10 Intense Horror Movies You (Probably) Haven't Seen
4. Excision (2012)
A feature-length adaptation of the short film of the same, Richard Bates, Jr.'s Excision follows a social reject whose murderous, psychosexual fantasies combine with her interest in medicine, building to a tense and visceral conclusion.
Appropriately enough, Nip/Tuck's AnnaLynne McCord stars as Pauline, the troubled teen with sex, surgery and blood on the brain. Her dreams of mutilation often bring her to orgasm and the only thing really keeping her tethered to reality is a genuine affection for her sister Grace (Ariel Winter), whose cystic fibrosis is slowly killing her.
Excision excels as an anti-teen-movie, taking the genre's tropes – the loser protagonist, the virginity quest, the mean girls – and putting them to work in something twisted and alien that, in many ways, far better represents the bullied teenage psyche. Cameos from Malcolm McDowell, Ray Wise and John Waters underline the film's oddball horror qualifications, and when it arrives, the conclusion seems so predestined that we're surprised we never saw it coming.
Despite Excision's bold, creative approach, and the impressive array of other original horror flicks the director has under his belt (seriously, check them out), Bates has as of yet failed to break through to mainstream audiences.