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Your Guide to Rewatching Millennium-Era Horror Movies

What better time than a pandemic to reappraise a 2000s micro-genre marked by tank tops, inexplicably attractive casts, and copious amounts of gore. Photo: Miramax Films

This list originally ran in early 2020, but here we are, in October, still stuck in a pandemic. With little else to do this Halloween, we’re republishing the timely guide.

In times of crisis, we all turn to different coping mechanisms. Some people needlepoint. Some clean. Some distract themselves with movies they’ve never seen or failed to appreciate at the time of their releases. Over these past months in coronavirus-prompted isolation, I’ve found comfort in a very specific batch of films that I have always loved but admittedly never gave the respect they deserve: turn-of-the-millennium horror movies.

And when I say “turn of the millennium” horror, I mean that as much existentially as I do literally. It was an era of excess that was split in half by the September 11 attacks, which took the late-’90s slasher revival featuring uniformly hot actors pressed out of the WB factory mold and threw in a nihilistic appetite for violence that emerged in a world where the War on Terror was raging. The real torture happening in holding cells abroad seeped into the genre films back home — following the lead of extreme-gore pioneers in France and Japan — and the combination of 2000s celebutante culture melded with a narrative darkness not seen so starkly in horror since the 1970s, when movies like Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave pushed the boundaries of onscreen abuse.

As we settled into the early-21st century, the movies were at once sexier and more fucked up than ever. Studios were willing to spend a lot of money placing stars in expensive set pieces that today’s indie horror directors would kill for. It all feels so … quaint now, the knowledge that all you needed was a Josh Hartnett–type heartthrob, a nu-metal-laden soundtrack, a stunt casting move like Paris Hilton, and, voilà, green light.

And that’s what we are here to reappraise — the gorgeous fluff, the more-is-more remake, the producers who understood the value of Matthew Lillard and Eliza Dushku. Of course, there were critically praised horror movies released in the late 1990s to early 2010s too — landmarks like Let the Right One In, 28 Days Later, The Host, and Scream. But perhaps they cast a shadow over their Not Important Enough compatriots, the movies that signaled to some critics that a fallow period in genre history was upon us. Today, I’d like to honor these aughts horror films — with their white tank tops and bootcut jeans, inexplicably attractive casts, screams built for teens, and copious amounts of gore.

The New Slashics

The Faculty (1998)

Is The Faculty the greatest youth-horror ensemble cast ever assembled? In this teen-screams genre classic, a group of students realize their high school is being overrun by an evil force turning everyone into mindless drones. It’s teachers versus students with Elijah Wood, Clea DuVall, Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster, Shawn Hatosy, Laura Harris, and Usher comprising Team Kids, and an adult cast that is somehow even more gobsmacking for the teachers, featuring Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Christopher McDonald, Robert Patrick, Jon Stewart, and Bebe Neuwirth. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

Disturbing Behavior (1998)

In 1998, we had a youth-horror super-bloom, and Disturbing Behavior will rip you back 20-plus years with the Noxema-ad charms of not only James Marsden and Katie Holmes but a young Nick Stahl. Marsden plays a high-school-senior transplant to scenic Cradle Bay (corny town names are a hallmark of this era of horror), where he quickly starts to suspect that the elite kids are the product of some nefarious scheme. Behavior is so overwhelmed with talent this movie has to relegate Katherine Isabelle, William Sadler, Ethan Embry, and Bruce Greenwood to supporting roles. Let goth Katie Holmes give you life. (Available on Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Tubi.)

Dead Man’s Curve (1998)

Also known as The Curve, this college-killer thriller demonstrates something most powerful about millennial horror: The importance of Matthew Lillard. Yes, Scream (we know), but Lillard was not a one-trick pony, and he provided a wily presence throughout the turn of the century that we should honor. In Curve he plays a student conspiring with one of his roommates (Michael Vartan, naturally) to kill their third roommate (Randall Batinkoff) so they can cash in on the clause that says they get automatic A grades for bereavement. Who else stars? Keri Russell! (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Tubi, or Google Play.)

