Slasher Movie

Slasher Movie killer in its natural habitat; stalking the Final Girl.

Zombie movies are about groups: outside, the zombies are legion; inside, the humans struggle to work together. Slasher movies are about individuals: one man is doing all the killing, and only one girl will outwit him and survive.

—Sara Bickley, reviewing The Ruins

Near-indestructible serial killers stalking attractive young girls, a combination that allows for buckets of gore and enough flesh to titillate.

The killers, mostly driven by Revenge, are Made of Iron, at a minimum, and usually Implacable. Many are explicitly supernatural. All of them can appear and disappear as if by magic, and the corpses of their victims are equally elusive. A slasher killer can whisk away a full grown adult's corpse in seconds, leaving not a single drop of blood behind, or swiftly arrange all its victims in an elaborate tableau, without ever being seen lugging the dead bodies around. The more explicitly supernatural killers will have powers ranging from Super Strength (all the better to pull victims through walls), the ability to appear in dreams and attack the dreamers, or other ghostly abilities.

The victims are usually teenagers or young adults, all usually guilty of some minor vice. Once the audience has had a convincing demonstration of their (usually sexual) misdemeanours, they are spectacularly slaughtered. If there's more than one sin or minority to pick from then the Sorting Algorithm of Mortality comes into play.

Eventually, there will be only one girl left standing, the Final Girl, normally the only "morally pure" member of the main cast. With considerable help from her death battle exemption, she will kill the killer.

Come the next sequel, it will be revealed that the killer was actually Not Quite Dead.

A subset of the Horror genre, although the schlockier examples replace suspense almost entirely with gore. They are often considered B-movies. Early examples of the genre were heavily influenced by the Giallo films of Italian directors like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Mario Bava. The genre first became popular in the late '70s and early '80s, with the release of the three most iconic slasher flicks: Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. The genre would burn itself out in the late '80s, as the established franchises grew stale and the ripoffs grew more desperate. The slasher genre was revived in the mid-late '90s, when Wes Craven's Scream satirized the genre and became a hit. Once again, studios sought to cash in on the film's success, releasing their own post-modern, teen-focused slasher flicks. Today, the slasher genre may be entering a third wave, with the remakes of Halloween, My Bloody Valentine, and Friday the 13th all being hits, a remake of Nightmare on Elm Street just arrived, and the backlash against the gore-driven "torture porn" that dominated horror in this decade.

Keep in mind that, while every slasher movie features a serial killer or a spree killer, not every serial killer or spree killer movie is a slasher movie. Also note that a slasher film is quite different from a Psychological Thriller, which tends to emphasize the Sympathy for the Devil part using a Freudian Excuse or two (and possibly a few Pet the Dog moments in the killer's favor), and de-emphasize the Final Girl, often killing off all characters.

Want to write your own slasher flick? We have a handy writer's guide for anybody looking to do just that.

