality. The Unicorn is immortal and, thus, cannot feel all the emotions that mortals can — she cannot regret, lest she live with it for eternity, and she is unable to comprehend death as anything but ugly.
So, when she is suddenly turned mortal by her new friend, Schmendrick the Magician (Alan Arkin), in an attempt to save her from what drove away the other unicorns, she has a bit of a crisis. She breaks down and reveals that she can feel her body dying all around her, suddenly stricken with the fact that the body she is in will wither away and die. While other children’s films have dealt with death before, and continue to do so, none have ever quite tackled one’s own imminent death — at least not in a way that feels so raw.
Watership Down (1978)
There isn’t much to say about Watership Downthat isn’t traumatizing.
On the surface, the story of a handful of rabbits traveling in search of a new home might seem fun and adventurous; in reality, why this movie was ever marketed to kids is a mystery to many people.
As stated before, the film follows a group of rabbits as they travel across the land searching for a new home, after their old home is destroyed by humans. The simplicity of the story ends there. Terrifying visions of rivers of blood plague one of the group’s members during the journey and many of the group never even make it to the fabled “Watership Down,” picked off by various predators, people, and even cars. The film comes to a head in a final battle between warring rabbit factions (yes, a battle) and the animators pull no punches; blood and spit fly as rabbits rip each other to bits, killing each other and leaving behind little rabbit corpses to litter the land. When a dog is added into the mix, literally killing rabbits on screen, everything becomes a bit hectic, to say the least.
The film ends with one of the main characters dying and going to the rabbit afterlife to meet God, and it is rather shocking to think that this is one of the tamest parts of the movie.
‘Perfect Blue’: How Satoshi Kon’s Anime Classic Still Resonates Nearly 25 Years Later
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About The Author
Olivia Fitzpatrick (27 Articles Published)
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From Olivia Fitzpatrick
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We want to say thanks to the writer of this write-up for this incredible content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1650752624;}i:5;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:40:"10 Most Terrifying Horror Movie Children";s:4:"link";s:96:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/10-most-terrifying-horror-movie-children/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 23 Apr 2022 21:01:40 +0000";s:8:"category";s:40:"Scream AwaychildrenHorrorMovieTerrifying";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=64026";s:11:"description";s:585:"Instinct dictates the unspoken rule of humanity that everyone should protect the children by any and all means. So, when the source of evil that everyone needs protection from is an allegedly innocent child, it is so unnatural that it becomes all the more terrifying. Related: 10 Life Lessons Reddit Fans Learned From Horror Movies ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:24714:"
Instinct dictates the unspoken rule of humanity that everyone should protect the children by any and all means. So, when the source of evil that everyone needs protection from is an allegedly innocent child, it is so unnatural that it becomes all the more terrifying.
Related: 10 Life Lessons Reddit Fans Learned From Horror Movies
There are quite a few films that utilize the evergreen oxymoron of evil innocence to instill fear in their viewers. Whether the children are ghosts, possessed by a demon, or undead, they are normally always terrifying. Horror films like Ju-On and Pet Sematary are among the films that highlight particularly nightmare-inducing kiddos.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
Samara – The Ring
Samara is the antagonist of Gore Verbinski’s The Ring. The demonic girl with supernatural abilities was trapped in a well at roughly twelve years old, but she lives on to kill those who watch a certain video after seven days.
Anyone who has seen The Ring is surely haunted by Samara’s ghostly whisper of “seven days” over the phone. A common prank call even plays off of the young girl’s signature phrase, because it is just so chilling when she delivers it. Samara’s method of killing by crawling out of the television makes her quite the terrifying young girl but it also makes The Ring one of the best movies on Paramount Plus.
Anne – The Others
Alejandro Amenábar’s 2001 film The Others features a little girl named Anne who lives with her family in a house that they suppose to be haunted. The end of the film reveals that they are the haunt in the house, making it one of those twisted horror films viewers have to watch twice to understand.
Although Anne is a ghostly little girl, neither she nor the audience knows this for quite a while. So, she does not necessarily spend the entire movie as a terrifying entity. However, as the film nears its climax, a scene occurs in which a living medium comes through Anne while she plays with a headless marionette and insists that she is Grace’s daughter. This scene yields the iconic line of “I am your daughter,” said in Anne’s sweet, childish voice that earns her a spot as an utterly terrifying horror film child.
Charlie – Hereditary
In Ari Aster’s Hereditary, Charlie Graham is the younger sister of Peter Graham. In an emblematic scene of the film, she is decapitated by a telephone pole while sticking her head out of the car window.
Related: 8 Great Short Films From Midsommar Director Ari Aster
While Charlie certainly has some peculiar behaviors, she is not entirely terrifying up until the reveal that she is never actually Charlie at all. Charlie’s own soul was consumed long ago by Paimon, who possesses her form but seeks to take Peter’s body. Charlie’s arc in Hereditary has big brothers everywhere shooting suspicious glances at their younger sisters and hoping that their clucking noises do not signal an evil entity trying to get out.
Toshio Saeki – Ju-On
In the iconic Japanese horror franchise, The Grudge, the ghost of Toshio follows around the vengeful spirit of his mother. His presence is not marked by the same haunting noise that Yoko makes, but he does let out a “meow” due to the emotional attachment that he had to his cat in life.
Toshio does not necessarily carry out the kills of the curse, but that does not make him any less terrifying. Viewers of The Grudge will forever be haunted by the thought of the child’s black eyes staring back at them when they peek under a table or look up at the banister. Plus, there’s no hiding under the covers from Toshio. Those who try will come face to face with his mother under their own blankets.
Karen – Night Of The Living Dead
Karen Cooper is a little girl in Night Of The Living Dead that meets the same unfortunate end as so many others do in zombie movies. She gets bitten, turns into the undead herself, and then gruesomely chows down on her own parents.
Zombies are terrifying, and Karen proves that they are made no less so when they are children. Regardless of the fact that she is undead, watching her bite into her own dead father’s flesh and disembowel own her mother with a trowel is nothing short of stomach-churning. She serves as a reminder to audiences to prevent the zombie apocalypse by all means, even if just to avoid unnaturally scary undead children running around.
Gage – Pet Sematary
In Pet Sematary, Gage Creed is a three-year-old boy that is killed by a speeding truck. After his father buries him in an ancient burial ground, he comes back to life, but not as the same sweet little boy that he was.
Related: The 10 Best Stephen King Books, According To Goodreads
Pet Sematary pulls the audience in to love sweet Gage, so the last thing that viewers want is for the young child to die. When he does die and come back, however, he instills a fresh fear in the audience of a murderous three-year-old. It makes it worse that he kills his own mother and aims to do the same to his father. Perhaps the most harrowing portion of Gage’s arc is the fact that his own father has to put him down, leaving the audience all around unsettled.
The Twins – The Shining
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is responsible for two of the most iconic horror movie children of all time: the Grady twins. These two little girls haunt the hallways of the Overlook Hotel, appearing to Danny in both their ghostly form and as their bloodied corpses.
The phrase “Come and play with us” lives in infamy because of The Shining twins, and the girls themselves have become cultural icons. The image of two identical little girls standing at the end of a long hallway and asking a living person to play with them is undoubtedly haunting, which is likely why the imagery has become a staple in horror movie iconography. The same can be said for other elements of the film, which is why The Shining is one of Eli Roth’s favorite horror movies.
Regan – The Exorcist
When it comes to terrifying horror movie children, no child is quite as chilling as Regan MacNeil from The Exorcist. The twelve-year-old girl falls victim to demonic possession, with fatal results for those who try to help her.
From levitating off of the bed to vomiting pea soup, there is no doubt that Regan is one of, if not the most iconic horror movie child of all time. Although she begins the film very sweet and charming, the demon inside of her turns her into something utterly petrifying. Regan makes The Exorcist one of the scariest films of all time, and also one of the favorite horror films of iconic filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.