Urban Legend (1998)

How did 1998 become the Infinity Gauntlet of modern-day teen horror, with which we can unlock the secrets of the genre’s forever-renewable power? (Well, the answer is mostly Kevin Williamson, but not entirely.) Urban Legends has what the other myth movies — Wish Upon, The Bye Bye Man, Ouija — want but just couldn’t capture. First of all, the cast: Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Tara Reid, Loretta Divine, Joshua Jackson, Brad Dourif, Robert Englund, and more all locked into a twisted orbit of college kids being picked off via urban-legend-centric deaths. Life will never again be as simple as convincing people Pop Rocks and soda will kill them, so rejoice in this Silvio Horta-penned treasure. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, or Google Play.)

Halloween: H20 (1998)

If you’re honest with yourself, this is the slasher-reboot gold standard. (And I say this as a big fan of Halloween 2018.) H20 keeps continuity with the classic mythology while letting its signature heroine be an adult with a life (paging fancy school headmistress Laurie Strode) and giving us an au courant cast of our dreams with Michelle Williams, Josh Hartnett, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, and LL Cool J. Goddamn, Janet Leigh is even here as Michael Myers returns to terrorize again. (Available on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999)

Before Helen Mirren had her third-act career resurgence winning an Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth, she was a villain of equal stature to teens raised on Dawson’s Creek thanks to her turn as the malevolent Mrs. Tingle. Katie Holmes returns with her undefeatable pout to take down a dictatorial teacher with Barry Watson and Best Supporting Actress of the Era nominee Marisa Coughlan. The problem is they accidentally kill her. Or do they? And if not, can any of them actually afford to let Mrs. Tingle live? Teaching is written and directed by Scream legend Kevin Williamson, so don’t miss out. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

Valentine (2001)

Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer carry the torch for the slasher revival, but no unsung hero capitalized on the formula like Valentine. This cast was so “stacked” for its era — Denise Richards, David Boreanaz, Jessica Capshaw, Marley Shelton, and (clears throat) Jessica Cauffiel — that Katherine Heigl serves as the cold-open kill. A 2001 flex! Based on the novel by Tom Savage, Valentine follows a group of longtime friends being stalked by a mysterious stranger with murderous intent. It has a killer in a cherub mask. It has Richards delivering wry one-liners. It even has privilege-based vengeance. It has everything. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

The Tank-Top Mafia

The Covenant (2006)

Speaking of smooth boys, this male-witches masterpiece showcases another, deliberately homoerotic aspect of millennium horror. (For the lesbian complement to the phenomenon, see: so many girls in cargo pants and bandanas.) Taylor Kitsch, Steven Straight, Toby Hemingway, and Chace Crawford star as the hot-boy clique at an expensive New England school where they are not only the old money in town but also witches — who wear Speedos and tank tops. They have to fight a powerful opposing presence when Sebastian Stan comes rolling in, but really they should all just kiss. There are women in this movie too, but no one cares. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Crackle, or Google Play.)

Soul Survivors (2001)

Soul Survivors is important because it could only exist in this most crucial time of horror. From abandoned-church raves to the chokers to Wes Bentley as a romantic lead, this is a movie that was born inside a Hot Topic. After a group of college kids loses a friend in a car accident, the heroine (Melissa Sagemiller) finds herself trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead (as represented by Casey Affleck). Eliza Dushku is the shit-talking best friend, and she also finally gets to make out with a girl onscreen. Justice for Faith and Buffy shippers. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Tubi, or Google Play.)