Tropes applicable to the genre

• Adults Are Useless: Parents, teachers, or any kind of authority figure are either blissfully unaware of what's happening or being obstructive and denying it. In the case of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, they're almost villains themselves.
  • Police Are Useless: The cops, the guys we normally expect to be able to deal with the problem, are especially useless in these kinds of movies. As always, it's up to the Final Girl to actually stop the killer.
• Asshole Victim
• Barrier-Busting Blow
• Black Dude Dies First/Bury Your Gays
• Cool Mask: On some of the killers. Usually leads to Dramatic Unmask.
• Creepy Basement: You can always expect at least one death in here.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: At least one death in many of these movies will qualify for this.
• Dark Secret: One of these lies at the core of most of these films, usually as the reason that the killer is on the rampage.
• Deadly Prank: Some slasher movies have one of these as either a way one of the victims is killed or as the catalyst for the entire thing (see Urban Legend for a recent example).
• Death By Genre Savvy: Ran into the ground by lesser filmmakers when Scream made it popular, and mostly set aside during the age of Torture Porn.
• Death By Pragmatism
• Death by Sex: If you have sex in one of these movies, rest assured that you will die. Horrifically.
• Developing Doomed Characters
• Don't Go in The Woods / Summer Campy: Summer camps and backwoods are a popular setting, owing to Friday the 13th's use of these locales.
  • A popular gimmick is to have a sequel be set in a sprawling urban setting, usually New York.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: In movies where the killer's identity isn't known.
• Fan Service: One of the reasons why the genre became popular.
• Final Girl: The Trope Maker. The trope was named by Carol J. Clover in her examination of the genre.
• Follow the Leader: These films tend to follow the path shown by the most successful entries.
• Gorn: The name of the game in these movies (although some of the most famous examples, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween, are rather pointedly not very explicit).
• Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: Although in references to these films rather than in the actual films.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: These films usually take place on holidays and such.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice
• Implacable Man: Killers in these movies are rather hard to kill.
• Improvised Weapon
• Just Here for Godzilla: A lot fans honestly watch to see the killer doing his thing and really don't care much about the actual story.
• Mask Power
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Slashers tend to blur the line between fantasy and reality. Even if the killer is an explicitly normal human, his seemingly superhuman speed, strength, and stamina will rarely be given an explanation.
• Menacing Stroll
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Male deaths are usually sudden and without struggle; it's incredibly rare to have a chase scene with a male character being chased. And in 99% of slasher movies, being male is practically a death certificate, because no matter how Too Dumb to Live the Final Girl is, she will live despite being a complete moron (examples are Friday the 13th Part 3, The Strangers, Mother's Day (2011)).
• Monster Misogyny: The other side of the coin. While men can and do die in these movies, the favorite victims of many slasher killers are women.
• My Car Hates Me; If you're running from the killer, expect your car to let you down at the worst possible time.
• Not Quite Dead: If a slasher movie goes into sequels, chances are this applies to the killer.
• Off with His Head
• Offscreen Teleportation
• Paint the Town Red
• Popularity Polynomial: The slasher genre was dead in the water by the end of The Eighties, before it was resurrected by Scream.
• Reactionary Fantasy: Many '80s slasher movies, underneath all the R-rated bloodshed and raunchiness, had a very socially conservative view of teenage culture, usually expressed by ensuring that those teenagers into drinking, partying, doing drugs, rock music, etc.—basically, those who "rebelled" in any way against society—were the ones who got killed. The Final Girl was nearly always the Token Wholesome virgin. Later films, however, tended to subvert, parody and/or deconstruct these aspects more often than they played them straight.
• Red Shirt: Yes, even in these. Before the main cast gets it, several minor (and usually unnamed) characters will get it early on.
• Reduced Killer Difficulty
• The Reveal: Usually coupled with the unmasking.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Most of the killers of these movies are on a vendetta of some sort.
• The Savage South: Slashers tend to take place in the southern regions. Ex: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
• The Scourge of God
• Shaggy Dog Story/Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The surviving protagonists generally don't get any reward for their trials. Oftentimes, their victories over the killers are completely undone in Sequel Hooks, even if the given movie doesn't have a planned sequel yet.
• Slashers Prefer Blondes: Blonde girls in slasher films tend to get offed a lot, usually with more elaborate deaths. The Final Girl is almost always brunette, in contrast to the blonde. Though of course there are exceptions.
• Small Reference Pools: Judging by the number of parodies that feature hockey masks and chainsaws, it's as if Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were the only slasher flicks ever made.
• Stealth Hi Bye
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Final Girls of previous movies who sign on for sequels are especially at risk of dying, usually very early on in the movie. The Final Girl of the original Friday the 13th was famously the very first victim of Jason Voorhees.
• Too Dumb to Live: Some victims just might not be particularly Genre Savvy, but the first victim is usually in a class of his/her own.
• Villain Based Franchise: Especially popular with slashers.
• Villain Protagonist: Most of the films have the killer as the center of the story.
• The Voiceless: Most of the killers rarely talk, if ever.
• Weapon of Choice: Most slashers have at least one.
  • An Axe to Grind
  • Chainsaw Good
  • Hooks and Crooks
  • Knife Nut
  • Machete Mayhem
  • Powerful Pick
  • Sinister Scythe
• Wild Teen Party: One of the most common set ups.

