Male Monsters Still Stalk, Yet More Violent: A Comparative Analysis of Original Slasher Films and Their Remakes

Since its origins in the mid-1970s, the slasher has been defined as a subgenre of horror in which a serial or mass killer stalks and massacres middle-class youngsters, and preferably attractive young women, using cutting weapons or projectiles. In that regard, the twenty-first century has seen a revival of the slasher, combining the release of original movies with remakes of classic films, adapting the traditional plots to the current context. In this paper, a comparative content analysis is performed on 13 slasher films made during the 1970s and the 1980s and 13 remakes premiered in the new millennium, focusing on the differences stemming from the adaptation of the latter to the new sociocultural context. The results indicate that, although there have been a number of changes, such as higher doses of explicit violence and profanity and in the fight responses of the victims, most of the subgenre’s defining traits have remained intact, whereas others, such as those relating to the defining traits of the victims, should be questioned. The limited differences found between the original films and the remakes provide the basis for drawing interesting conclusions about the subgenre itself, as well as to raise discussions about the different contexts of production and reception.

We’re doing this because you were home: an analysis of elements of the slasher formula in The Strangers (2008)

This article verifies how Bryan Bertino’s 2008 film The Strangers articulates the slasher formula (CLOVER, 2015; DIKA, 1985) in order to tell a horror story that is in tune with the cultural context from the first decade of the 2000s in the United States. Drawing from analyses of the cultural impact of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, we point out evolutions in the slasher convention, including the dissidence from slasher films made to be deeply self-referential and campy. We also demonstrate how the recognizable structure is subverted to play with viewer expectations, potentializing its bleak and nihilistic ending, a narrative feature described by Pinedo (1996) as a post-modernist trend that breaks away from the classical horror structure.

Slasher therapy: the slasher movie as an allegory for uncovering trauma

This study aims at analyzing slasher films as potential allegories for the therapeutic process of uncovering trauma, proposing a reading of the slasher killer as a metaphor for the trauma. To perform this analysis, the plots of the movies A Nightmare on Elm Street (Bayer, 2010) and Final Girls (Schulsson, 2015), were read as possible allegories for a psychoanalytical process in which their final girls come to terms with trauma as they face the killers. This analysis is performed based on the slasher film structure as composed by Final Girl versus Slasher killer, as defined by Carol Clover (1992), and, as their confrontation takes place in what Clover calls the Terrible place, that is compared to the unconscious and its dynamics, as proposed by Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id (2019). The correlation of trauma and fictional narratives is performed based on Cathy Caruth’s (1996) studies of trauma and the construction of narratives.

SEE! HEAR! CUT! KILL!

SEE! HEAR! CUT! KILL!: Experiencing Friday the 13th, is the first book entirely devoted to the analysis of the Friday the 13 th franchise. The story a film tells is usually filtered through a particular perspective, or point of view. This book argues that slasher films, and the Friday the 13th movies particularly, use all the stylistic tools at their disposal to create a complex and emotionally intense approach to perspective, which develops and shifts across the decades. Chapter one discusses the history of perspective in horror, and the different critical conversations around this. Chapter two looks at the use of camerawork, specifically point-of-view camerawork in the way these films visually communicate perspective. The fourth chapter talks about the way sound and editing work together to communicate perspective and experience in the death sequences these movies capitalize upon. The fourth chapter considers the perspective of viewers, and how each movie speaks to viewers who are either familiar or unfamiliar with the ongoing story in the series. The final chapter first explains how these trends look across a chronological timeline, and what this tells us about the historical development of perspective before looking at the influence these stylistic approaches have had on ‘serious’ film, particularly those recognized by the Hollywood critical establishment.

Some ‘R’ points: Repression, repulsion, revelation and redemption in South Korean horror films

This article examines some of the formal properties, stylistic motifs and thematic preoccupations of classic and contemporary South Korean horror films. As a genre that has enormous box-office appeal and crossover potential for western audiences, horror might seem to be little more than a commercial platform for young filmmakers to exploit popular tastes and cash in on derivative stories offering scant insight into the social conditions faced by modern-day Koreans. However, even the most cliché-ridden, shock-filled slasher films and ghost tales reveal the often-contradictory cultural attitudes of a populace that, over the past three generations, has weathered literally divisive transformations at the national and ideological levels. As such, the genre deserves scrutiny as a repository of previously pent-up, suddenly unleashed libidinal energies, consumerist desires and historical traumas, as well as a barometer of public opinion about such issues as class warfare, gender inequality and sexual identity. Specifically, I explore some of the most salient features of Korean horror cinema, including filmmakers’ tendency to adopt narrative analepsis – typically rendered as flashbacks – in the course of plotting out scenarios that, though far-fetched, are rooted in unsettled (and unsettling) real-world problems. Historical return, I argue, truly is a horrifying prospect, especially for anyone old enough to remember, or to have experienced firsthand, the brutality of a military dictatorship or an ongoing abuse of presidential power resulting in severe rights violations (e.g. the Park Chung-hee [1961–79]) and Chun Doo-hwan [1980–88] administrations). But historical return simply must be dramatized as part of the regurgitative ‘purging’ for which the genre has been singled out by theorists who recognize horror’s socially productive function.

Postmodern Horror

This chapter explores how, in postmodern horror cinema, the very formulaic nature of the genre becomes part of an in-joke. Wes Craven's Scream (1996) featured teen characters so familiar with slasher films that they were able to list the generic conventions with ease. The film is often credited with sparking a new wave of so-called 'postmodern' horror cinema, resulting in three direct sequels, a television series, and a slew of imitators, reboots, and re-imaginings. The chapter looks at a film that Craven made two years prior to the first Scream, and which in many respects is closer to the concept of postmodernism as it is more broadly defined. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) allowed the director to revisit his most famous creation with a postmodern twist, using reflexivity and circularity to adapt what had gone before and present audiences with something new. Given Craven's fascination with dreams and the overlap between the real and the imaginary, the chapter also discusses surrealism in cinema. Finally, it evaluates the cultural popularity of horror cinema, and how it affects both audiences and film-makers.

The Slasher Film

This chapter argues that of all the horror genre's many strands and variations, the original 'slasher' cycle of the 1970s and early 1980s remains the most disreputable and critically vilified, yet its commercial popularity and lasting influence are unquestionable. Whilst rarely making out-and-out slashers themselves, major Hollywood studios cashed in by buying finished films from their independent producers, giving the makers an instant profit and the studios a cheap marketable film virtually guaranteed an audience of teenagers. The chapter examines a film frequently cited as a forerunner of the slasher, one heavily influenced by the Italian giallo genre of crime fiction. In diverging from the established conventions of the giallo, Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (1971) introduced a number of narrative and aesthetic features found in many of the slasher films that followed. The chapter then considers the influence of the video industry on the evolution of the horror genre (and vice versa), and looks at the issue of censorship as it assesses the British 'video nasties' scare of the early 1980s.