Slasher films

What is a slasher movie?

"A horror film, especially one depicting a series of violent murders or assaults by an attacker armed with a knife or razor." Slasher movies are based around killings,  Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) is an early influential "slasher" film but the genre's peak occurred in films released during the 1970s and 1980s.

Common tropes of a slasher:

• Most slasher franchises follow the continued efforts of a specific villain, rather than the killer's victims
• The killers are mostly driven by revenge
• Are not easily killed or injured. Some even make returns in sequels as they were not dead as people thought in the first movie
• Some villains have supernatural abilities for example, super strength and appearing in dreams
• Able to appear and reappear instantly and do the same with the victims bodies.
• The victims tend to be teenage girls or young women who are not typical 'good girls' They will be drinking, smoking or having sex.

The Final Girl theory

 Carol J. Clover explained this theory  in her 1992 book Men, Women, And Chain Saws: Gender In The Modern Horror Film, a critical examination of slasher movies.

The final girl theory literally means the last person left standing at the end of the movie. However, this character has a very typical set of traits which generally all slasher movies follow:

1. Almost always female - Think Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween
2. Almost certainly a virgin, typical good girl type - no drink, drugs or cigarettes
3. Most likely to turn out much more resourceful and clever than the other characteristics. It could also be interpreted that they will end up being as/more sadistic than the real villain



“She alone looks death in the face, but she alone finds the strength either to stay with the killer long enough to be rescued (ending A) or to kill him herself (ending B).”  - A quote from Carol Glover's book (1992)

It is suggested that the final girl has masculine traits to mirror the anxiety of male viewers to make her easier for men to identify with. The final girl is important to a slasher film but in order for her to be the final girl the other characters must come across as deserving to die, this could be from promiscuity or partying which would make them more feminine in comparison to the final girl and consequently more deserving of death.

With a slasher movie, it can be very easy to take it too far and go into the bounds of splatter and even further 'torture porn' this is the use of over the top violence, gore, nudity, sadism and mutilation. Torture porn applies to films like Hostel and Saw even though this is incredibly popular it lacks the morality and purpose of a slasher. To be a slasher there needs to be suspense and build up to produce fear opposed to non-stop murder and violence