10 Great Teen Horror Movies (No One Ever Talks About)
The best of the underrated teen slashers, rom zom coms, and high school sci-fi horrors...
Some movies simply seem to slip by audiences unheralded, and never get the credit they deserve as a result.
Often, this is because the genre or sub genre they belong to isn't one likely to be singled out for praise or critical love.
Of all genres, horror, with its thin characters and love of jump scares, is so maligned by critics that it makes space set sci-fi look like period dramas. It's near impossible for a horror film to get great reviews, but occasionally a more art-y and mature effort will win over reviewers.
Teen horror, however, has no chance.
Whether it's a slasher, a tale of witchcraft, or the story of a demonic truck-driving entity, teen horror is seen as the lowest of the low (i.e the most trashy, crowd pleasing, and shamelessly entertaining) by many critics. As a result, a great many superb teen horrors end up criminally underrated, as epitomised in this list of ten teen fright machines which were undeservedly forgotten.
10. The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Released in 2014, The Town That Dreaded Sundown went largely unnoticed by anyone other than horror film fans who were eagerly anticipating this update of the 1976 movie.
The original film is a classic seventies horror which provided the blueprint for countless slashers, with its masked killer, simple story, and dubious claim to a historical basis in fact. Sure, the film was based on a string of murders, but it's far from true to life, which is where this underrated remake comes in.
This witty and subversive re-do deserved more love. A clever meta-remix of the original, the film subverts expectations by setting the killings in a world where the original film not only exists, but is the backbone of this small town's thriving true crime tourism economy.
A sharp satire on a craze which has only grown in popularity since its release, this one surprisngly went under the radar despite the involvement of Glee creator Ryan Murphy, horror powerhouse Jason Blum, and the creators of teen drama Riverdale.