Wrong Turn (2003)

There are two crucial elements of aughts horror that Wrong Turn puts on display: white tank tops and Eliza Dushku. (So linked are those two things that all Eliza Dushku characters from this time period are spiritually wearing white tank tops even when they literally are not.) This movie about 20-somethings trying to survive a Deliverance-style backwoods nightmare (with Jeremy Sisto, Desmond Harrington, and Nina Dobrev prototype Emmanuelle Chriqui) somehow gave way to five sequels, but the important thing here is Eliza in bootcut jeans and her customary tank, once again having more chemistry with her female co-stars than any of her male ones, because if dawn-of-the-millennium horror taught us one thing, it is that all Eliza characters are canonically (if only subtextually) bisexual. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Cinemax, or Google Play.)

House of Wax (2005)

Perhaps more than any other movie, the House of Wax remake is an example par excellence of aughts horror. It has the marketing-bait ensemble, the stunt-casting decision, the alt-rock soundtrack, the name recognition of a remade classic, brutally stylish violence, a “big” star that gets sacrificed as a first death, elaborate staging that they just don’t make like they used to, and, yes, tank tops. Chad Michael Murray, Elisha Cuthburt, Jared Padalecki, Jon Abrahams, Robert Ri’chard, and Paris fucking Hilton star as a group of friends pulled into an elaborate murder trap by some hillbilly brothers who have killed an entire town’s worth of people and made them wax figurines in a perversely configured remodel of small town America. The finale is 2000s horror excess at its best. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)

Even though Mandy Lane didn’t come out until 2013, this movie was made in 2006 and is millennial horror down to its bones. It’s also a really good teen slasher and essential tank-top viewing. Amber Heard plays the titular character, a pretty social outsider invited on a weekend trip by the popular kids. It’s too bad there’s a serial killer stalking them. Heard gives a performance that reminds us how perpetually underutilized her abilities are in one of the best pieces of Texas horror this century. (Available on Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Prime, or Vudu.)

Turistas (2006)

What says tank tops more than hop people vacationing in Brazil? Josh Duhamel, Melissa George, and Olivia Wilde (fresh off her The O.C. debut) are tourists who get robbed of all their vital travel possessions and end up lost in a remote location. This movie is a quintessential 2000s vibe, because everyone looks both sweaty and smooth. (We did not love beards in the aughts. We loved hairless men with basketball-player muscles.) (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Hulu, or Google Play.)

Carriers (2009)

Some movies are tank-top horror in their DNA, even if tank tops are not proliferate onscreen, and Carriers is one of them. Lou Taylor Pucci, Emily VanCamp, Piper Perabo, and an asshole version of Chris Pine star in this contagion movie about a civilization-ending virus and a small group of attractive people trying to survive the wasteland. Let not the history of pandemic horror or Pine’s career be written without Carriers. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Tubi, or Google Play.)

The Indies

The Descent (2005)

It sounds hyperbolic, but British director Neil Marshall delivered the best female ensemble horror film of all time with The Descent. A group of unknowns play friends who get trapped in a labyrinth of monsters when they go on a cave-diving trip together. Somehow it’s 15 years later, and there hasn’t been a better showcase strictly for women since. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Hulu, or Google Play.)

Ginger Snaps (2000)

These are the weirdos, mister. In this low-key Canadian classic, Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins star as co-dependent sisters whose bond is threatened when Isabelle’s Ginger starts exhibiting werewolf tendencies. Queer horror came on strong in the 2000s, and Isabelle in Snaps is practically one of the gay house sigils. (Available on YouTube, Crackle, Vudu, Tubi, or Google Play.)

May (2002)

The counterpart to the network TV stars headlining slick horror movies in the aughts were the art-school kids pushing youth-driven horror movies in bizarre new directions. An essential in this group is May, about an outcast (Angela Bettis) whose romantic letdowns with boyfriends (Jeremy Sisto) and girlfriends (Anna Farris) push her to snap, and she decides to build herself the ideal companion out of collected parts from other people. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Tubi, or Google Play.)

Hellbent (2005)

This pioneering gay slasher follows a group of men in West Hollywood who are being terrorized by a devil-masked killer. Is it perfect? No. Is it important? Yes, and it’s vital to the great gayening of horror in the aughts. (Available on Amazon Prime.)