Damien – The Omen
Richard Donner’s The Omen follows a young boy named Damien. The strange events that occur around Damien allude to the fact that he is, indeed, the Biblical Antichrist on the rise to power.
Damien is not just any scary horror movie child. He bears the mark of the best on his skin, “666.” Putting so much evil power in the body of a seemingly innocent boy is a twisted yet very effective move. After the first film, The Omen franchise continues to follow Damien as the little boy who breathes life into the Devil himself.
Isaac – Children Of The Corn
In Children Of The Corn, Isaac stands at the head of a town of killer children who murder any adult that steps foot in the town to pacify a malevolent spirit of the cornfields.
An entire cult of murderous children is scary enough. The thought of one single child standing at the head of all of them, persuading and manipulating them to the dark will of an otherworldly entity, is entirely horror-striking. Out of all of the children of the corn, Isaac certainly takes the cake as one of the most terrifying horror movie children.
NEXT: 10 Classic Universal Horror Movies (That Don’t Feature The Monsters)
Huge Predator Movie Theory Reveals The Predator Let Arnie’s Dutch Escape
About The Author
Gabby Etzel (36 Articles Published)
Gabby Etzel is a Manhattan-based writer with an affinity for the fearsome and an inexplicable identification with Throg. She’s easily charmed by two things: A well-written villain and a smoked salmon bagel.
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";}s:7:"summary";s:585:"Instinct dictates the unspoken rule of humanity that everyone should protect the children by any and all means. So, when the source of evil that everyone needs protection from is an allegedly innocent child, it is so unnatural that it becomes all the more terrifying. Related: 10 Life Lessons Reddit Fans Learned From Horror Movies ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:24714:"
Instinct dictates the unspoken rule of humanity that everyone should protect the children by any and all means. So, when the source of evil that everyone needs protection from is an allegedly innocent child, it is so unnatural that it becomes all the more terrifying.
Related: 10 Life Lessons Reddit Fans Learned From Horror Movies
There are quite a few films that utilize the evergreen oxymoron of evil innocence to instill fear in their viewers. Whether the children are ghosts, possessed by a demon, or undead, they are normally always terrifying. Horror films like Ju-On and Pet Sematary are among the films that highlight particularly nightmare-inducing kiddos.
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Samara – The Ring
Samara is the antagonist of Gore Verbinski’s The Ring. The demonic girl with supernatural abilities was trapped in a well at roughly twelve years old, but she lives on to kill those who watch a certain video after seven days.
Anyone who has seen The Ring is surely haunted by Samara’s ghostly whisper of “seven days” over the phone. A common prank call even plays off of the young girl’s signature phrase, because it is just so chilling when she delivers it. Samara’s method of killing by crawling out of the television makes her quite the terrifying young girl but it also makes The Ring one of the best movies on Paramount Plus.
Anne – The Others
Alejandro Amenábar’s 2001 film The Others features a little girl named Anne who lives with her family in a house that they suppose to be haunted. The end of the film reveals that they are the haunt in the house, making it one of those twisted horror films viewers have to watch twice to understand.
Although Anne is a ghostly little girl, neither she nor the audience knows this for quite a while. So, she does not necessarily spend the entire movie as a terrifying entity. However, as the film nears its climax, a scene occurs in which a living medium comes through Anne while she plays with a headless marionette and insists that she is Grace’s daughter. This scene yields the iconic line of “I am your daughter,” said in Anne’s sweet, childish voice that earns her a spot as an utterly terrifying horror film child.
Charlie – Hereditary
In Ari Aster’s Hereditary, Charlie Graham is the younger sister of Peter Graham. In an emblematic scene of the film, she is decapitated by a telephone pole while sticking her head out of the car window.
Related: 8 Great Short Films From Midsommar Director Ari Aster
While Charlie certainly has some peculiar behaviors, she is not entirely terrifying up until the reveal that she is never actually Charlie at all. Charlie’s own soul was consumed long ago by Paimon, who possesses her form but seeks to take Peter’s body. Charlie’s arc in Hereditary has big brothers everywhere shooting suspicious glances at their younger sisters and hoping that their clucking noises do not signal an evil entity trying to get out.
Toshio Saeki – Ju-On
In the iconic Japanese horror franchise, The Grudge, the ghost of Toshio follows around the vengeful spirit of his mother. His presence is not marked by the same haunting noise that Yoko makes, but he does let out a “meow” due to the emotional attachment that he had to his cat in life.
Toshio does not necessarily carry out the kills of the curse, but that does not make him any less terrifying. Viewers of The Grudge will forever be haunted by the thought of the child’s black eyes staring back at them when they peek under a table or look up at the banister. Plus, there’s no hiding under the covers from Toshio. Those who try will come face to face with his mother under their own blankets.
Karen – Night Of The Living Dead
Karen Cooper is a little girl in Night Of The Living Dead that meets the same unfortunate end as so many others do in zombie movies. She gets bitten, turns into the undead herself, and then gruesomely chows down on her own parents.
Zombies are terrifying, and Karen proves that they are made no less so when they are children. Regardless of the fact that she is undead, watching her bite into her own dead father’s flesh and disembowel own her mother with a trowel is nothing short of stomach-churning. She serves as a reminder to audiences to prevent the zombie apocalypse by all means, even if just to avoid unnaturally scary undead children running around.
Gage – Pet Sematary
In Pet Sematary, Gage Creed is a three-year-old boy that is killed by a speeding truck. After his father buries him in an ancient burial ground, he comes back to life, but not as the same sweet little boy that he was.
Related: The 10 Best Stephen King Books, According To Goodreads
Pet Sematary pulls the audience in to love sweet Gage, so the last thing that viewers want is for the young child to die. When he does die and come back, however, he instills a fresh fear in the audience of a murderous three-year-old. It makes it worse that he kills his own mother and aims to do the same to his father. Perhaps the most harrowing portion of Gage’s arc is the fact that his own father has to put him down, leaving the audience all around unsettled.
The Twins – The Shining
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is responsible for two of the most iconic horror movie children of all time: the Grady twins. These two little girls haunt the hallways of the Overlook Hotel, appearing to Danny in both their ghostly form and as their bloodied corpses.
The phrase “Come and play with us” lives in infamy because of The Shining twins, and the girls themselves have become cultural icons. The image of two identical little girls standing at the end of a long hallway and asking a living person to play with them is undoubtedly haunting, which is likely why the imagery has become a staple in horror movie iconography. The same can be said for other elements of the film, which is why The Shining is one of Eli Roth’s favorite horror movies.
Regan – The Exorcist
When it comes to terrifying horror movie children, no child is quite as chilling as Regan MacNeil from The Exorcist. The twelve-year-old girl falls victim to demonic possession, with fatal results for those who try to help her.
From levitating off of the bed to vomiting pea soup, there is no doubt that Regan is one of, if not the most iconic horror movie child of all time. Although she begins the film very sweet and charming, the demon inside of her turns her into something utterly petrifying. Regan makes The Exorcist one of the scariest films of all time, and also one of the favorite horror films of iconic filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.
Damien – The Omen
Richard Donner’s The Omen follows a young boy named Damien. The strange events that occur around Damien allude to the fact that he is, indeed, the Biblical Antichrist on the rise to power.
Damien is not just any scary horror movie child. He bears the mark of the best on his skin, “666.” Putting so much evil power in the body of a seemingly innocent boy is a twisted yet very effective move. After the first film, The Omen franchise continues to follow Damien as the little boy who breathes life into the Devil himself.
Isaac – Children Of The Corn
In Children Of The Corn, Isaac stands at the head of a town of killer children who murder any adult that steps foot in the town to pacify a malevolent spirit of the cornfields.
An entire cult of murderous children is scary enough. The thought of one single child standing at the head of all of them, persuading and manipulating them to the dark will of an otherworldly entity, is entirely horror-striking. Out of all of the children of the corn, Isaac certainly takes the cake as one of the most terrifying horror movie children.
