Jake Weary and Maika Monroe in It FollowsIT FOLLOWS

Any horror fan who came of age with Halloween, Friday the 13th, and their many sequels knows the ironclad rule regarding imperiled teens: If they have sex, they're gonna die. So maybe you'll have to be of a certain generation - or have an affinity for a certain breed of shocker - to get the most from It Follows, writer/director David Robert Mitchell's intensely witty, pretty damned scary tale of a young woman diagnosed with a literally murderous, and ambulatory, STD.

Fran Kranz, Chris Hemsworth, and Anna Hutchison in The Cabin in the WoodsTHE CABIN IN THE WOODS

Hollywood's been leading toward it for decades, and with the blithely enjoyable, exceedingly clever The Cabin in the Woods, it's finally happened: A movie has been released in which practically everything about it - its plot, its twists, its performers, its characters, its themes, its jokes - could be considered a spoiler.

Naomi Snieckus in Saw 3DSAW 3D

In the first 10 minutes of Saw 3D, a grim-faced cop enters an interrogation room and addresses his visitor with a curt "Let's get this over with." I couldn't agree more!

Jackie Earle Haley in A Nightmare on Elm StreetA NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

Before its title card appears, director Samuel Bayer's reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street opens -- as these things usually do -- with a dream sequence, in which a frightened, sleep-deprived teen finds himself face to face with the scarred and monstrous personage of Freddy Krueger. Granted, the murderous apparition with the razor-blade gloves and snappy sweater-and-hat combo, last seen in 2003's Elm Street/Friday the 13th mashup Freddy Vs. Jason, hasn't been away from cineplex screens for terribly long. But Freddy's arrival should still provide both a jolt and a kick, especially with the creepy, ferrety Jackie Earle Haley taking over the role from Robert Englund, whose initially horrifying figure in Wes Craven's low-rent classic descended into camp long before the series reached (what we incorrectly presumed was) its conclusion.

friday-13-thumbCoraline won our Box Office Power Rankings for the past two weekends, and its success forces me to make two confessions: (1) I felt a touch ashamed and flawed for not adoring Henry Selick's two previous stop-motion features (The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach), and (2) I loved his live-action/animation hybrid Monkeybone. My memories of those three movies are too faded to justify or explain myself, and I haven't seen Coraline, but my conscience is now clear.

Let's move on.

What could possible explain Friday the 13th's $43.6-million holiday-weekend take?

Derek Mears in Friday the 13thFRIDAY THE 13TH

When the original Friday the 13th debuted, I was living in Crystal Lake, Illinois, and just a month shy of 12 years old. So you can only imagine how jazzed I was when I saw director Marcus Nispel's Friday the 13th reboot this past weekend, and the movie not only opened with its victims-to-be hanging out at Crystal Lake (as the series' inspiration demands), but with a title card reading "June 13, 1980" - my 12th birthday!

Jason Biggs and Woody Allen in Anything ElseANYTHING ELSE

As a lifelong fan of Woody Allen's cinematic oeuvre, the last five years have been rather painful. Sure, Small Time Crooks was a lot of fun and Sean Penn delivered a truly inspired performance in Sweet & Lowdown, but The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, though intermittently amusing, felt pretty stale, and Celebrity and last year's Hollywood Ending were just plain awful. (Part of being a true fan includes admitting when your heroes fail, and feeling somewhat heartbroken when they do.)