Notable Slasher Movies include

• All the Boys Love Mandy Lane—And one of them is willing to kill for her, it seems.
• The Anthropophagus Beast—Tourists are stuck on an island inhabited by a ravenous cannibal.
• April Fool's Day—For April Fool's Day weekend, a group of friends decide to party on a remote island mansion, but a killer starts taking them out one by one. Had a 2008 redo often considered the absolute worst of the modern remakes.
• Ax 'Em—Notoriously bad "shot-on-shitteo" slasher.
• Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon—A Mockumentary that follows a wannabe slasher as he prepares for his killing spree; later turns into a straight example.
• Black Christmas—One of the earliest examples of a straight slasher movie. Also started the tradition of holiday-themed horror movies.
• Blood and Black Lace—Models are killed by a killer in a white mask.
• Bloody Moon—Man returns from a sanitarium and soon murders start to occur.
• Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet—High school students celebrating a local pseudo-holiday dubbed "Blood Night" find themselves being killed off, possibly by the very urban legend figure whose infamy they are commemorating.
• Blood Rage—Psychotic Evil Twin goes on a Thanksgiving killing spree.
• The Burning—Summer camp caretaker hates kids. After he is horribly burnt in a prank gone horribly wrong, he really hates kids.
• Chain Letter
• Cheerleader Camp
• Cherry Falls—Teenage virgins are being killed off in a small town.
• Childs Play—In a desperate move to continue living, a Serial Killer transfers his soul into a body of a doll.
• Chopping Mall—Kids break into shopping mall, death by robot ensues.
• Cold Prey—An abandoned hotel in Norway proves to be a wrong choice for a shelter.
• Cornered—No corner store is safe with a murderous gimp running loose in LA.
• Creep—British film about a career woman being stalked by a monstrous man in The London Underground.
• The Dead Pit -- Deadly Doctor returns from the other side to harass an amnesiac woman. His zombie cronies soon follow.
• Death on Demand—Contestants of a Halloween reality show are butchered by a mountain climber's ghost.
• Don't Go in the Woods—Because there is a killer in there.
• Don't Open Till Christmas—It's Christmastime in London, but a serial killer is prowling the streets, knocking off men who happen to be dressed like Santa Claus.
• The Dorm That Dripped Blood—College students cleaning out a condemned dormitory get bumped off by a mysterious assailant.
• Dr. Giggles—The maniac son of a Deadly Doctor escapes from a mental asylum and poses as a doctor for bloody revenge on the townspeople who killed his father.
• Dream Home—Woman finds out that she can't afford a new apartment due to hike in stock market. She is P.O.'d and starts killing other people in the building.
• Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!—The tormentors of a disabled child are gorily disposed of by a killer in an Easter Bunny mask.
• Evil Laugh—Med-students are killed in an ex-orphanage.
• The Final Terror
• Friday the 13th—One of the movies often named as the Trope Codifier. The first movie had more in common with the Italian giallos, with the identity of the killer kept a secret until the end, then later installments took the genre into straight-out fantasy. Created the second of the big slasher icons: Jason Voorhees.
• The Funhouse—A carnival darkride takes a turn to deadly when teens witness a murder.
• Halloween—The original movie that popularized the genre in the US. Created the first of the Big Three slasher icons: Michael Myers (no, not the guy who played Austin Powers). Often credited as the Trope Codifier, alongside Friday the 13th.
• Happy Birthday to Me—Murders happen around an academy as Virginia's birthday draws closer.
• Happy Hell Night—Body of priest is possessed by a demon and starts killing people.
• Hatchet—A modern Reconstruction of the genre
• Hell Night—Initiation goes haywire when it turns out the house where it's going on has a killer in it.
• High Tension—Brutal French gorefest involving two women being pursued by a maniac.
• Home Sweet Home -- Maniacal addict embarks on a killing spree, eventually ending up at the secluded home of a family in the middle of celebrating Thanksgiving.
• Hospital Massacre—A psycho stalks the woman who spurned him years ago through a hospital on Valentine's Day.
• House of Wax—The 2005 remake, to be more specific. Notable for having Paris Hilton as one of the victims.
