“Beware the currents of the lake. It’s dangerous to dream. Stay awake. The nix pretends to be asleep. Above him, lilies gently sweep.” That is the opening narration of 1958’sLake of Death, a story about a group of friends who go to a cabin in the Norwegian forests and experience ghostly encounters and a who-dun-it mystery.
The marriage ofhorrorand lakes is not new, but since the success ofFriday the 13thin 1980, lakes have become a popular stage for horror movies. There is a gothic atmosphere about a lake. It is a hole in the forest. The trees loom over the water. The sky sparkles on its surface. We are uncomfortable with our inability to see what is hidden in the black water, we sense a thousand eyes watching from the woods, and the silence makes us conscious of our isolation.
Lake horror stories are in their bones folk horror – people from the city travel to somewhere rural, they go to the forbidden place despite the warning of a death curse, and in the lakeside horror genre, they swim where they are not supposed to swim. In some cases there is a legend, as inLake of Death, and it is the past that lurks in the bottom of the lake. In others, the lake is home to a beast that threatens to eat us alive, or the lake sets the atmosphere, or the movie is set on a lake for the love ofFriday the 13th. And sometimes, as in the case of the first entry on the list, some movies in the lake horror genre are just a copycat, but this one is still a lovable copycat for all its wrongness.
10Sleepaway Camp (1983)
When a boy’s father and sister are killed in a boating accident, he is adopted by his aunt, who raises him as a girl and gives him the name of his dead sister, Angela. Angela and her cousin Ricky are sent to summer camp, but Angela has been psychologically twisted by the death of her family and being raised to be a girl.
When teens at the camp torment Angela, she murders them. In the end, the boy who has pursued her romantically discovers she is a boy when they undress to go swimming. When he rejects her, in a scene that happens off-screen, she kills him. In the final shocking scene, the counselors discover Angela with the boy’s corpse and that she is not a she.
9The Deep House (2021)
The Deep Houseis a mix of found footageand traditional, third person camera horror. An engaged couple, Ben and Tina, go scuba diving in a lake in France and explore a Victorian mansion in the flooded valley. The couple find the former owners were keeping a dark secret, and worse, they are still in the house.
When the couple try to leave, they find the window they entered through is bricked over, and they desperately search for another way out with less than an hour of oxygen.The Deep Housebrings together ghosts, claustrophobia, and the time-bomb anxiety of depleting oxygen levels. Get ready to hold your breath in the end.
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8Sick (2022)
Sickis a slasher set during the COVID-19 pandemic. It begins in April of 2020 – everyone is on lockdown, arrows point the way at the grocery store, the shelves are empty, there is that one shopper who is a jerk, there is the gasping sound of someone struggle-breathing through a mask, and when you get home, you ask yourself if it is the COVID all over the groceries or the killer in the closet that is going to get you.
With the anxiety of the virus on top of the serial killing established in the cold open, two college students, Parker and Miri, drive to a remote cabin on a lake that Parker’s family owns and intend to spend quarantine there. During the night, they discover that someone is in the cabin with them.
7Us (2019)
The Wilson family vacations at a lake house, meeting up with old friends, the Tyler family. During the night, the Wilson’s home is invaded by a family of doppelgängers determined to kill them. This bizarre home invasion unfolds simultaneously for the Tylers, but they are not able to fight off their clones. The origin of the doppelgängers involves a massive government conspiracy to engineer clones of Americans, kept in underground tunnels, to control the citizens and keep them docile through a telepathic bond.
The clones emerge from the subterranean world, compelled to search out their originals that they are seemingly drawn to, and attempt to murder them. In the end,there is a twist that turns our view of the Wilson family upside down.
6Piranha (1978)
Piranhawas conceptualized to be a copycatJaws, butit failed upward and managed to turninto an endearing exploitation movie with some great special effects shots with the titular fresh-water beasts. The government selectively bred piranha to use as biological weapons in Vietnam. The war ended, and the program was forgotten.
