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Piranha - 1978
Two teenagers come upon an apparently abandoned military installation. They take advantage of what appears to be a swimming pool to skinny dip. The teenagers are attacked by an unseen force and disappear under the water. A light activates in the main building and a silhouetted figure investigates the screams, but is too late to help. A determined but somewhat absent-minded insurance investigator named Maggie McKeown is dispatched to find the missing teenagers near Lost River Lake.
She hires surly backwoods drunkard Paul Grogan to serve as her guide. They come upon the abandoned compound, which functioned as a fish hatchery before being militarized. They discover bizarre specimens in jars and indications of an occupant. Maggie locates the drainage switch for the outside pool and decides to empty it to search the bottom, but the moment she activates it a haggard and frantic man begins to panic and attacks her, attempting to stop the draining until he is subdued by Grogan.
Grogan intends to open the smelting refuse tanks, hoping the industrial waste will kill the fish. They arrive at the plant ahead of the fish, but the elevated water level has submerged the control office, and Grogan must go underwater; he ties a rope around his waist and instructs Maggie to count to 100 before pulling him out. Grogan struggles to move the rusted valve wheel when the school arrives and attacks him. The assault hyperadrenalizes him, and he manages to open the valves just as Maggie pulls him to safety.
Maggie takes Grogan back to the water park, where a massive MEDEVAC is tending to the victims; his injuries are severe and he is seen in a catatonic state. Mengers gives an on-site television interview, providing a sanitized version of events and downplaying the existence of piranha. Her voice is heard carrying out over a radio on the shore of a West Coast beach. As she says "there's nothing left to fear", the piranha's characteristic trilling sound drowns out the waves on a beach.
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The Monster Squad - 1987
The Monster Squad is a society of young pre-teens who idolize classic monsters and monster movies and hold their meetings in a tree clubhouse. Club leader Sean, whose five-year-old sister Phoebe desperately wants to join the club, is given the diary of legendary monster hunter Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, but his excitement abates when he finds it is written in German. Sean, his best friend Patrick, and the rest of the Monster Squad visit an elderly man, known as the "Scary German Guy", actually a kind gentleman, to translate the diary.
When one of the Squad compliments the German man on his knowledge about Van Helsing's battle with monsters, he wryly implies that he has some experience with monsters"and his shirt sleeve briefly reveals a Concentration camp number tattoo. The diary describes, in great detail, an amulet that is composed of concentrated good. One day out of every century, as the forces of good and evil reach a balance, the otherwise indestructible amulet becomes vulnerable to destruction.
Phoebe finishes the incantation, opening the portal which begins to consume the bodies of the monsters. Dracula, still alive, attempts to drag Sean in with him, but Sean stabs Dracula with a wooden stake before Van Helsing appears, having briefly escaped from Limbo, and takes Dracula to his doom. Although Phoebe tries desperately to hold onto him, the Frankenstein Monster has no choice but to enter the portal, but accepts a gift of a stuffed animal to remember Phoebe.
The portal then closes, ensuring the world's safety. In the aftermath, the United States Army arrives on the scene, having received a letter from Eugene (Michael Faustino) earlier on asking for their help against the monsters. When the confused General fails to make sense of the situation, Sean steps forward and presents the man with his business card, identifying himself and his friends as "The Monster Squad". Sean then celebrates with the rest of the group as the film closes.
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Tremors - 1990
Valentine "Val" McKee and Earl Basset work as handymen in Perfection, Nevada, an isolated ex-mining settlement in the high desert east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains that contains only 14 residents, among them general store owner Walter Chang, and survivalist couple Burt and Heather Gummer. A new arrival is Rhonda LeBeck, a graduate student conducting seismology tests. Val and Earl tire of their hand-to-mouth existence and leave for Bixby, the nearest town.
They discover another resident, Edgar, dead at the top of an electrical tower, though still holding on to the beams with a .30-30 Winchester rifle. Jim Wallace, the town doctor, determines that Edgar died of dehydration, apparently afraid to climb down. Elsewhere, shepherd Old Fred and his flock are attacked by a force that drags him underground. Val and Earl arrive, only to find the sheep cut to pieces and Fred's severed head buried in the sand. Val and Earl return to Perfection, thinking a murderer is on the loose.
