10 Slasher Movies That Broke All The Rules

Helmed by a director previously best known for his work on Adam McKay and Will Ferrell’s online side project FunnyorDie.com, Fear Inc has an inventive premise which could only have come from the mind of a sketch comedy writer, and at times the film feels like a YouTube skit that’s gotten way out of hand—in a good way, if that makes sense.

Our hero is a shiftless slacker who loves haunted house attractions, the seasonal tourist traps wherein janky animatronics and underpaid teens in shoddy mummy costumes jump out at unsuspecting customers to give them a good-natured scare. Borrowing its premise from real life “extreme endurance” haunted houses such as the infamous McKamey Manor, the flick sees him sign up for “Fear Inc,” a haunted house experience “like none other.”

Cue the lights flickering out, shadowy figures appearing in his garden after dark, and—his best friend being trapped in a Saw-style torture trap, forcing our hero to either mutilate his mate or stand by and watch him die?! Our hero’s girlfriend being bundled into an unmarked van, thus starting a terrifying all-night ordeal to find her?

The film constantly wrongfoots audience expectations, with “real” scenes being set-ups and vice versa, and although its ending is a little too corny for our liking—just one twist too far—the movie nonetheless manages to remix the slasher formula to mind-blowingly twisty success.