Round one is over.

On the left side of the bracket, No. 1 “Get Out” advances easily to face underdog No. 5 “Paranormal Activity.” And both lower seeds No. 6 “Sinister” and No. 7 “Hush” vanquished their more highly favored opponents to square off against each other.

On the right side, No. 1 “Hereditary” crushed No. 8 “Candyman” and will face off against North Korean challenger No. 4 “Train to Busan.” Then, No. 3 “28 Days Later” will take on No. 7 “The Strangers.”

Let the round 2 quarterfinals begin!

By 2000, the zombie film was as stale as week-old bread. Slow moving, brain-eating monsters no longer held the same place in popular culture as they had in the 70s and 80s. And then came “28 Days Later.” It was so scary that acclaimed horror novelist Stephen King bought out an entire 800 seat theater for a private screening. And he wasn’t wrong. Finding inspiration in the spread of the ebola virus, this pandemic horror is even scarier today than it was at the turn of the century. When our main character finds a church filled with dead bodies not yet reanimated with a “rage virus” it no longer feels like a bleak vision of the future; it feels like reality.

“The Strangers” helped pave the way for repopularizing the terrifying genre of home invasion films. It follows a couple that go on a vacation but are soon attacked by the titular strangers. These said strangers torment the couple through the whole night, offering up many creative jump scares in such a small location. Though the movie was very small in scale, it garnered a gigantic fan base by advertising that the movie was based on true events. The director failed to say that the only true part about the Strangers was that a stranger came to his door one night and said the fan loved catchphrase “Is Tamra home?” While being a small film with a small cast, it sets a type of new fear that you can get hunted down by any random stranger at night.