• The House on Sorority Row—After covering up the accidental death of their house mother, a group of sorority girls begin to be picked off a killer wielding the dead woman's signature walking stick.
• Humongous—Bunch of kids are stranded on an island inhabitated by a deformed killer.
• Idle Hands
• I Know What You Did Last Summer—One of the first films following the success of Scream.
• Intruder—Supermarket employees are trapped in the store with a mysterious killer, who has a penchant for dismemberment.
• Jack Frost—Supernatural slasher which shouldn't be confused with the family film with same name.
• Jeepers Creepers—Demonic entity goes on a twenty-three day long feeding frenzy every twenty-three years.
• Just Before Dawn—Kids venture into woods and start dying.
• Laid to Rest
• Las Vegas Bloodbath—A businessman descends into homicidal, misogynistic madness after catching his wife in bed with another man.
• Lighthouse
• Lovers Lane—Maniac with a hook for a hand terrorizes a Make-Out Point on Valentine's Day.
• Madman—Local campfire tale turns out to be real when a deranged hillbilly starts killing the populace of a summer camp.
• Mikey -- Enfant Terrible kills his adoptive families, and anyone else who bugs him.
• Motor Home Massacre
• The Mutilator—Students on fall break are hunted by the main character's insane father.
• My Bloody Valentine—Killer wearing a miner's outfit terrorizes small town. Got 3D remake in 2008.
• My Soul to Take—Dead killer's soul went into the body of a child born the night he was killed. His son either is that child, or has to stop him.
• New Years Evil—Punk icon is harassed by a caller who claims he will murder a person every time the clock strikes twelve in a different time zone.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street—Popularized the supernatural slasher movie by introducing a killer who stalked his victims through their dreams. The killer in question, Freddy Krueger, was the last of the great slasher icons to come about.
• Pieces—Little boy murders his mother when she freaks out after finding his Porn Stash. 40 years later, killer with a chainsaw emerges to terrorize a college campus.
• The Pool—Graduation party at a swimming hall goes awry.
• Prom Night—Little girl dies accidentally. Cut to several years later, when murder, mayhem and disco dancing ensues.
• The Prowler—Soldier returning from WWII isn't happy about the "Dear John" letter he got. 35 years later, he is still not happy.
• Psycho Cop -- Satan worshiping fake cop kills hapless teens. In the sequel, he terrorizes office workers having a bachelor party.
• Return to Horror High—The actors of a slasher film based upon unsolved high school murders are getting killed as well. Or maybe not.
• Reazione a Catena
• Scream—1981 slasher which is usually said to be rather awful. Notable for sharing its name with:
• Scream—Started the revival of the genre in 1996, with an increased sense of self-awareness.
• See no Evil -- Kane offs delinquents in an abandoned hotel.
• Silent Night, Deadly Night—An unstable man suffers a psychotic break at Christmas, and starts "punishing the naughty" while dressed as Santa.
• Slaughter High—Bullied kid takes revenge on his tormentors at their high school reunion.
• Sledgehammer
• Sleepaway Camp—Don't pick on Angela.
• The Slumber Party Massacre—An attempted feminist parody of the genre that failed due to Executive Meddling.
• Sorority Row -- In Name Only remake of The House on Sorority Row.
• Stage Fright Aquarius—Bunch of actors find themselves locked up inside a theater with a maniac wearing an owl's head. Made in Italy, combining the slasher with the Giallo.
• The Stepfather -- Bluebeard offs families who fail to live up to his expectations, and also kills anyone else who gets in his way.
• Superstition
• Terror Train—There's a new year's eve masquerade party on a train. There's also a killer onboard.
• ThanksKilling -- Fowl-mouthed demon turkey created by a Native shaman centuries ago slaughters kids on Thanksgiving break.
• Uncle Sam -- Sociopathic Soldier returns from the grave on the Fourth of July to murder those he views as unpatriotic.
• Urban Legend—Attractive teens on a campus are killed with inspiration taken from a certain subject.
• Valentine—A nerd comes back to kill the girls who rejected him on his junior high school prom.
• Wrong Turn—After getting lost, a group of city slickers become the prey of a mutant, inbred Cannibal Clan.

