To many, Labor Day signifies a day off from work to honor the working force, allowing many to celebrate the end of summer with a three-day weekend. To students, however, the holiday signifies that summer vacation is merely a thing of the past and you have nine agonizing months to get through before you can have more fun in the sun.
Horror movies have always used high school teenagers and college coeds as the victims of carnage, as they’re old enough to understand the terrifying situations they fall into while also being slightly less mature and more irrational in their reactions to deadly events. Summer camps, in particular, have been a popular setting, as the lack of parents and teens’ proclivities for shedding clothing in lieu of swimsuits has become a horror movie staple.
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For those students heading back to school, these horror movies will remind you that you aren’t alone in dreading your daily life, but we hope you don’t experience encounters as deadly as these. And for those who are long past your days of heading to school, these films will make you as thankful as ever for those times to be over.
Carrie (1976)
Based on Stephen King’s very first novel, Carrie serves as a cautionary tale to not pick on anyone at school, and especially don’t douse them with pig’s blood.
Carrie (Sissy Spacek) is far from the most popular girl at school, mocked and ridiculed for not looking as developed as the other girls in her class, her drab clothing, and her overly religious mother. In moments of Carrie’s most extreme stress, objects around her begin to rattle and quake, but these latent telekinetic abilities don’t come to fruition until she’s announced as homecoming queen, which is ultimately a ruse to taunt her further.
After a bucket of blood gets dumped on her in her moment of triumph, Carrie taps into her telekinesis to lock the doors and set the school on fire to get vengeance on all of those who had wronged her.
Prom Night (1980)
A student’s senior prom is a momentous event, as it symbolically represents the transition into adulthood and more mature relationships with the opposite sex. If you’ve accidentally caused a child to die earlier in your life, however, then prom could be your last night on earth.
As a group of young children is playing hide and seek in an abandoned building, they all gang up on one girl to taunt her, only for her to accidentally fall to her death. The other children vow to never reveal the events of her death, allowing someone else to take the blame.
Six years later, the kids head to prom on the anniversary of the death of the young girl, causing an unknown killer to begin picking them off one by one.
The Craft (1996)
Much like Carrie, The Craft shows you what happens when you mess with the wrong girls in your class, but gives the story a modern ’90s spin.
Sarah (Robin Tunney) moves from San Francisco to Los Angeles and immediately becomes friends with three girls who have banded together as a result of the rest of the school ostracizing them. After Sarah shows a predilection for the supernatural, she’s invited to join the girls’ coven, as their embrace of practicing witchcraft has helped them cope with their tortured high school existences.
As the coven proves to be a success, the girls all grow more powerful, first using their powers to improve their daily lives and ultimately using them to strike out against those who have wronged them.
Scream (1996)
As both a way to poke fun at horror tropes of previous decades and also being a solid installment into the slasher subgenre, Scream helped revive the trend of teens in turmoil.
Following the brutal murder of two of the most popular kids in school, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her group of friends all begin to theorize who the killer could be. Is it a jealous schoolmate? An estranged relative? Someone connected to the murder of Sidney’s mother from years ago?
As the plot unfolds, Sidney’s friend Randy (Jamie Kennedy), a horror movie fanatic, tries to educate those around him on the “rules of horror movies” that they all must follow to stay alive. Scream spawned three sequels, a TV series, and countless imitators hoping to embrace wit and self-mockery to introduce new generations to the joy of slasher movies.
The Faculty (1998)
Students thinking their teachers would have to be from another planet to act the way they do is a familiar thought to many students, but The Faculty takes that idea and runs with it.
Following a series of attacks on students from teachers, several students begin to notice strange things unfolding all around them, including the discovery of some incredibly bizarre creatures. One student catches a teacher placing the mysterious creature into the ear of another teacher, making it quite clear that the teachers are up to something horrifying.
High school can be a place to befriend people from all sorts of cliques and backgrounds, which is exemplified in The Faculty, as it takes all different kinds of students and skill sets to band together to expose the other-worldly teachers for what they really are.