NEXT: 10 Classic Universal Horror Movies (That Don’t Feature The Monsters)
Huge Predator Movie Theory Reveals The Predator Let Arnie’s Dutch Escape
About The Author
Gabby Etzel (36 Articles Published)
Gabby Etzel is a Manhattan-based writer with an affinity for the fearsome and an inexplicable identification with Throg. She’s easily charmed by two things: A well-written villain and a smoked salmon bagel.
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We want to give thanks to the writer of this post for this awesome material
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1650747700;}i:6;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:45:"10 Best R-Rated Comedies From The Early 2000s";s:4:"link";s:101:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/10-best-r-rated-comedies-from-the-early-2000s/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 23 Apr 2022 19:40:00 +0000";s:8:"category";s:30:"Scream Away2000scomediesRRated";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=63997";s:11:"description";s:593:"The early 2000s was a great time for comedy. It gave us unlikely heroes and outrageous spoofs and provided Hollywood stardom to comedic greats we all know and love, like Michael Cera, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, and Ken Jeong. And although it’s possible to achieve still gut-busting cinema with a pg-13 rating (uh, ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:15111:"
The early 2000s was a great time for comedy. It gave us unlikely heroes and outrageous spoofs and provided Hollywood stardom to comedic greats we all know and love, like Michael Cera, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, and Ken Jeong.
And although it’s possible to achieve still gut-busting cinema with a pg-13 rating (uh, hello!? Talladega Nights!?), there’s just something about the raw, unfiltered jokes penned in r-rated comedies that really get the tears flowing. Take a trip down memory lane while we look at the best r-rated comedies that premiered before 2010 (sorry, Bridesmaids).
10. Scary Movie
Year Made: 2000
Scary Movie is brought to you by the zany minds of the Wayans Bros, who, by the early 2000s, had already secured their mantles as comedy kings of movie spoofs ( see examples: Don’t Be A Menace and I’m Gonna Git You Sucka). Scary Movie is not only one of the funniest movies from the early 2000s but also one of the most influential. After its 2000 premiere, you couldn’t call a friend without hearing “WAZZUP!?”.
Scary Movie put us on to the comedic talents of Anna Farris and Regina Hall, featured hilarious cameos from Carmen Elektra and Shannon Elizabeth, while also treating us to the hilarious dynamics of comedic vets like Cheri Oteri and, of course, Shawn and Marlon Wayans. This horror movie parody does a perfect job of poking fun at all the horror movie stereotypes we see in films like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and The Blair Witch Project while also tying in spoofs of some of the biggest blockbuster films at the time (like Charlie’s Angels, The Matrix, and American Pie).
9. The 40 Year Old Virgin
Year Made: 2005
The jokes from The 40 Year-Old Virgin never get old. It has a premise and an ensemble cast that still guarantee laughs to this day. The 40 Year Old Virgin was the first 2000s Judd Apatow comedy to kickstart Apatow’s “rat pack” era, in which he frequently cast comedians like Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen (as well as Jason Segel, Johan Hill, and Bill Hader).
The r-rated comedy in The 40 Year Old Virgin works so well thanks to the hilarious dynamics between the crude Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, and Romany Malco and the seemingly innocent (and sexually oblivious) Steve Carrell. This romantic comedy is full of hysterical improvised scenes, such as the infamous waxing scene with Steve Carrell (which was actually done in real life) and a deleted scene with Romany Malco and Kevin Hart. Thanks to this rom-com and its amusing ensemble, I’ll never hear The Fifth Dimension’s Aquarius the same way ever again.
8. Shaun Of the Dead
Year Made: 2004
“You’ve got red on you.” Of course, Edgar Wright would find a way to make zombie movies funny. I expect nothing less from the mastermind behind Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. I love Shaun of the Dead. Not only is it a spectacular comedy that put me on to the greatness of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, but it’s also one of my favorite zombie movies thanks to its choice to make fun of an otherwise dramatic premise of a zombie apocalypse.
Don’t get me wrong, Shaun of the Dead certainly has some serious moments and will definitely tug at your heartstrings, but when there are jokes, they hit every time. And although Simon Peg, Dylan Moran, and Peter Serafinowicz delivered excellent on-screen performances, the real comedy grand prize goes to Nick Frost for his portrayal of the hilarious air-headed Ed, the best sidekick you could ever ask for in a zombie apocalypse. “Yeah, boyyyeee!”.
7. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Year Made: 2004
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is a movie whose premise is simple: two college friends get stoned and, thanks to a weirdly enticing television ad, decide they will stop at nothing to satisfy their craving for a meal from White Castle. What ensues from there is a nonstop, outrageously funny adventure with absurd twists, bizarre turns, and hilarious bits from Neil Patrick Harris.
Just when you think it can’t get any more insane, random, or funny, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle takes you deeper into its rabbit hole. This movie not only made the world crave White Castle (no, really. The film reportedly drove sales up for the fast-food franchise), but it also made us all want to scream Wilson Phillips’ Hold On at the top of our lungs. Good luck getting past Kumar’s marijuana fantasy without losing your breath from laughter.
6. Superbad
Year Made: 2007
Ah, Superbad. The r-rated comedy that made us all love/hate the vulgar and obnoxious Jonah Hill. When this movie came out, it was the stuff of legends. People couldn’t stop going on about the awkwardness of Michael Cera, the obscenity of Jonah Hill, or the dorky, but somehow also, smoothness of your boy Christopher Mintz-Plasse aka McLovin.
Superbad is funny and extremely relatable, as we witness the coming of age story of two teenage pals who are desperate to make a name for themselves before they are forced to leave their friendship and their dorky high school personas behind. Superbad has protagonists you really want to see win while also giving us hilarious scenes that we can quote for days. The great lengths that Seth and Evan (who are named after writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) go to manifest their cool reputations is insane but guarantees roaring laughter every time. I’ll be damned if Seth Rogen and Bill Hader aren’t the coolest, most understanding crooked cops ever!
5. EuroTrip
Year Made: 2004
If you read the title of this movie and instantly envisioned Matt Damon performing Scotty Doesn’t Know, you’ve come to the right place, my friend. This r-rated 2004 comedy is a riot. It depicts a tale of romance, friendship, growth, and determination while also poking fun at European caricatures such as the Red Light District, the USD exchange rate, and the passionate fandom of fútbol in the UK.
EuroTrip features hilarious cameos from David Hasselhoff, Lucy Lawless, and Fred Armisen as we follow the crazy backpacking shenanigans of Michelle Trachtenberg, Scott Mechlowicz, Jacob Pitts, and Travis Wester. Do yourself a favor and watch this early 2000s gem if you haven’t already.
4. Knocked Up
Year made: 2007
Knocked Up is another early 2000s r-rated comedy classic from the Apatow vault. It stars Seth Rogen in his first-ever leading role as unlikely hero Ben Stone who ends up in a co-parenting relationship with Katherine Heigl’s Allison Scott after the two hook up during a one-night stand.
Knocked Up is brilliant thanks to the misfit ensemble of Rogen, Jason Segel, Jonah Hill, and Jay Baruchel, as well as the awkward chemistry between Heigl and Rogen, who never seem to be on the same page about anything. As you watch the improbable twosome struggle to get to know each other, you can’t help but wonder: how the hell are these two going to raise a kid together? This rom-com features the first-ever movie role for Ken Jeong (who was actually a real-life doctor at the time) and the scene-stealing duet of Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd, who did such a fantastic job as the married couple, Debbie and Pete, that they eventually starred in their own spinoff (This Is 40.)
3. The Hangover
Year Made: 2009
The Hangover is good old-fashioned comedy gold and shows the magic that occurs when actors perfectly understand the assignment. The shocking twists, musical breaks, and legendary appearance from Mike Tyson sky rocked this r-rated comedy to record-breaking success, making it the highest-grossing r-rated comedy of 2009.