The townsfolk use Burt's home-made explosives to drive the creatures away long enough to reach the safety of a boulder, where Earl has another idea: tricking the graboids into swallowing Burt's bombs. This works once, but on the second try, the last graboid spits the explosive onto Burt's pile of bombs, sending everyone scattering. Val, Earl, and Rhonda are stranded yards from the boulder, with the graboid blocking their path to safety.
Val has one more bomb and one last idea: he lets the graboid chase him to the edge of a cliff and "stampedes" it with the bomb, then jumps out of its way, sending it through the cliff-face to its death. The group returns to town, where they call in the authorities to begin an investigation of the graboids, and Earl pushes Val into approaching the clearly interested Rhonda romantically.
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Don't be Afraid of the Dark - 2010
At Blackwood Manor in Providence County, Rhode Island, renowned wildlife painter Lord Blackwood summons his housekeeper into the basement where he reluctantly kills her with a hammer and chisel. He removes her teeth, as well as his own, and offers them to mysterious creatures down an ash pit within an old fireplace; however, the creatures demand the teeth of children. Blackwood begs for them to give back his kidnapped son, only to be dragged down the ash pit by the creatures.
In the present day, 8-year old Sally Hurst arrives in Rhode Island to live with her father Alex and his girlfriend Kim, both restoring Blackwood Manor to put it on the market for their client Mr. Jacoby. Sally is depressed due to her mother forcefully putting her in Alex's care and giving her copious amounts of Adderall. On the first night of her stay, the melodious tune from a carousel-styled nightlight awakens the creatures in the ash pit. The next day, Sally wanders the grounds and finds the hidden basement's skylight.
When Sally wakes up, her feet have been tied up with rope, and the creatures are starting to drag her to the basement for her transformation. Kim awakens and goes to basement confronting the creatures, cutting the rope around Sally's feet but only to get herself in the ropes and her leg broken by it as she struggles to get free. The creatures drag Kim into the fireplace, as a distraught Sally crushes the creature who used to be Lord Blackwood to death with a large flashlight.
Alex arrives just as Kim disappears, and the father and daughter mourn their loss. Some time later, both return to the abandoned mansion to leave a drawing of Kim there, but a gust of wind blows the drawing into the creatures' lair, where the transformed Kim is heard convincing the creatures to stay where they are and just go deeper into the basement � for they will forget in time, and others will come � claiming they have "all the time in the world".
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Trollhunter - 2010
A group of university college students, Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), Johanna (Johanna M�rck) and their cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen), set out to make a documentary about a suspected bear poacher, Hans (Otto Jespersen). At the site of an illegally slain bear they interview local hunters, who comment that the bear tracks look odd, as well as Finn Haugen (Hans Morten Hansen), head of the Norwegian Wildlife Board. Finn dismisses the idea that the bear tracks could have been faked.
The students follow Hans in an attempt to secure an interview but he continually rebuffs them. After following him into a forest at night time, they see mysterious flashing lights and hear roars. Hans comes running back, screaming "Troll!" Thomas is attacked and bitten by a large animal. They escape in Hans� Land Rover, and discover their own vehicle turned over with the tyres ripped off. Hans admits that he does not hunt bears, but trolls.
The group finds signs of a Jotnar, a giant mountain troll 50�100 metres tall. Thomas falls ill, and they learn that the troll blood sample came back positive for rabies; Thomas has been infected by the bite he received several days earlier. After several attempts, Hans manages to kill the Jotnar by launching a rocket-like projectile that transforms the troll into stone. He directs the others to find the highway. Finn and his government agents arrive to confiscate the students' tapes.
Thomas flees with the camera and is seen collapsing at the side of a road when the tape cuts out. Just before the cut to black a truck is seen stopping next to the camera. Presumably the driver is the person who "found the footage". An epilogue tells the audience that none of the students were heard from again. The film ends with a news clip of the Norwegian Prime minister Jens Stoltenberg appearing to admit to the existence of trolls, though the press fails to take notice.
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