Five years ago, we wrapped up a long-running feature where visitors submitted their five favorites in a specific category each week. While I’m not bringing back THAT particular feature, I am reviving the title for a new feature that I intend to release weekly on Thursdays.

This new feature will be my list of 5 favorites with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.

For my first post, we’re looking at inventive horror premises. Countdown is the story of a phone app that can tell you when you’re going to die, but for some, it’s a short sentence. There’s more to the premise, I’m sure, but it’s enough inventiveness to sponsor a very interesting look at five of my favorite horror films with most fascinating concepts.

While these may not be the all-time best horror films or everyone’s agreement on the most inventive premises, these five films are among my favorites. What I tried to do was go with horror films that were written directly for the screen, not adapted. If I were looking at adapted scripts then something like The Birds might have easily made it. Now, here are my favorites in order of release.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The concept of A Nightmare on Elm Street came to writer/director Wes Craven after a series of LA Times articles about Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese refugees who were plagued by horrendous nightmares and refused to sleep, ultimately dying after falling asleep. The singular most inventive slasher premise in history was born.

Asking the audience to question reality versus nightmare, Freddy Krueger became one of the most easily recognized horror icons in cinema, the film is an atmospheric exploration of trauma, guilt, and psychological horror. Slashers were all the rage when Elm Street was released thanks to films like Halloween and Friday the 13th, but whereas those bogeymen were simply crazed stalkers, Krueger was the most dangerous of killers, one who could kill you in your sleep. You can run and avoid dark houses and basements, but the one thing you can never escape is your dreams.

The Others (2001)

Gothic horror films are a mainstay of the horror genre and countless films have been set within a haunted mansion of some sort or another. The Others twisted that concept a bit with the story of a mother (Nicole Kidman) and her two photosensitive children where she must protect them from exposure to the sun by keeping all shades within the creepy old mansion drawn, creating a haunting atmosphere that is all the more jarring once mysterious occurrences threaten her family’s lives.

It’s a film that the careful observer can probably guess with some deliberation, but which unfolds with such tense excitement that you almost don’t want to try to figure out until the final act reveal that calls into question everything you’ve seen before. While numerous films have tackled similar base concepts, The Others benefits from stellar performances from Kidman and Fionnula Flanagan as the head of a trio of servants who show up unexpectedly. Alejandro Amenábar directs his own screenplay.

Buried (2010)

The concept, of a man buried alive in a wooden box, might seem like a challenging one to turn into a 95-minute film, but Rodrigo Cortés managed to do just that with his direction of Chris Sparling’s compelling screenplay. Starring Ryan Reynolds as an American contractor in Iraq who wakes up trapped in a box with a cellphone and a lighter his only companions, what transpires is a taut psychological drama about the shaky tethers between life and death.

Whether you suffer from claustrophobia or nyctophobia, being trapped in that coffin with Reynolds and facing the prospects of hope and despair as the events of the film unfold, you’re gripped by fear. The occasional bit of hope, in spite of all of the main character’s setbacks, that he will eventually be rescued, the only thing keeping fear from destroying your emotions. That kind of drama is challenging to pull off and Reynolds does the entirety of the heavy lifting in a riveting performance that tops anything he has done before or since.

The Purge (2013)

It’s easy to nitpick this locked-house horror flick. The concept for the film and its sequels is that a quasi-futuristic American government decides to create an annual event where all crime, including murder, is legal from sunset to sunrise. While the event is created specifically to keep the poor and minorities in check by the wealthiest Americans, the first film focuses on the white contractor (Ethan Hawke) who designed a security system that the wealthy use to keep the Purge participants at bay.

The underlying concept, better explored in the sequels, is introduced through a single character (Edwin Hodge) seeking refuge inside Hawke’s home, which brings the purgers trying to eliminate the stranger knocking at Hawke’s door. While the focus is primarily on this affluent white family, we’re given just enough information about the bloody stranger’s plight to understand the sociopolitical conversation at play in the film. This high concept film, in spite of its weaknesses, is a most fascinating exploration of the socioeconomic climate of the U.S. and now provides a strangely eerie prescience of 2019 America. That its sequels are even more astute observations on modern politics is a testament to this film’s initial success.

A Quiet Place (2018)

As far as high concept horror thrillers goes, A Quiet Place may be the pinnacle of the idea, and it’s easily one of the best executed such premise. In the future, an alien force invades Earth and roots out and kills the human population. Drawn by sound, these alien creatures have largely ignored those who live in absolute silence.

As one such family, Emily Blunt and John Krasinski star as parents trying to ensure that they and their children survive the onslaught until the aliens leave or they find a way to defeat them. Left to their semi-idyllic life, the couple are expecting another child, but several careless missteps risk exposing them all to the threat. With only a small batch of dialogue in the entire film, everything is told either in eerie silence or through American Sign Language with a superb soundscape to define the film and a magnificent score to punctuate the drama. It’s a frightening premise executed to perfection with stellar performances from the entire cast.

Now tell me, what are YOUR five favorite inventive horror premises?