The Hangover is an amusing spin on a bachelor party gone awry after Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper), and clingy brother-in-law-to-be Alan (Zach Galifianakis) go through hell on high water to find their best bud and groom to be Doug (Justin Bartha) after a wild night of partying in Vegas. As the Wolf Pack retrace their steps through a series of various clues (including a tiger, an abandoned baby, and a butt naked Ken Jeong), all the things that could go wrong do so in the most hilarious way. Be on the lookout for the musical talents of Ed Helms, who improvises a hysterical tribute to his lost friend Doug on the piano.
2. Tropic Thunder
Year Made: 2008
Tropic Thunder is so good that we all just accepted the fact that Robert Downey Jr. wore blackface for most of it. Tropic Thunder hysterically pokes fun at Hollywood tropes and the complications of making a big-budget film; Ben Stiller plays the cheesy action star, Robert Downey Jr plays the intense character actor, and Jack Black is the goofy comic relief, and Brandon T Jackson plays the rapper attempting to crossover into acting. The premise alone is a knee-slapper: what would happen if four Hollywood actors were forced to portray action heroes in the real-life jungles of Southeast Asia while being completely oblivious to the fact that what they’re experiencing is real.
This early 2000s action-comedy has an A-list cast of comedy heavy-hitters like Steve Coogan, Danny McBride, and Matthew McConaughey. Look out for a cameo from action star Tom Cruise who is barely recognizable as the hot-headed Hollywood exec Les Grossman.
1. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Year Made: 2006
Borat is another example of an early 2000s comedy with a huge pop culture impact; people everywhere could not stop talking like the reporter from the glorious nation of Kazakhstan (say it with me: Niiice!). The beauty of Borat is that most of the scenes are hidden camera pranks with real people who have no idea that Sacha Baron Cohen was in character the whole time. But c’mon, who doesn’t love a good prank!?
With all the obliviousness, cultural ignorance, and gender biases, this r-rated comedy stirred up a lot of controversies. Borat caused so much backlash that not only were the producers sued, but the police were called on Cohen over 90 times during production. Talk about a show-stopping performance.
What are your favorite r-rated comedies from the early 2000s? Let us know in the comments.
We wish to say thanks to the writer of this article for this outstanding material
";}s:7:"summary";s:593:"The early 2000s was a great time for comedy. It gave us unlikely heroes and outrageous spoofs and provided Hollywood stardom to comedic greats we all know and love, like Michael Cera, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, and Ken Jeong. And although it’s possible to achieve still gut-busting cinema with a pg-13 rating (uh, ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:15111:"
The early 2000s was a great time for comedy. It gave us unlikely heroes and outrageous spoofs and provided Hollywood stardom to comedic greats we all know and love, like Michael Cera, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, and Ken Jeong.
And although it’s possible to achieve still gut-busting cinema with a pg-13 rating (uh, hello!? Talladega Nights!?), there’s just something about the raw, unfiltered jokes penned in r-rated comedies that really get the tears flowing. Take a trip down memory lane while we look at the best r-rated comedies that premiered before 2010 (sorry, Bridesmaids).
10. Scary Movie
Year Made: 2000
Scary Movie is brought to you by the zany minds of the Wayans Bros, who, by the early 2000s, had already secured their mantles as comedy kings of movie spoofs ( see examples: Don’t Be A Menace and I’m Gonna Git You Sucka). Scary Movie is not only one of the funniest movies from the early 2000s but also one of the most influential. After its 2000 premiere, you couldn’t call a friend without hearing “WAZZUP!?”.
Scary Movie put us on to the comedic talents of Anna Farris and Regina Hall, featured hilarious cameos from Carmen Elektra and Shannon Elizabeth, while also treating us to the hilarious dynamics of comedic vets like Cheri Oteri and, of course, Shawn and Marlon Wayans. This horror movie parody does a perfect job of poking fun at all the horror movie stereotypes we see in films like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and The Blair Witch Project while also tying in spoofs of some of the biggest blockbuster films at the time (like Charlie’s Angels, The Matrix, and American Pie).
9. The 40 Year Old Virgin
Year Made: 2005
The jokes from The 40 Year-Old Virgin never get old. It has a premise and an ensemble cast that still guarantee laughs to this day. The 40 Year Old Virgin was the first 2000s Judd Apatow comedy to kickstart Apatow’s “rat pack” era, in which he frequently cast comedians like Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen (as well as Jason Segel, Johan Hill, and Bill Hader).
The r-rated comedy in The 40 Year Old Virgin works so well thanks to the hilarious dynamics between the crude Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, and Romany Malco and the seemingly innocent (and sexually oblivious) Steve Carrell. This romantic comedy is full of hysterical improvised scenes, such as the infamous waxing scene with Steve Carrell (which was actually done in real life) and a deleted scene with Romany Malco and Kevin Hart. Thanks to this rom-com and its amusing ensemble, I’ll never hear The Fifth Dimension’s Aquarius the same way ever again.
8. Shaun Of the Dead
Year Made: 2004
“You’ve got red on you.” Of course, Edgar Wright would find a way to make zombie movies funny. I expect nothing less from the mastermind behind Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. I love Shaun of the Dead. Not only is it a spectacular comedy that put me on to the greatness of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, but it’s also one of my favorite zombie movies thanks to its choice to make fun of an otherwise dramatic premise of a zombie apocalypse.
Don’t get me wrong, Shaun of the Dead certainly has some serious moments and will definitely tug at your heartstrings, but when there are jokes, they hit every time. And although Simon Peg, Dylan Moran, and Peter Serafinowicz delivered excellent on-screen performances, the real comedy grand prize goes to Nick Frost for his portrayal of the hilarious air-headed Ed, the best sidekick you could ever ask for in a zombie apocalypse. “Yeah, boyyyeee!”.
7. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Year Made: 2004
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is a movie whose premise is simple: two college friends get stoned and, thanks to a weirdly enticing television ad, decide they will stop at nothing to satisfy their craving for a meal from White Castle. What ensues from there is a nonstop, outrageously funny adventure with absurd twists, bizarre turns, and hilarious bits from Neil Patrick Harris.
Just when you think it can’t get any more insane, random, or funny, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle takes you deeper into its rabbit hole. This movie not only made the world crave White Castle (no, really. The film reportedly drove sales up for the fast-food franchise), but it also made us all want to scream Wilson Phillips’ Hold On at the top of our lungs. Good luck getting past Kumar’s marijuana fantasy without losing your breath from laughter.
6. Superbad
Year Made: 2007
Ah, Superbad. The r-rated comedy that made us all love/hate the vulgar and obnoxious Jonah Hill. When this movie came out, it was the stuff of legends. People couldn’t stop going on about the awkwardness of Michael Cera, the obscenity of Jonah Hill, or the dorky, but somehow also, smoothness of your boy Christopher Mintz-Plasse aka McLovin.
Superbad is funny and extremely relatable, as we witness the coming of age story of two teenage pals who are desperate to make a name for themselves before they are forced to leave their friendship and their dorky high school personas behind. Superbad has protagonists you really want to see win while also giving us hilarious scenes that we can quote for days. The great lengths that Seth and Evan (who are named after writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) go to manifest their cool reputations is insane but guarantees roaring laughter every time. I’ll be damned if Seth Rogen and Bill Hader aren’t the coolest, most understanding crooked cops ever!
5. EuroTrip
Year Made: 2004
If you read the title of this movie and instantly envisioned Matt Damon performing Scotty Doesn’t Know, you’ve come to the right place, my friend. This r-rated 2004 comedy is a riot. It depicts a tale of romance, friendship, growth, and determination while also poking fun at European caricatures such as the Red Light District, the USD exchange rate, and the passionate fandom of fútbol in the UK.
EuroTrip features hilarious cameos from David Hasselhoff, Lucy Lawless, and Fred Armisen as we follow the crazy backpacking shenanigans of Michelle Trachtenberg, Scott Mechlowicz, Jacob Pitts, and Travis Wester. Do yourself a favor and watch this early 2000s gem if you haven’t already.