The Quiet (2005)

When people hear the name Jamie Babbit, they probably first think of But I’m a Cheerleader. However, don’t sleep on this truly disturbing incest thriller starring aughts icon Elisha Cuthbert and Camilla Belle. The Quiet is so extra in its salaciousness and melodrama it feels like it could only have happened in this “yes and” genre period. Belle plays a “deaf” teen named Dot who goes to live with her godparents (Edie Falco and Martin Donovan) and their cruel daughter (Cuthbert) after her dad dies. But the daughter, Nina, has a bad attitude for a reason (remember, when we said “incest thriller”). Dot’s speaking disability is a complicated topic, and Katy Mixon shows up as maybe the biggest high-school-bitch-friend character of all time. The Quiet will put your jaw on the floor multiple times. (Available on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Tubi, or Google Play.)

Teeth (2007)

Teeth hasn’t received the respect it deserves as a subversive horror classic in which a virginal high-school girl (Jess Weixler) is protected from the salivating patriarchy by the teeth in her vagina she never knew she had. Feminist horror was having a lot of weird fun in the 2000s. (Available on iTunes, Vudu, Amazon Prime, HBO, or Hulu.)

Excision (2012)

Excision came out in 2012, but like the ’60s, millennium movies are not strictly bound by the calendar. AnnaLynne McCord stars as a critically awkward high-schooler who is obsessed with viscera and aspires to become a surgeon, an ambition that plays out in candy-colored fantasies where she writhes in blood surrounded by beautiful bodies. Everything about this movie is 2000s horror, from the cast (including Traci Lords, Malcolm McDowell and Marlee Matlin) to the David LaChapelle–esque dream sequences. (Available on iTunes, Vudu, Tubi, and Amazon Prime.)

The Sexy Remakes

Sorority Row (2009)

Sorority Row is based on 1983’s House on Sorority Row, and, as per custom, the cast is stacked with Whos (Jamie Chung, Rumer Willis, Audrina Patridge). But it also features Carrie Fisher as a shotgun-toting sorority house mom, as well as an archetypal easy girl with the nickname — and this is not a joke — Chugs (Margo Harshman, you went down a legend in this one). This movie has an excellent dark sense of humor, making the dry one-liners as good as the kills. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Tubi, or Google Play.)

The House on Haunted Hill (1999)

People will try to tell you that this retooled Vincent Price movie was bad. But they’re wrong. Haunted Hill took the undercranking cinematography trick made famous in Jacob’s Ladder and transformed it into the house style for an entire film. The premise is the same as the original: a group of strangers have to survive the night in an asylum in order to reap their monetary reward. They’re played by a remake cast including Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan, Jeffrey Combs, and Bridgette Wilson, with small appearances by James Masters and Lisa Loeb. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

There were two separate TCM reboots made in the 2000s (and more franchise-revival attempts beyond that), but it’s the one starring Jessica Biel that boiled the MTV Movie Awards remake formula down to its essence. The denim is riding low, and even though it’s a period piece set in 1973, every single person looks like they are going to the mall to buy a Hoobastank CD. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Hulu, Starz, or Google Play.)

The Amityville Horror (2005)

When the words “sexy horror remake” hit, one image should come to mind first and foremost, and that is Ryan Reynolds — with a torso so cut it’s like it was crafted in postproduction — wearing pajama pants that are just barely clinging to his hips. Of course we’re talking Amityville Horror, with Reynolds as the Lutz-family patriarch who is being overwhelmed by a demonic presence in his house. Style often ruled over substance in this era, and Reynold’s reboot bod ended up stealing the show from co-stars Melissa George and a little tiny Chloë Grace Moretz. A progenitor of swole culture and a real win for nascent beard thirst. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Netflix, or Google Play.)

