My Most Memorable Slasher

I am a connoisseur of horror movies and especially of the ever popular "slasher" genre. I have seen cheesy slashers, funny slashers, gratuitous slashers and everything in between. After a while, they begin to follow the same format and become predictable and eventually lose their power to induce fear in me. These days, I view slashers in a clinical sense, dissecting the onscreen dissections with a removed attitude. The characters are so two-dimensional that their deaths are nothing more than the vehicle that drives the story forward. The killers are almost one-dimensional, giving us these soulless killing machines that may or may not have a snappy one-liner before they dispatch another "good guy". To truly be memorable, a slasher must be innovative and break this tried and true mold. There must be a human element added to the characters to make it so that the limit is reached. My desensitized heart strings must be revitalized and tugged to their breaking points. My blood should boil and my hair should stand on end. And at the end of such a film, I should be left wanting to close my curtains and sleep with my sister that night. The last slasher I saw to give me a semblance of those feelings was Michael Haneke's 2007 movie, "Funny Games". The movie made me uncomfortable. I didn't enjoy watching it. I wanted to turn it off. And I remember it to this day even though I only watched it once. "Funny Games" spent its time making you grow to enjoy a small family's quirks and habits, only to bring two sadistic killers in to ruin it. There was no final girl and there were no rules. No one was safe. And when I turned it off, I didn't feel safe. This is what horror is supposed to do. It should pull you in and force you to confront the things that scare you the most.