4. Knocked Up
Year made: 2007
Knocked Up is another early 2000s r-rated comedy classic from the Apatow vault. It stars Seth Rogen in his first-ever leading role as unlikely hero Ben Stone who ends up in a co-parenting relationship with Katherine Heigl’s Allison Scott after the two hook up during a one-night stand.
Knocked Up is brilliant thanks to the misfit ensemble of Rogen, Jason Segel, Jonah Hill, and Jay Baruchel, as well as the awkward chemistry between Heigl and Rogen, who never seem to be on the same page about anything. As you watch the improbable twosome struggle to get to know each other, you can’t help but wonder: how the hell are these two going to raise a kid together? This rom-com features the first-ever movie role for Ken Jeong (who was actually a real-life doctor at the time) and the scene-stealing duet of Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd, who did such a fantastic job as the married couple, Debbie and Pete, that they eventually starred in their own spinoff (This Is 40.)
3. The Hangover
Year Made: 2009
The Hangover is good old-fashioned comedy gold and shows the magic that occurs when actors perfectly understand the assignment. The shocking twists, musical breaks, and legendary appearance from Mike Tyson sky rocked this r-rated comedy to record-breaking success, making it the highest-grossing r-rated comedy of 2009.
The Hangover is an amusing spin on a bachelor party gone awry after Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper), and clingy brother-in-law-to-be Alan (Zach Galifianakis) go through hell on high water to find their best bud and groom to be Doug (Justin Bartha) after a wild night of partying in Vegas. As the Wolf Pack retrace their steps through a series of various clues (including a tiger, an abandoned baby, and a butt naked Ken Jeong), all the things that could go wrong do so in the most hilarious way. Be on the lookout for the musical talents of Ed Helms, who improvises a hysterical tribute to his lost friend Doug on the piano.
2. Tropic Thunder
Year Made: 2008
Tropic Thunder is so good that we all just accepted the fact that Robert Downey Jr. wore blackface for most of it. Tropic Thunder hysterically pokes fun at Hollywood tropes and the complications of making a big-budget film; Ben Stiller plays the cheesy action star, Robert Downey Jr plays the intense character actor, and Jack Black is the goofy comic relief, and Brandon T Jackson plays the rapper attempting to crossover into acting. The premise alone is a knee-slapper: what would happen if four Hollywood actors were forced to portray action heroes in the real-life jungles of Southeast Asia while being completely oblivious to the fact that what they’re experiencing is real.
This early 2000s action-comedy has an A-list cast of comedy heavy-hitters like Steve Coogan, Danny McBride, and Matthew McConaughey. Look out for a cameo from action star Tom Cruise who is barely recognizable as the hot-headed Hollywood exec Les Grossman.
1. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Year Made: 2006
Borat is another example of an early 2000s comedy with a huge pop culture impact; people everywhere could not stop talking like the reporter from the glorious nation of Kazakhstan (say it with me: Niiice!). The beauty of Borat is that most of the scenes are hidden camera pranks with real people who have no idea that Sacha Baron Cohen was in character the whole time. But c’mon, who doesn’t love a good prank!?
With all the obliviousness, cultural ignorance, and gender biases, this r-rated comedy stirred up a lot of controversies. Borat caused so much backlash that not only were the producers sued, but the police were called on Cohen over 90 times during production. Talk about a show-stopping performance.
What are your favorite r-rated comedies from the early 2000s? Let us know in the comments.
We wish to say thanks to the writer of this article for this outstanding material
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1650742800;}i:7;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:59:"Halloween (1978): The Main Characters, Ranked By Likability";s:4:"link";s:111:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/halloween-1978-the-main-characters-ranked-by-likability/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 23 Apr 2022 18:17:41 +0000";s:8:"category";s:50:"Scream AwaycharactersHalloweenLikabilitymainRanked";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=63974";s:11:"description";s:694:"There aren’t always many likable characters in horror movies, as sometimes minor characters make silly choices and, of course, there’s always at least one villain to be scared of. The original Halloween movie from 1978 features quite a few caring characters. Fans sympathize with Laurie Strode from the beginning of the story, hoping that she will get through this scary ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:22463:"
There aren’t always many likable characters in horror movies, as sometimes minor characters make silly choices and, of course, there’s always at least one villain to be scared of. The original Halloween movie from 1978 features quite a few caring characters. Fans sympathize with Laurie Strode from the beginning of the story, hoping that she will get through this scary October evening and make it out alive. The film also features adorable characters like Lindsey Wallace and Tommy Doyle who come back in Halloween Kills to stand up for their town.
RELATED: 10 Best Movies That Were Inspired By Halloween (1978), Ranked
When comparing Michael Myers to Laurie, Laurie’s friend Annie Brackett, and Dr. Loomis, it’s clear that audiences sympathize with everyone over the classic villain. But who are the most likable characters in Halloween (1978)?
9 Michael Myers
From the people who Michael Myers kills to his silent evil nature, the villain who was called “The Shape” in the first movie is impossible to like. He stalks and murders people and doesn’t seem to feel any emotion whatsoever.
While Michael Myers is an interesting villain and fans love debating his powers and what he’s going to do in Halloween Ends, fans feel badly about the pain that he brings to people and how scared he has made Laurie for decades.
8 Sheriff Brackett
It’s also hard to like Sheriff Brackett, who might want to keep the town of Haddonfield, Illinois safe, but who doesn’t seem like he wants to worry much about Michael Myers, let alone take this threat seriously.
When Sheriff Brackett talks to Dr. Loomis about Michael, he isn’t certain that Dr. Loomis is telling the truth. Since audiences know that Dr. Loomis is all too familiar with Michael’s evil actions, it feels impossible to understand why Sheriff Brackett is being so stubborn.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
7 Bob Simms
Lynda’s boyfriend Bob appears briefly in Halloween, allowing the movie to tell a typical teenage story of two high schoolers who want to spend some time alone on Halloween evening.
RELATED: 10 Things Fans Love About Halloween (1978), According To Reddit
While it’s sad that Michael murders Bob, and Bob is an innocent character who was in the wrong place at the absolute wrong time, Bob doesn’t have a ton of personality and fans don’t know him as well as the other characters.
6 Dr. Sam Loomis
Dr. Loomis is a smart Halloween character as he’s the person who truly knows what Michael can do and why he’s so horrifying.
Although Dr. Loomis is an expert, he’s a gruff, cynical person who doesn’t seem all that easy to like. Still, fans understand why he acts the way that he does as he’s scared of Michael Myers and totally consumed by Michael’s escape from the hospital where he was staying for several years. Dr. Loomis can’t rest until he stops Michael.
5 Lynda Van Der Klok
Laurie and Annie’s friend Lynda seems like a good person, but she’s shown to be a fairly vapid teenager who invites her boyfriend over. Lynda loves saying the word “totally” and cares a lot about popularity and being stylish. It’s easier to like Laurie and Annie as they seem more compassionate than Lynda, who seems to care mostly about herself.
Michael kills Lynda by making himself look like a ghost and wearing a sheet, and fans feel terribly that Lynda has died so young and in such an awful way.
4 Annie Brackett
Laurie’s friend and fellow babysitter Annie is more likable than Lynda, as Annie has a bit more of an understanding of the terror that’s going on this Halloween night.
When Michael murders Annie from her car’s backseat, which is a scary Halloween scene, it’s heartbreaking to see Annie’s life cut short and to watch Laurie lose such a good friend and important person in her life.
3 Tommy Doyle
Tommy is an innocent child getting caught up in the horrors of Michael Myers, and as Laurie takes care of Tommy and Lindsey and they all try to escape Michael, audiences see Tommy as a sweet character.
RELATED: 10 Horror Movies To Watch If You Love Halloween (1978)
When Tommy is an adult and he goes after Michael in Halloween Kills, fans can tell that Tommy has been traumatized by this scary childhood experience. Audiences cheer Tommy, Lindsey, and Laurie on and applaud their courage.