Final Destination 3 (2006)

FD3 in fact a sequel, not a remake, but what is any Final Destination movie if not an almost shot-for-shot reboot of the original played out like Groundhog Day? And what is FD3 if not the best one? The reason this movie is important is because it epitomizes the assembly-line production of super-franchised modern horror, and as those sequels tend to do, it features a mostly unknown cast that is inexplicably lead by the very talented Mary Elizabeth Winstead. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Netflix, or Google Play.)

The Hitcher (2007)

If the image of Sophia Bush in a denim skirt and cowboy boots doesn’t scream “2000s” as loud as the All-American Rejects, can you even call yourself a cinephile? This Teen Choice Awards friendly remake of the ’80s classic psycho-killer movie puts Sean Bean in the Rutger Hauer role and makes Bush your new Jennifer Jason Leigh. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

My Bloody Valentine (2009)

When you hear the names Jensen Ackles, Kerr Smith, and Jamie King, do you immediately hear that guy with the really deep trailer-narration voice speaking in your head? You should, and you should then start thinking wistfully of the time when Ackles was considered a movie-carrying star. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

The Less Sexy Remakes

Fright Night (2011)

This movie came in the last throes of remake mania, but this reboot of the beloved ’80s vampire movie Fright Night delivered on the popcorn thrills. Anton Yelchin plays the boy next door to probable bloodsucker Jerry (Colin Farrell), and he lives with horror’s best mom, Toni Collette, and dates one of horror’s best leading ladies, Imogen Poots. Lovable supporting guys Dave Franco and Christopher Mintz-Plasse also appear, as does David Tenant as a magician vampire hunter. It was the 2000s and more was more. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

The Haunting (1999)

This interpretation of the Shirley Jackson classic The Haunting of Hill House gets a bad wrap, but it’s worth the time and it really kicked off the remake craze of the aughts with its soon-to-be ubiquitous strategy: a handsome ensemble cast, expensive-looking practical sets, enough CGI to show off “modern technology,” a classic piece of preexisting IP, and a dab of queerness (we see you, lavish-life bisexual Theo played by Catherine Zeta-Jones). Liam Neeson’s also here, and so is Owen Wilson. And Lili Taylor. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Hulu, or Google Play.)

Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

An epic of its era, Ghosts was a remake of a William Castle classic that honored the horror master’s sensational legacy. In a sprawling glass house, the down-on-their-luck Kriticos family thinks they have just hit it big after inheriting a mansion from an estranged dead relative. But they don’t know that the basement is a prison for malevolent spirits and the home itself is an elaborate mechanism “designed by the devil and powered by the dead.” Tony Shaloub stars as Papa Kriticos, and the aughts go into overdrive with the casting choices of Shannon Elizabeth as Daughter Kriticos and Matthew Lillard as a stressed-out medium. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

Willard (2003)

The New Line Cinema logo plus Crispin Glover plus the song “Rat in a Cage,” by Smashing Pumpkins: That’s the magic cocktail you get in this remake of Willard, a movie about a man who is best friends with rats and who trains them to become his avenging army. (Available on iTunes or Vudu.)

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Despite the lies that Batman v Superman fans tell you, Zack Snyder’s best movie is actually his remake of George A. Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead. In an era when the zombie movie was being rebooted wholesale (Dawn of the Dead came just a year after 28 Days Later), Dawn of the Dead gets credit for taking something good and old and outfitting it for a modern era. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

Disturbia (2007)

Millennium horror isn’t known for being family friendly, but this teen-centric reworking of Rear Window is downright wholesome in its context. Shia LaBeouf was at the height of his powers as a boy under house arrest who has nothing better to do but spy on his neighbors, which is how he sees a new guy on the block maybe disposing of a body under the cover of night. It’s fun. It’s thrilling, and it’s got a soundtrack that features Guster, Nada Surf, and Buckcherry. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

The Crazies (2010)

Before Timothy Olyphant was a swaggering lawman in Justified, he was a swaggering lawman in The Crazies, a 2010 remake of a George Romero contagion horror that surpasses its source material. Crazies took the assaulting speed and the heavy handed violence of millennium horror and used it in the best way possible, which made for a properly white-knuckled and properly gruesome look at one town falling to the ravages of a rage-monster disease. (Available on Tubi and Amazon Prime.)

