Preamble

Whether you are the type who enjoys being creeped out or feels the need to vicariously murder, horror movies in all likelihood speak to something deep in all of our psyches. Let psychoanalysts deal with that. We are writing this to confront a much more important issue: what is the perfect horror movie?

Thanks to the hundreds of millions of people with varied interests and unnecessary cash, studios are seemingly willing to give money and a camera to anyone with a third of a half-baked idea and a couple of good-looking friends. This excess of creation is by no means a good thing for all movie-watchers, but for my friends and I there could not be a better scenario. We have been blessed enough to witness the greatest horror sub-genre of them all: the group horror.

At its most basic, the group horror requires only two simple elements. First, as the name implies, a group is necessary. This group can be anyone: scientists digging up an ancient burial site, teenagers camping, or college friends driving on a backroad, to name a few. Second, a murdering thing of some sort must set itself upon the group. This killer could be any number of things. A ghost out to kill those who disturbed its body's burial site. A disfigured man who preys on unwary travelers. An enormous snake created by a science experiment gone wrong. The beauty of the genre comes from both the flexibility and rigidity that the above framework provides.

Group horror films are best enjoyed with 1-3 other people. Whenever the group that will be getting killed is clearly defined, everyone watching should choose a character they would like to be. Characters left over may be assigned to other friends not present, or simply left to die unnamed. Then, and most importantly, everyone individually decides which characters will die, which will survive, and the order the deaths will happen.

The purpose of this site is to document and review all of the group horror films that we view. As we do so, we will attempt to uncover the specific rules that make the perfect group horror.