2 Lindsey Wallace
Lindsey becomes one of the best characters in Halloween Kills and in the first movie, she’s stunned when a normal night of babysitting turns into a nightmare. Audiences hope that Lindsey and Tommy will both be safe and okay.
Lindsey is incredibly likable as she’s kind, caring, and understandably frightened by Michael. When she tells Laurie how she feels, Laurie does what she can to protect her, and audiences are riveted by this unimaginable evening.
1 Laurie Strode
Of all the main characters in Halloween (1978), audiences love Laurie the most, cheering her on when she faces Michael Myers and is the final girl who is still on a mission in Halloween Kills and, soon, Halloween Ends.
In the first movie, Laurie’s high school life shifts to one of danger and action and horror, as she hides from Michael while figuring out a game plan to save herself. Laurie is so brave and caring when she looks after Lindsey and Tommy, showing that even in the face of evil, she has a kind heart.
NEXT: 10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Night He Came Home, Halloween (1978)
Next The 10 Darkest Batman Movies Ever, Ranked
About The Author
Aya Tsintziras (1757 Articles Published)
Aya Tsintziras is a freelance writer who writes about pop culture and TV. She has a Political Science degree from the University of Toronto and a Masters of Journalism from Ryerson University. She loves coffee, reading, working out, and watching TV. She lives in Toronto with her husband.
More From Aya Tsintziras
We would like to thank the author of this article for this remarkable material
";}s:7:"summary";s:694:"There aren’t always many likable characters in horror movies, as sometimes minor characters make silly choices and, of course, there’s always at least one villain to be scared of. The original Halloween movie from 1978 features quite a few caring characters. Fans sympathize with Laurie Strode from the beginning of the story, hoping that she will get through this scary ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:22463:"
There aren’t always many likable characters in horror movies, as sometimes minor characters make silly choices and, of course, there’s always at least one villain to be scared of. The original Halloween movie from 1978 features quite a few caring characters. Fans sympathize with Laurie Strode from the beginning of the story, hoping that she will get through this scary October evening and make it out alive. The film also features adorable characters like Lindsey Wallace and Tommy Doyle who come back in Halloween Kills to stand up for their town.
RELATED: 10 Best Movies That Were Inspired By Halloween (1978), Ranked
When comparing Michael Myers to Laurie, Laurie’s friend Annie Brackett, and Dr. Loomis, it’s clear that audiences sympathize with everyone over the classic villain. But who are the most likable characters in Halloween (1978)?
9 Michael Myers
From the people who Michael Myers kills to his silent evil nature, the villain who was called “The Shape” in the first movie is impossible to like. He stalks and murders people and doesn’t seem to feel any emotion whatsoever.
While Michael Myers is an interesting villain and fans love debating his powers and what he’s going to do in Halloween Ends, fans feel badly about the pain that he brings to people and how scared he has made Laurie for decades.
8 Sheriff Brackett
It’s also hard to like Sheriff Brackett, who might want to keep the town of Haddonfield, Illinois safe, but who doesn’t seem like he wants to worry much about Michael Myers, let alone take this threat seriously.
When Sheriff Brackett talks to Dr. Loomis about Michael, he isn’t certain that Dr. Loomis is telling the truth. Since audiences know that Dr. Loomis is all too familiar with Michael’s evil actions, it feels impossible to understand why Sheriff Brackett is being so stubborn.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
7 Bob Simms
Lynda’s boyfriend Bob appears briefly in Halloween, allowing the movie to tell a typical teenage story of two high schoolers who want to spend some time alone on Halloween evening.
RELATED: 10 Things Fans Love About Halloween (1978), According To Reddit
While it’s sad that Michael murders Bob, and Bob is an innocent character who was in the wrong place at the absolute wrong time, Bob doesn’t have a ton of personality and fans don’t know him as well as the other characters.
6 Dr. Sam Loomis
Dr. Loomis is a smart Halloween character as he’s the person who truly knows what Michael can do and why he’s so horrifying.
Although Dr. Loomis is an expert, he’s a gruff, cynical person who doesn’t seem all that easy to like. Still, fans understand why he acts the way that he does as he’s scared of Michael Myers and totally consumed by Michael’s escape from the hospital where he was staying for several years. Dr. Loomis can’t rest until he stops Michael.
5 Lynda Van Der Klok
Laurie and Annie’s friend Lynda seems like a good person, but she’s shown to be a fairly vapid teenager who invites her boyfriend over. Lynda loves saying the word “totally” and cares a lot about popularity and being stylish. It’s easier to like Laurie and Annie as they seem more compassionate than Lynda, who seems to care mostly about herself.
Michael kills Lynda by making himself look like a ghost and wearing a sheet, and fans feel terribly that Lynda has died so young and in such an awful way.
4 Annie Brackett
Laurie’s friend and fellow babysitter Annie is more likable than Lynda, as Annie has a bit more of an understanding of the terror that’s going on this Halloween night.
When Michael murders Annie from her car’s backseat, which is a scary Halloween scene, it’s heartbreaking to see Annie’s life cut short and to watch Laurie lose such a good friend and important person in her life.
3 Tommy Doyle
Tommy is an innocent child getting caught up in the horrors of Michael Myers, and as Laurie takes care of Tommy and Lindsey and they all try to escape Michael, audiences see Tommy as a sweet character.
RELATED: 10 Horror Movies To Watch If You Love Halloween (1978)
When Tommy is an adult and he goes after Michael in Halloween Kills, fans can tell that Tommy has been traumatized by this scary childhood experience. Audiences cheer Tommy, Lindsey, and Laurie on and applaud their courage.
2 Lindsey Wallace
Lindsey becomes one of the best characters in Halloween Kills and in the first movie, she’s stunned when a normal night of babysitting turns into a nightmare. Audiences hope that Lindsey and Tommy will both be safe and okay.
Lindsey is incredibly likable as she’s kind, caring, and understandably frightened by Michael. When she tells Laurie how she feels, Laurie does what she can to protect her, and audiences are riveted by this unimaginable evening.
1 Laurie Strode
Of all the main characters in Halloween (1978), audiences love Laurie the most, cheering her on when she faces Michael Myers and is the final girl who is still on a mission in Halloween Kills and, soon, Halloween Ends.
In the first movie, Laurie’s high school life shifts to one of danger and action and horror, as she hides from Michael while figuring out a game plan to save herself. Laurie is so brave and caring when she looks after Lindsey and Tommy, showing that even in the face of evil, she has a kind heart.
NEXT: 10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Night He Came Home, Halloween (1978)
Next The 10 Darkest Batman Movies Ever, Ranked
About The Author
Aya Tsintziras (1757 Articles Published)
Aya Tsintziras is a freelance writer who writes about pop culture and TV. She has a Political Science degree from the University of Toronto and a Masters of Journalism from Ryerson University. She loves coffee, reading, working out, and watching TV. She lives in Toronto with her husband.
More From Aya Tsintziras
We would like to thank the author of this article for this remarkable material
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1650737861;}i:8;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:29:"5 Worst Horror Movie Villains";s:4:"link";s:85:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/5-worst-horror-movie-villains/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 23 Apr 2022 16:58:13 +0000";s:8:"category";s:35:"Scream AwayHorrorMovieVillainsWorst";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=63951";s:11:"description";s:564:"From Ghostface to Chucky, there are many unforgettable horror movie villains who have been appearing on movie screens for several decades. While some are campy and fun, others are downright chilling to watch, with Norman Bates from Psycho and Annie Wilkes from Misery falling into the latter category. Even though horror fans are familiar with ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:13644:"
From Ghostface to Chucky, there are many unforgettable horror movie villains who have been appearing on movie screens for several decades. While some are campy and fun, others are downright chilling to watch, with Norman Bates from Psycho and Annie Wilkes from Misery falling into the latter category.
Even though horror fans are familiar with several villains who they would never want to encounter IRL, there are a few evil characters from popular films who don’t measure up in terms of scares, place in the genre, and character development.
GAMERANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
RELATED: 5 ’90s Horror Movie Villains That Stand The Test Of Time
There should be no Jeeper’s Creepers reboot because of the director, and the 2001 movie has a terrible villain as well. Trish (Gina Philips) and Darry Jenner (Justin Long) are siblings on a road trip and they find The Creeper, who goes after them.
While there are many monster movies, The Creeper doesn’t feel like the most fully formed horror movie villain. The main characters hear the backstory behind his killing sprees: The Creeper comes out in spring every 23 years and he kills people for 23 days so he can use their body parts. This might be disgusting to hear about, and the end scene of The Creeper tormenting Darry is definitely unforgettable. But compared to other villains, no one really remembers The Creeper or talks about him as much as Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.
The 2018 movie Slender Man takes the Creepypasta story of this character and tells a tale about a group of teenage girls who come across this mysterious and horrible figure. The movie not only has a depressing ending and not much development of the plot or characters, as it feels very generic, but the villain itself is not that interesting.
Whether audiences are familiar with the Slender Man myth or not, this character falls flat when compared to others, from Ghostface to Michael Myers. Slender Man looks like a shadow, or even a drawing of a shadow, which isn’t really that scary. Horror fans can shrug at the idea that he comes for people who keep writing and talking about him as he doesn’t feel as powerful or significant as other villains.
The Miner is the villain in the 1981 and 2009 My Bloody Valentine movies. In the 1981 film, Harry Warden is the first Miner as he gets stuck in the mines during a Valentine’s Day dance. He becomes cannibalistic and then goes on a killing spree when he gets out. Axel Palmer then takes on the persona of the Miner, wearing a mining uniform and committing murder. In the 2009 film, Tom Hanniger is the villain, as Harry hurt him, and he wants revenge.
The 2009 My Bloody Valentine is one of the worst horror movie remakes and also has one of the least well-developed or interesting villains. Unlike the terrifying villain Freddy Krueger, who is very detailed in each movie in A Nightmare On Elm Street, horror fans might not be all that scared of The Miner. He feels like a generic horror movie bad guy.
While the fun and cheesy 2000s slasher Valentine is entertaining, and a reason is given for why the villain is killing people, Jeremy Melton/Cupid doesn’t seem that thrilling when compared to others in the genre.
Jeremy wants revenge for the girls who teased and tormented him when they were younger, and it soon becomes clear that Adam Carr (David Boreanaz) is actually Jeremy. Although there is a good explanation for why he did the horrible things that he did, Adam isn’t all that compelling as a horror movie villain because many others have murdered because they wanted to right some childhood wrongs. Since Valentine doesn’t have a sequel and it’s not as popular as some other scary films, that makes the villain feel less horrifying as well.
When looking at the 2006 and 2019 remakes of Black Christmas, the 2019 version changes the villain from Billy to a cult of young adult men who want to take control of the women on their college campus. The characters feel superficial and one note.
The members of the fraternity Delta Kappa Omicron are murdering their fellow students, and while the movie is meant as a statement about feminism and sexism, it doesn’t work that well. The villain in the other two Black Christmas films was Billy, who targeted the sorority sisters living in a house together. While Billy wasn’t a strong villain, the decision to make an entire frat the villains doesn’t work very well. At least Billy had a backstory that was explained to audiences and that made him seem even creepier.
NEXT: Horror Movies Need A New Iconic Slasher Villain
Ranking The 10 Scariest Horror Video Games Of All Time
Read Next
About The Author
Aya Tsintziras (129 Articles Published)
Aya Tsintziras is a freelance writer who writes about TV, movies, and has a particular interest in the horror genre. She has a Political Science degree from the University of Toronto and a Masters of Journalism from Ryerson University. She loves coffee, reading, working out, and watching TV. She lives in Toronto.
More
From Aya Tsintziras
We want to say thanks to the writer of this article for this outstanding content
";}s:7:"summary";s:564:"From Ghostface to Chucky, there are many unforgettable horror movie villains who have been appearing on movie screens for several decades. While some are campy and fun, others are downright chilling to watch, with Norman Bates from Psycho and Annie Wilkes from Misery falling into the latter category. Even though horror fans are familiar with ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:13644:"
From Ghostface to Chucky, there are many unforgettable horror movie villains who have been appearing on movie screens for several decades. While some are campy and fun, others are downright chilling to watch, with Norman Bates from Psycho and Annie Wilkes from Misery falling into the latter category.
Even though horror fans are familiar with several villains who they would never want to encounter IRL, there are a few evil characters from popular films who don’t measure up in terms of scares, place in the genre, and character development.
GAMERANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
RELATED: 5 ’90s Horror Movie Villains That Stand The Test Of Time
There should be no Jeeper’s Creepers reboot because of the director, and the 2001 movie has a terrible villain as well. Trish (Gina Philips) and Darry Jenner (Justin Long) are siblings on a road trip and they find The Creeper, who goes after them.
While there are many monster movies, The Creeper doesn’t feel like the most fully formed horror movie villain. The main characters hear the backstory behind his killing sprees: The Creeper comes out in spring every 23 years and he kills people for 23 days so he can use their body parts. This might be disgusting to hear about, and the end scene of The Creeper tormenting Darry is definitely unforgettable. But compared to other villains, no one really remembers The Creeper or talks about him as much as Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.
The 2018 movie Slender Man takes the Creepypasta story of this character and tells a tale about a group of teenage girls who come across this mysterious and horrible figure. The movie not only has a depressing ending and not much development of the plot or characters, as it feels very generic, but the villain itself is not that interesting.
Whether audiences are familiar with the Slender Man myth or not, this character falls flat when compared to others, from Ghostface to Michael Myers. Slender Man looks like a shadow, or even a drawing of a shadow, which isn’t really that scary. Horror fans can shrug at the idea that he comes for people who keep writing and talking about him as he doesn’t feel as powerful or significant as other villains.
The Miner is the villain in the 1981 and 2009 My Bloody Valentine movies. In the 1981 film, Harry Warden is the first Miner as he gets stuck in the mines during a Valentine’s Day dance. He becomes cannibalistic and then goes on a killing spree when he gets out. Axel Palmer then takes on the persona of the Miner, wearing a mining uniform and committing murder. In the 2009 film, Tom Hanniger is the villain, as Harry hurt him, and he wants revenge.
The 2009 My Bloody Valentine is one of the worst horror movie remakes and also has one of the least well-developed or interesting villains. Unlike the terrifying villain Freddy Krueger, who is very detailed in each movie in A Nightmare On Elm Street, horror fans might not be all that scared of The Miner. He feels like a generic horror movie bad guy.
While the fun and cheesy 2000s slasher Valentine is entertaining, and a reason is given for why the villain is killing people, Jeremy Melton/Cupid doesn’t seem that thrilling when compared to others in the genre.
Jeremy wants revenge for the girls who teased and tormented him when they were younger, and it soon becomes clear that Adam Carr (David Boreanaz) is actually Jeremy. Although there is a good explanation for why he did the horrible things that he did, Adam isn’t all that compelling as a horror movie villain because many others have murdered because they wanted to right some childhood wrongs. Since Valentine doesn’t have a sequel and it’s not as popular as some other scary films, that makes the villain feel less horrifying as well.
When looking at the 2006 and 2019 remakes of Black Christmas, the 2019 version changes the villain from Billy to a cult of young adult men who want to take control of the women on their college campus. The characters feel superficial and one note.
The members of the fraternity Delta Kappa Omicron are murdering their fellow students, and while the movie is meant as a statement about feminism and sexism, it doesn’t work that well. The villain in the other two Black Christmas films was Billy, who targeted the sorority sisters living in a house together. While Billy wasn’t a strong villain, the decision to make an entire frat the villains doesn’t work very well. At least Billy had a backstory that was explained to audiences and that made him seem even creepier.
