Reply #34: I wasn't enamored with that trend

[DerekG]

There are a handful of slasher films I find enormously effective ("Black Christmas"; "Halloween"; "A Nightmare on Elm Street"), and I credit their success to the dead sobriety suffusing every frame. The recent spat, unfortunately, was so taken with spouting pop-culture references they forgot to be scary.

On a related note: Have you seen Wes Craven's "New Nightmare?" It was a kind of prototype for his "Scream" franchise, but one I found far more intriguing. For the first time since the original, Fred Krueger had an air of menace. Good stuff.