Slasher film
Slasher films are a distinctive subgenre of horror movies that gained prominence in the 1970s, characterized by a maniacal killer, a group of vulnerable victims, and graphic violence. Typically, the narrative follows a group of young individuals who are stalked and murdered by a brutal antagonist, often masked or concealed. The plot usually culminates in a final showdown where the last survivor, frequently a female known as the "final girl," confronts the killer. Influential early works such as Alfred Hitchcock's *Psycho* and *Peeping Tom* helped shape the conventions of the genre, leading to its mainstream success with films like *Halloween* (1978) and *Friday the 13th* (1980).
The genre's evolution saw it become a cultural phenomenon in the 1980s before entering a parody phase in the 1990s with Wes Craven's *Scream*, which introduced self-awareness to the narrative. More recently, filmmakers have redefined slasher conventions, as seen in franchises like *Saw*, which offered complex storytelling, and *It Follows*, which provided a fresh perspective on traditional themes. As a result, slasher films continue to challenge audience expectations while maintaining core elements that define the genre.
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Slasher film
First evolving as a distinct subgenre during the 1970s, slasher films are horror movies defined by three key conventions: a maniacal killer, a vulnerable group of victims, and high levels of graphic on-screen violence. In a standard slasher film story line, a group of young victims are stalked by a brutal murderer, who is often masked, concealed by darkness, or otherwise unidentified. Plots are typically configured to give the killer the opportunity to murder the victims one by one, building to a final confrontation in which the last survivor, who is usually female, must either kill the killer or make an improbable escape. Slasher film killers sometimes have supernatural origins and are often male, but there are noteworthy exceptions in which they are female.
Rising to unprecedented heights of popularity during the 1980s, conventional slasher films had largely run their course by the mid-1990s. In recent years, filmmakers have reimagined the genre by overturning, manipulating, and defying its established set of conventions in novel and innovative ways.
Background
While the slasher subgenre does not have an easily identifiable origin point, film historians often cite Psycho (1960), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, as an important early influence on its development. The British psychological horror movie Peeping Tom (1960) also played a key role in shaping its conventions. Challenging the restrictive production codes and censorship limits of its era, Psycho was the first mainstream Hollywood production to feature shocking eruptions of brutal on-screen violence. In addition to graphic killing scenes, Peeping Tom featured a deranged male killer stalking and murdering female victims one by one. Dismissed and reviled by critics upon its original release, Peeping Tom has since come to be regarded as a groundbreaking masterpiece.
Other obscure 1960s releases continued to shape the nascent subgenre, including Violent Midnight (1963) and an Italian cinema movement known as giallo, which introduced stylized and artistically treated violence in the context of crime-driven story lines. By the 1970s, the slasher subgenre was beginning to take a clear and distinctive form, with movies such as Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), Wicked, Wicked (1973), Black Christmas (1974), Alice, Sweet Alice (1976), and Carrie (1976) solidifying and defining its conventions. However, it was the breakthrough success of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), a brutally violent horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper, that helped usher slasher films into the mainstream consciousness.
Halloween (1978), directed by John Carpenter, marks the point at which the slasher film subgenre emerged in its fully realized classical form to achieve major international financial success. Produced on a very low budget, Halloween went on to earn $70 million worldwide. Adjusted for inflation, the movie's box-office take would equal about $265 million in 2017. At the time, Halloween was the most profitable independent film ever released, and its strong performance during its original theatrical run led to an explosion of slasher films in the 1980s. The subgenre's golden age is widely said to have begun with the release of Halloween and continued into the mid-1980s, when the iconic Friday the 13th(1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) horror franchises reached the peak of their popularity.
Overview
Beyond the basic tropes of a deranged killer stalking and killing off young victims, the slasher film subgenre is also notable for another well-known convention. In many slasher films, the killer's victims are often portrayed as having loose morals and engaging in activities including excessive drinking, drug use, and premarital sex. One member of the victim group, usually a female, avoids or rejects such activities, and goes on to be the sole survivor of the villain's killing spree; as such, this character is sometimes referred to as the "final girl." In a variation of this narrative standard, the final girl may prove to be the only person in the group who shows compassion for socially marginalized outcasts or outsiders who interact with the group members. These narrative standards define a kind of unwritten moral code that governs the development and resolution of most slasher film plotlines.
Unlike most other mainstream movie genres and subgenres, it is not normally the protagonist who drives the action in slasher films, but rather the murderous antagonist. Some of the most instantly recognizable villains in movie history appear in slasher films, including Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Michael Myers (Halloween), Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th), and Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street). Film historians and theorists note that these deranged killers effectively occupy starring roles in slasher movies, as they tend to receive the most character development and audiences are often prompted to subconsciously root for the villain rather than his or her victims.
As noted by the influential French film theorist Christian Metz, film genres tend to follow a cycle of four developmental stages: the experimental stage, the classical stage, the parody stage, and the deconstruction stage. Most film historians agree that the slasher film's experimental stage ended with the 1978 release of Halloween, which also marked the beginning of the subgenre's classical stage. It is also widely accepted that the slasher film's classical stage began to decline during the late 1980s and early 1990s, prompting the rise of its parody stage. Scream (1996), directed by Wes Craven, is often cited as the definitive beginning of the subgenre's parody cycle. Craven, the creative force behind the Friday the 13th franchise, intentionally introduced a level of meta-cinematic self-awareness in Scream that reinvigorated the fading genre while earning critical approval and box-office success.
More recently, the slasher film has moved into its deconstruction stage, in which the subgenre's standards and conventions have been challenged, defied, subverted, and reconfigured to disrupt audience expectations and break new creative ground. For example, the highly successful Saw franchise made novel use of complex plotting and a far deeper and more detailed story world than had previously been seen in slasher films. The first Saw installment was released in 2004 and generated a highly profitable series of sequels and spin-offs. The critically acclaimed horror film It Follows (2014) marked another noteworthy innovation with its fresh take on the standard slasher film trope of punishing teenage promiscuity. As the twenty-first century progressed, many producers turned to remaking classic slasher films. The Friday the 13th (2009) remake was considered a box office success. Similarly, the 2018 remake of Halloween was a huge box office success, earning over $255 million worldwide and breaking several box office records to become the highest-grossing film in the Halloween franchise. Hollywood continues to explore remaking classic slasher-films with mixed results.
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