The piranha were left in a pool at a facility in Texas for years until they are released into the river system and make their way to a children’s camp where they snack on the campers and counselors before moving downstream to the main course at the Lost River Lake Resort.
5Creepshow 2 (1987)
TheCreepshowmovies are anthology horror films, but the second story inCreepshow 2, titledThe Raft, is skin-crawling enough to be a feature. If it were a feature, it would rank higher here for its hydrophobia factor (ability to make us afraid to get in the water). A group of 20-somethings drives out to the country to swim at an empty lake in the early fall.
The four swim out to a wood raft in the middle of the lake, but when they get to the raft, they notice something strange in the water that moves toward the raft. It is black and round, floating across the surface like a lily pad. One of the women reaches down from the raft to touch it, and the thing climbs up her arm and pulls her in. The three remaining friends are stranded. No one knows they are there, and the thing waits for them in the water.
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4Fear Street Part 2: 1978 (2021)
ThoughFear Street 2is set on the lip of the ‘70s,it is a love letter to ‘80s summer camp slasher movies. InPart 2, the teens from the first entry in theFear Streettrilogy seek out the woman who escaped the Nightwing Massacre – C. Burman. The rest of the sequel is a flashback to 1978 told by Burman. The children of rival towns, Sunnyvale and Shadyside, spend the summer at Camp Nightwing. Your bullies, outsiders, nerds, aggressive jock, stoners and preps are all present.
The night of the beginning of Color Wars at the camp, a competition between the campers from Sunnyvale and Shadyside, the curse of the witch, Sarah Fier strikes a counselor from Shadyside and he goes mad. The possessed Shadyside counselor goes on an ax-murdering spree during the games, and there is no minimum height limit for getting splattered – no one at Camp Nightwing is off-bounds.
Xis about a van-full of adult filmmakers who rent a cabin on a Texas farm with a small lake that belongs to an elderly couple who are serial killers. Referencing Tobe Hooper’sThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre,Xis set in Texas and begins with people from the city driving into the country in a van. At the farm where they film their XXX movie within the movie, there is an alligator living in the lake, which the seniors feed the bodies of their victims to.
The alligator is a homage to Hooper’sEaten Alive(1976), which is about a man living in the swamps who feeds people to a crocodile that was brought from Africa.Xdelivers the sexploitation of a ‘70s grindhouse movie, with its plot about people who work in the adult film industry, but it spreads the texture of sensualism across the movie with an exhalation sound effect and haunting choral music that echo the exhalations of the actors filming their XXX scenes.
2The Burning (1981)
The Burninghas a lot of similarities toFriday the 13th– it is set at a camp on a lake, you have young people having pre-marital sex in the woods, and there is a revenge killer. The story was inspired by the Cropsey legend in New York.The Burninghas been forgotten becauseFriday the 13thbecame a massive franchise, butThe Burningis better than any of theFriday the 13thsequels afterPart 2.
It has an authentic filming location on the North East Coast, evoking the same atmosphere as the first twoFriday the 13thfilms.Tom Savini, who did the effects forFriday the 13th, delivers heavier gorein The Burning than he was able to inFriday the 13th. And the cast features future stars Holly Hunter, Jason Alexander and Fisher Stevens.
1Friday the 13th (1980)
Friday the 13this the mother of all camp and lake horror. It is synonymous with summer camp. It has everything to make it a success: the gore, the music, the sex, the atmosphere, a ghost story and a murder mystery. The first is still the best entry in the franchise. All the franchise’s motifs are established here and are never better.Friday the 13this not just a slasher set on a lake. It has a language. Its score is reminiscent toPsychowith squeaking strings. When someone is killed, the screen dissolves to white.
We watch from the perspective of the killer, but do not see their face until the climax. And there is a sound effect used to trigger tension.Friday the 13this a horror movie operating at a higher, psychological level. The plot is simple, young people from the city are stalked and killed by a serial murderer, but the camera devices, editing and sound design make this movie a total package of horror from the filmic side. Many have imitated it, but none have succeeded in matching the range of textures ofFriday the 13th.
