Eric Langberg

"The Twilight Zone" was not just a show with amazing sci-fi premises and great storytelling twists; it was also capable of being quite unsettling.

In many ways, "The Matrix" was the perfect sci-fi movie to close out the 1990s. There was a sense at the time that we'd reached what people took to calling "the end of history" — with the collapse of the Soviet Union, some believed that capitalism and liberal democracy had triumphed and that Western civilization had reached its zenith. There were some fears over the so-called Millennium Bug (the idea that computer systems would crash when the year 2000 arrived), but, generally, the feeling was that we had ironed out most of the societal kinks of the past few decades. As "The Matrix" points out, this was nothing but an illusion.

Cinema draws much of its power from letting us witness things we wouldn't otherwise see in real life. Thankfully, most of us will never encounter serial killers in our day-to-day lives, but we sure do love to watch them on screen. Many of the most disturbing true crime documentaries of all time are about serial killers, but we don't even need our cinematic murderers to be real to find them entertaining. It seems that audiences will happily watch fictional killers stalk their prey, too.

For almost as long as there have been horror movies, there have been vampire movies. Though not the first, F. W. Murnau's "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror" was released all the way back in 1922; filmgoers have been terrified of cinematic bloodsuckers ever since. "Nosferatu" was a thinly-veiled retelling of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," and filmmakers have attempted to adapt the novel in Murnau's wake. With Stoker's iconic character now in the public domain, you'll even find numerous bizarre international versions of "Dracula" out there.

Since Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" first swam onto screens in 1975, shark movies have been a staple of the entertainment industry. Just about any ranking of best shark movies of all time will put it at the top, as they should; it's by far still the best execution of what a shark movie can be.

Horror director Leigh Whannell is perhaps best-known for creating the "Saw" franchise alongside James Wan, and together they've become two of horror's biggest names. Whannell went on to star in the "Insidious" franchise and to helm "Wolf Man" and "The Invisible Man," which was a major success. In 2018, he directed the underrated sci-fi horror action film "Upgrade," starring "Marshals" actor Logan Marshall-Green.

Though Stephen King's books are infused with more humanity and optimism than he often gets credit for, no Constant Reader would call his stories lighthearted. He's considered one of the masters of horror, responsible for some of the most famous scary stories of the century, including everything from "The Shining" and "Carrie" to "Cujo" and "It." Some of his work is more fantastical, while some is based in deeply human impulses toward evil; but with very few exceptions, King's work exists on a spectrum from "dark" to "very dark."

Many horror fans are no stranger to the slasher subgenre. There are the popular staple films, but these five forgotten movies still hold up today.

While the 1980s were a Golden Age of slasher movies, horror went in several different directions the following decade. The biggest slasher movies of the 1990s turned out to be satirical — either full-on comedies like "Scream" or winking, teen-centric takes on popular horror like "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Urban Legend."

As any horror fan knows, the 1980s were a fantastic decade for the genre. It was, after all, the Golden Age of slasher films; the decade where frightening villains like Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger became cultural forces to be reckoned with. There were endless franchises springing up everywhere you looked. There were films that followed trends, while some decided to make their own.