Nightmare on Elm Street
Based on a strange character director Wes Craven saw out his window as a boy, Elm Street may be one of the greatest premises for a horror franchise. After all, what is scarier than being attacked in your sleep when you are at your most vulnerable?
The film also gave birth to one of the most popular ’80s icons, Freddy Krueger. He would evolve into more of a jokester murderer in future films, but the mysterious psychopath with the trademark red and green sweater, burned face and razor glove is scariest in the first. Sure, the film has worn a bit with age and it’s got some cheesy moments, but it still makes good in the jump-scare department, especially when Freddy’s glove makes an appearance in Nancy’s bath. Or when Freddy makes a literal impression from the other side of Nancy’s bedroom wall. Tina’s death is one of the best slasher death sequences ever, as is the bloody geyser of Johnny Depp toward the climax of the film.
The jury is still out on how the remake will fare, but we hope it can stand its own with this modern horror classic.
Evil Dead 2
It’s rare that any movie sequel manages to surpass the original. It’s even more rare in a genre as formulaic and predictable as horror movies. That said, there was nothing predictable about the first Evil Dead. With more experience under his belt and a bigger budget to draw upon, Sam Raimi was able to surpass his freshman effort and turn out a horror film that was as creepy as it was kooky.
Evil Dead 2 is argued by some to be a remake of the original rather than a sequel because of the differences in the opening recap of the first Evil Dead. But as long as Raimi insists Evil Dead 2 is a true sequel, who are we to argue?
The film continues the adventures of everyone’s favorite big-chinned, wise-mouthed hero, Ash Williams. Ash returns to the cursed cabin in the woods to battle the Deadites and rid the world of the evil book Necronomicon Ex-Mortis.
Evil Dead 2 is a strange mix of humor, campy adventure, grotesque violence, and good, old-fashioned frights. The first Evil Dead was barely more than a prototype for the Evil Dead formula Raimi established in this sequel. And with the following sequel Army of Darkness ditching most of the horror in favor of more camp, it could certainly be argued that the franchise peaked at number two. In any case, we’re hoping the long-promised Evil Dead 4 will see the light of day.
The Ring
The horror genre had almost totally stagnated by the time the ’90s rolled around. Pseudo-parody films like Scream helped turn things around, but it was the Japanese film industry that reminded viewers horror could still be scary. In 2002, Japanese horror movie Ringu was remade for American audiences as The Ring.
Like many of the films on this list, The Ring bucked the trend by refusing to allow gore and exploitation to rule the day. The Ring was more interested in terrifying viewers through evocative imagery and a slowly building sense of tension. Who wouldn’t freak out by the thought of a simple videotape foretelling certain doom within one week?
It helped that The Ring enjoyed a healthy budget and some bankable Hollywood talent in place of the dime-a-dozen horror victims of most movies. Naomi Watts may not have nabbed an Oscar for her performance, but she certainly made viewers believe in her plight. We have no idea if The Ring Three will keep the franchise afloat when it is rumored to hit theaters in 2011, but we’re content just to have this horror gem in our library.
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
The original is a classic, and we’ve given plenty of attention and respect to it. And before director Zack Snyder was overseeing 300 Spartans and Rorschach, he was the helmer behind this slick, chilling bullet of a remake that benefits from a bigger budget and a scarier dramatic tension applied to the zombie threat.
The remake could have proved disastrous, as most often do. But anyone who watches the film’s first 10 minutes is guaranteed to forget all of their objections and join the talented helmer for a raucous thrill ride with some much-earned character development along the way. Ving Rhames, Jake Weber and a game Sarah Polley hold together this ramshackle remake, which changes a few key elements of Romero’s story for modern audiences (the zombies can run) and retains others (the careful character study) both for horror fans current and classic.
While the subsequent slate of horror remakes failed to similarly raise pulses, Snyder’s Dawn is satisfying — and scary — enough to sustain fans through a dozen more crash-and-burn creep-fests.
Shaun of the Dead
It’s funny how fast Shaun of the Dead, the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright zombie comedy, became a cult sensation amongst fans of two seemingly opposing genres. Taking the same extraordinary wit and equal ability to comment on genre conventions as they demonstrated during their BBC TV show Spaced, the trio managed to create a side-splitting homage to zombie films. And they did so with dynamic characters, intense gore, quality scares and sizeable laughs.
Taking the structure of your average zombie film — a group of everyday people trying to find shelter from an undead horde — Pegg and Co. were able to create a film that works equally on both levels, eliciting screams as victims are horrifically disemboweled and laughter as a completely oblivious Pegg walks unknowingly through a field of flesh-eating abominations. Pepper in a few sequences of actual emotion that’ll tug at your heartstrings, and somehow Shaun of the Dead becomes more than just some cheap effort to make easy fun of a cheesy sub-genre. It becomes a legitimate love letter to filmmakers such as Romero who pioneered the big, terrible, blood-drenched world of zombies to such great effect.