NEXT: Horror Movies Need A New Iconic Slasher Villain
Ranking The 10 Scariest Horror Video Games Of All Time
Read Next
About The Author
Aya Tsintziras (129 Articles Published)
Aya Tsintziras is a freelance writer who writes about TV, movies, and has a particular interest in the horror genre. She has a Political Science degree from the University of Toronto and a Masters of Journalism from Ryerson University. She loves coffee, reading, working out, and watching TV. She lives in Toronto.
More
From Aya Tsintziras
We want to say thanks to the writer of this article for this outstanding content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1650733093;}i:9;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:72:"A quiet queer star. An 80s horror romp. Did people know it’s this gay?";s:4:"link";s:122:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/a-quiet-queer-star-an-80s-horror-romp-did-people-know-its-this-gay/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 23 Apr 2022 15:33:43 +0000";s:8:"category";s:47:"Scream Away80sGayHorrorPeopleQueerquietrompStar";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://movieshere.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=63899";s:11:"description";s:670:"Fright Night Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a re-watch. The Queerty Rockin’ Roddy Double Feature Part I: Fright Night Why does Roddy McDowall not get more love? The quiet, whisper-voiced actor appeared in a whopping 270 movies & TV shows ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:4931:"
Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a re-watch.
The Queerty Rockin’ Roddy Double Feature Part I: Fright Night
Why does Roddy McDowall not get more love? The quiet, whisper-voiced actor appeared in a whopping 270 movies & TV shows before his death in 1998. He also became one of Hollywood’s most renowned film historians, amassing a collection of more than 1,000 films at a time before most movies were even available on videocassette.
Oh yeah, McDowall was gay and threw some of Tinseltown’s most notorious gay beach parties. So, there’s that.
In honor of the late, great, Mr. McDowall, we’ve devised this weekend’s Screen Gems double feature. We begin with one of the actor’s most popular films–and one of his best performances. Director Tom Holland’s (no, not that Tom Holland) Fright Night became an unexpected hit back in 1985 thanks to its unique mix of horror, humor and Jungian undercurrents. It remains a classic of the era to this day.
The story follows Charley (William Ragsdale), one of those prototypical 80s, male geeks obsessed with horror movies, and Peter Vincent (McDowall), a horror host very much in the vein of Elvira or Svengoolie. A handsome bachelor named Jerry (Chris Sarandon) moves in next door and begins to romance Charley’s single mom. Charley begins to notice a few details that suggest Jerry is actually a vampire. Since nobody will believe that vampires actually exist, Charley reaches out to Peter Vincent for help in defeating his mother’s undead beau.
Of course, horror and hilarity ensue. Sarandon and Ragsdale may get higher billing, but the success of Fright Night rests on the shoulders of Roddy McDowall. The actor sinks his teeth (pardon the phrase) into his role, playing Vincent as a bitter old coot of middling talent who finally finds purpose in his life: to use all the bad horror movies he’s seen as ammunition against the undead. Other actors would have played the character as an action-movie badass or shrieking pansy. McDowall hits those notes and everything in between, and also adds an extraordinary quality of his own. There’s something touching about watching his Peter Vincent, an actor of limited success, find a mission in battling real monsters. Over the course of the film, he begins to actually like himself, possibly for the first time ever.
Fright Night also succeeds thanks to its toying with subtext and latent anxieties of the era. Divorce was rampant in the 1980s; plenty of kids, regardless of gender, had to deal with the stress of watching mom or dad date. That made for some severe feelings of intrusion into the safe space of the home. Whether Jerry was a vampire or not, we have a feeling Charley would have rejected him as an intruder.
The movie also leans into homoeroticism: Jerry seems to want to seduce Charley as much as his mom. Several other scenes of the vampire dealing with his henchman, Billy, suggest a gay relationship…one quite blatantly. Does that fall into the trap of the gay villain/80s homophobic exploitation? Maybe…though watching sissy Peter Vincent battle it out with Jerry adds another layer of complexity. In a sense, Fright Night is really about two coded gay characters battling it out for Charley’s soul. We love that, and have to wonder what a sequel or remake that fully embraces the gay elements would look like.
Fright Night doesn’t aspire to be a horror classic on par with, say, Rosemary’s Baby. On the contrary, it revels in its shlockiness, but has the good sense to make the dreck about something deeper. We recommend it for the gayness, the nostalgia, and above all, for Roddy McDowall’s iconic performance. Go figure that a gay actor could make something so scary and funny at the same time.
Streams on Amazon, YouTube & VUDU.
We want to thank the writer of this article for this awesome material
";}s:7:"summary";s:670:"Fright Night Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a re-watch. The Queerty Rockin’ Roddy Double Feature Part I: Fright Night Why does Roddy McDowall not get more love? The quiet, whisper-voiced actor appeared in a whopping 270 movies & TV shows ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:4931:"
Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a re-watch.
The Queerty Rockin’ Roddy Double Feature Part I: Fright Night
Why does Roddy McDowall not get more love? The quiet, whisper-voiced actor appeared in a whopping 270 movies & TV shows before his death in 1998. He also became one of Hollywood’s most renowned film historians, amassing a collection of more than 1,000 films at a time before most movies were even available on videocassette.
Oh yeah, McDowall was gay and threw some of Tinseltown’s most notorious gay beach parties. So, there’s that.
In honor of the late, great, Mr. McDowall, we’ve devised this weekend’s Screen Gems double feature. We begin with one of the actor’s most popular films–and one of his best performances. Director Tom Holland’s (no, not that Tom Holland) Fright Night became an unexpected hit back in 1985 thanks to its unique mix of horror, humor and Jungian undercurrents. It remains a classic of the era to this day.
The story follows Charley (William Ragsdale), one of those prototypical 80s, male geeks obsessed with horror movies, and Peter Vincent (McDowall), a horror host very much in the vein of Elvira or Svengoolie. A handsome bachelor named Jerry (Chris Sarandon) moves in next door and begins to romance Charley’s single mom. Charley begins to notice a few details that suggest Jerry is actually a vampire. Since nobody will believe that vampires actually exist, Charley reaches out to Peter Vincent for help in defeating his mother’s undead beau.
Of course, horror and hilarity ensue. Sarandon and Ragsdale may get higher billing, but the success of Fright Night rests on the shoulders of Roddy McDowall. The actor sinks his teeth (pardon the phrase) into his role, playing Vincent as a bitter old coot of middling talent who finally finds purpose in his life: to use all the bad horror movies he’s seen as ammunition against the undead. Other actors would have played the character as an action-movie badass or shrieking pansy. McDowall hits those notes and everything in between, and also adds an extraordinary quality of his own. There’s something touching about watching his Peter Vincent, an actor of limited success, find a mission in battling real monsters. Over the course of the film, he begins to actually like himself, possibly for the first time ever.
Fright Night also succeeds thanks to its toying with subtext and latent anxieties of the era. Divorce was rampant in the 1980s; plenty of kids, regardless of gender, had to deal with the stress of watching mom or dad date. That made for some severe feelings of intrusion into the safe space of the home. Whether Jerry was a vampire or not, we have a feeling Charley would have rejected him as an intruder.
The movie also leans into homoeroticism: Jerry seems to want to seduce Charley as much as his mom. Several other scenes of the vampire dealing with his henchman, Billy, suggest a gay relationship…one quite blatantly. Does that fall into the trap of the gay villain/80s homophobic exploitation? Maybe…though watching sissy Peter Vincent battle it out with Jerry adds another layer of complexity. In a sense, Fright Night is really about two coded gay characters battling it out for Charley’s soul. We love that, and have to wonder what a sequel or remake that fully embraces the gay elements would look like.
Fright Night doesn’t aspire to be a horror classic on par with, say, Rosemary’s Baby. On the contrary, it revels in its shlockiness, but has the good sense to make the dreck about something deeper. We recommend it for the gayness, the nostalgia, and above all, for Roddy McDowall’s iconic performance. Go figure that a gay actor could make something so scary and funny at the same time.
Streams on Amazon, YouTube & VUDU.
We want to thank the writer of this article for this awesome material
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