The Trash Treasures

Obsessed (2009)

Before Beyoncé was the unstoppable cultural force that is present Beyoncé, there was Obsession, an heir apparent to the thrones of adult-contemporary thrillers that flourished in the ’90s, like Disclosure and Malice. In 2009, you could say the cast made sense, with Idris Elba starring as a successful man rebuffing the advances of an office temp named Lisa (Ali Larter), who is in fact dangerously Obsessed with him. Beyoncé plays Elba’s wife, and there is a literal fight between Larter and the most deified musical presence of a generation. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

The In Crowd (2000)

A group of rich kids, led by chief hot tyrant Brittany (Susan Ward), welcome the poor girl (Lori Heuring) who works at their country club into their good graces, meaning they rope her into their backbiting and in-group betrayals. The aggregate critical rating is sub-5 percent, but you know what, I’ve watched and loved this Mary Lambert movie more often than I have Pet Sematary, because it goes down like candy. (Available on YouTube, Amazon Prime, or Google Play.)

The Glass House (2001)

Wow. The Glass House. When Stellan Skarsgård cemented himself as a human spoiler alert (tip: If a movie features Skarsgård and a mysterious villain, the answer is not that mysterious!) and Leelee Sobieski made a play for leading teen status in the millennium era. Everything about Glass House feels so bad, from the tragically dead parents to the creepy abusive adoptive father shtick to the tragic pill popping of the adoptive mom (Diane Lane). If you don’t have standards, but you love fun, this movie is basically a classic. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Crackle, or Google Play.)

The Hole (2001)

Did you know that Kiera Knightly broke into films with this savage horror movie about a group of friends who get trapped in an underground fallout shelter and start turning on one another when help doesn’t show up? If not, you should also know Thora Birch, Desmond Harrington, and Laurence Fox are in the bunker with her. There’s backstabbing, psychosexual obsession, manipulation, and murder, all of which springs from big teen feelings. It will leave you feeling icky, but that’s the point of a trash treasure. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Tubi, or Google Play.)

One Hour Photo (2002)

Robin Williams took a dark detour in the aughts and shocked audiences as an all-time villain in One Hour Photo. His Seymour Parrish is a photo tech at the local drugstore who becomes obsessed with one family of frequent patrons. He thinks of them as his own, so when the patriarch, played by Michael Vartan, starts cheating on his wife, Seymour makes it his mission to punish the man for his sins. Williams is so chilling and the expression of his rage is so hideous the movie will leave you wanting a shower. It goes just too far enough to push One Hour Photo into modern exploitation territory. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

Swimfan (2002)

The teens needed their own Fatal Attraction, and that’s what they got in the nighttime soap-style drama of Swimfan. Erika Christensen (2000s hero!) plays a new student who gets obsessed with swim-team star Jesse Bradford, and he, like an idiot, cheats on his wonderful girlfriend (Shiri Appleby) for some hero-worship pool sex with the new girl. She takes the inevitable rejection poorly and is going to make Golden Boy Ben (Bradford) pay for breaking her heart. There’s something about the way Christensen channels that bunny-boiler fixation that makes Swimfan feel transgressive to watch even now. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, or Google Play.)

The Roommate (2011)

Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester team as newly bunked-up co-eds in The Roommate. Although it came out in 2011, this movie is so 2000s that it co-stars Cam Gigandet, Nina Dobrev, and Ally Michalka. It’s so 2000s that it’s framing 30-year-old Kelly as 18, five years after the start of Friday Night Lights. When you watched Gossip Girl, did you wish Meester was playing more of a queer Single White Female type? Of course you did, because you’re trash, baby. (Available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Netflix, or Google Play.)

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Your Guide to Rewatching Millennium-Era Horror Movies