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Slasher Hybrids and Proto-Slashers^[1]

Pre-'70s and '80s movies (but there are some recent examples as well) which contain some of the elements familiar to the genre. These are mostly made of Serial Killer and Giallo movies.

• Alice, Sweet Alice (1977)
• Alien (1979)
• Alone in the Dark (1982 film) (1982)
• 10 to Midnight (1983): Dirty Harry meets Friday The 13th.
• The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970): Influential film by famed Italian horror director Dario Argento, who made his debut here. By this film, most of the tropes were in place, although the term "slasher flick" didn't exist yet, and the plot and characters were more akin to those in a usual whodunit.
• Bloody Birthday (1981): Has some elements in common with the slasher genre and is sometimes categorized as such. Features three pre-adolescent children who kill people off.
• Dementia 13 (1963): An early predecessor to the genre featuring an axe-weilding killer, notable for being an early work of director Francis Ford Coppola.
• Death Proof (2008): Quentin Tarantino's take on the genre, featuring a professional stunt driver who uses a souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger as his weapon.
• Website Hysteria Lives! has a fairly decent list (with reviews and kill lists) of a number of these.
• Lost Signal (2007): A slasher-less slasher, featuring a drugged out of their mind teenaged couple wandering through the wilderness in the dead of night, convinced someone or something is after them.
• Maniac (1980): Contains a killer who slashes (and shoots) people with a variety of different things, but tends to the much bleaker side of things. The killer is the main character and suffers from mental illness that neither turns him into a mindless silent bogeyman nor a wisecracking sadist, you don't root for anyone to die, and the final girl's big fight against the killer has her stab him once and run like hell away. The killer does not pursue her for long.
  • Don't Go in the House (1980): Maniac WITH FIRE!
• Perfect Blue (1997)
• Psycho (1960): Has very few of the associated tropes and is more akin to a typical Serial Killer movie.
• Peeping Tom (1960): Same thing as Psycho. As you can see, they even were released on the same year.
• Pumpkinhead (1988): Features the usual tropes and trappings of the slasher genre, though the villain is a giant monster.
• Silent Night Bloody Night (1974): Although it predates the recognition of the genre, it does have some elements in common with it.
• The Terminator (1984): The first film definitely has elements of the genre. Though the sequels are straight action movies.
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): One of the first well-known ones to use a Final Girl (though not the first, that would be the 1972 Italian slasher Torso), possibly the first to "monsterize" the killer by portraying him as more beast than man. Also responsible for the stereotype of slasher villains wielding chainsaws. One of the two Trope Makers for the genre, the other being Black Christmas.
• Thirteen Women (1934)
• The Toolbox Murders (1978)
• True Crime movies (usually the poorly made ones, such as Nightstalker or Kemper: The Co-ed Killer) can sometimes give off distinctive slasher film vibes.
• Visiting Hours (1982)

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Homages, Parodies, Other

• The comic book Hack Slash stars a former Final Girl who hunts down slashers.
• Cry Wolf is worthy of mention here for being a "faux-slasher". Only two people die in the entire movie. I'm not saying who.
  • And neither of them really dies in a particularly brutal fashion as has become accustom to the genre.
• Hunter: The Vigil has... Slashers, who are people influenced by the supernatural into becoming perfect Serial Killers. They range from Rippers, who have abnormal, but still theoretically possible abilities, to Scourges, who are obviously supernatural. The types are: Avengers & Legends, Brutes & Masks, Charmers & Psychos, Freaks & Mutants, and Geniuses & Maniacs. It is possible, though difficult, to play one as a Type IV or V Anti-Hero, targeting people, or supernatural beings, who deserve it.
• Tucker and Dale vs. Evil parodies the 'degenerate hillbilly' variation on this genre by flipping it; the two main characters are a pair of sweet-natured but not very bright hillbillies who, through a bunch of misunderstandings, are mistaken for psycho killers by a group of college students camping in the woods. Very Gory Hilarity Ensues.
• Clock Tower, released in 1995, while a game, is very similar to a slasher movie. You've got your near-indestructible slasher villain who murders young women off-screen. A movie in and out of Development Hell is being made.
• The "Weird Al" Yankovic song "Nature Trail To Hell" is a parody of these sorts of movies.
• Scary Movie parodies the genre, mostly Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Its sequels venture into other genres.
• Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth, which also heavily parodied Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
• Stan Helsing features various Captain Ersatzes of various horror icons, including from Slasher movies.
• Unmasked Part 25 is an existential British satire of the Friday the 13 th series, in which a deformed slasher named Jackson tries to leave his life of meaningless slaughter for his love of a beautiful blind woman. It's somewhat reminiscent of The Toxic Avenger.
• The comedy film Psycho Beach Party is a homage to the old slasher movies and beach movies from the 60s.
• The music video for E-Type's "Angels Crying" is based around slasher movie tropes.
• There was a Nike commercial were a sporty female outran the chainsaw-toting psycho during a chase scene. Some of the viewers missed the positive message and it eventually got banned.
• The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon takes the invulnerable killer aspect and runs with it.
• Apeshit.
• Boy Meets World did an episode that parodied slasher movies. It involved the main characters getting killed off one by one by masked killer while trapped in detention after school (it was All Just a Dream, of course). The episode came out during the revitalization of the genre in the late 90s and even guest-starred Jennifer Love Hewitt who had recently starred in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
• Where The Bodies Are Buried and sequels by Kim Newman, are about a series of slasher movies of the same name, whose slasher, Rob Hackwill, has a nasty habit of becoming real.
• The genre is played with Andrea Mouse-themed storylines from Horndog. Given the comic's style, it tee-totals between straight example and Affectionate Parody.
• Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre, a porno-slasher notable for sharing its set with Hatchet.

1. ↑ (Named after a Retro Slashers feature)