I'm watching it now

Criminally unknown.

This year, I was surprised how much I was affected by the scene were Barb was having an asthma attack. I've never really thought about this scene too much. Thinking it only existed to further the "I dreamed there was somebody in my room" warning.

But Barb is such a complex character. It's easy to look at her as just an unpleasant character, who is always drunk. But at the start of the movie, we see her mother running off with a strange man instead of spending time with her on Christmas. Barb seems at her most drunk and spiteful later when Mr. Harrison is there. Is this just the act of a character who doesn't really care about anybody, or the act of somebody who is jealous that one of the other girls has a worried parent there? Something Barb never seemed to have growing up.

At the end, when Barb is coughing and struggling to reach her asthma pump, Jess retrieves it for her and sits with her a moment to make sure she's okay. Showing that there is somebody willing to look after Barb, despite it all. This moment hadn't particularly resonated with me in previous years, but made me feel even sadder when Barb was killed. It felt that her character had come full circle in the movie, finally finding somebody who cared for her. It somehow made me wish she'd stayed alive longer, to stay with her friends that would confront her demons.

This sort of character development isn't present in a lot of slasher movies. As much as I love slashers, a lot of them feature characters that are stereotypes of lack depth. Certainly I've never seen ones that have characters this well developed.