As if the run-of-the-mill high school movie wasn’t scary enough (cough–High School Musical 3), Hollywood has been upping the ante for years by tossing unsuspecting teens into horrific situations. Audiences seem to enjoy watching vulnerable characters having the hormones scared out of them — or else they just enjoy seeing annoying teens get tortured.

Every high school teen horror flick has a stereotypical cast of characters straight out of cliche-ville: the jock/hot guy, the cheerleader/hot girl, the know-it-all nerd (male or female), the misunderstood girl, the new student, and a slew of others who normally end up as a victim for the killer/monster/plague at the heart of the movie. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the acclaimed Swedish preteen vampire film Let the Right One In (which comes out in limited release tomorrow) has been so successful at festivals: it finds ways to rework the nerd/bully/bad guy constructs that Hollywood has been regurgitating in teen movies for fifty years. After the jump, we take a look at the prototypical high school horror stories that make Right One feel so fresh.

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