10 MORE Horror Movies That Actually Benefitted From Bad Acting

The film that ushered in both the next generation of meta-horror and a new wave of 1980s nostalgia (paving the way for the likes of Happy Death Day and the X trilogy), Todd Strauss-Schulson's The Final Girls holds a special place in modern horror. The film drops a clutch of high school students right into the world of their favourite mid-'80s horror - essentially, Friday the 13th without the branding - and they must use their knowledge of that movie and the slasher genre to make it out alive.

Now, on the one hand, we have a group of contemporary American teens playing to type, with that special brand of dumb, plain-faced Hollywood acting that makes them such easy marks for the discerning killer; on the other, we have the cheesy, flamboyant acting of the teens in the film-within-a-film, harkening back to the '80s when horror performances were goofy and overdramatic. And, while these wouldn't necessarily signal themselves as good bedfellows within one movie, it all hangs together rather nicely.

Shlocky acting and close adherence to acting tropes serve the story from both ends, paying homage to the '80s slasher movie by emulating its lack of traditional acting craft, while simultaneously showing up the supposedly in-the-know modern horror protagonist. And the fact that the performances on screen are self-consciously second-rate doesn't take away from the fact that, yes, it is indeed bad acting.