10 Most Underrated High School Horror Movies

Christian schoolgirls, step-sister shenanigans, vagina dentata... Teeth (2007) has it all, stepping out of line as one of the noughties' biggest video-nasty-style flicks, which your friends all seemed to know someone who knew someone who'd seen it.

Sitting in a strange niche somewhere between the absurd, high concept films of Quentin Dupieux and the extreme-violence-for-the-sake-of-extreme-violence flicks that dominated internet forums at the turn of the next decade (The Human Centipede, The Tortured, the remake of Last House On The Left), Teeth is the story of Dawn (Jess Weixler), active member of her high-school chastity club and all-round model teen, who turns out to have a set of sharp pearly whites in her private parts.

Like many of the undervalued films in this article, Teeth's genius is in how it uses its tropes against the audience, taking what we know about character archetypes – like the aforementioned Christian schoolgirl – and putting a new, postmodern twist on them. Unfortunately, this is the double-edged blade that caused many to dismiss it out of hand as sensationalist trash, failing to see the deep satire not just of a patriarchal, sex-fearing society, but of its very audience and the preconceptions we carry with us.

And, of course, it leaves you with several potent images you're glad don't feature in your own memories of high school.