The formula for a slasher film, one of the most ubiquitous, notorious, and oft-maligned subgenres of horror, feels simple enough: Put a person in a mask, give them a knife, then let them loose. Rinse, repeat. But if you look closer, you’ll find lots of intriguing and educational elements to unpack underneath the viscera. Let’s dig in.
Theatrically, folks have been watching people inflict fake violence upon each other for millennia, from vicious Greek tragedies like Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” to Shakespearean barnburners like “Macbeth.” But the closest link from stage to screen, slasher-wise, comes from the Grand Guignol theater scene in early 20th century Paris.
The Grand Guignol theater, whose name you might recognize as a catchall term for “grotesquely violent horror,” put on short plays. The emphasis was on naturalistic performances, psychological examinations of humanity rather than the supernatural or mythological, and, yes, bloody and realistic special effects. From these hallmarks, slashers were born.
The Best Horror Movies for Actors to Study Other noteworthy genres—literary, theatrical, and eventually film—that led to slashers include whodunits (people getting picked off one by one by a killer with a hidden identity), noir (presenting a morally pessimistic worldview and mysterious characters acting in self-interest), and gothic horror (dark and stormy milieus with violent characters driven by madness).
Influential 1960s films like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom,” and a glut of Hammer Production B movies started blending all of these aforementioned genres—laying the tracks for a more explicit, human-based style of psychological (and physical) horror. Then in the ’70s, the potential exploded into calcification with iconic works like John Carpenter’s “Halloween” and Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” These films were masterfully made and thematically rich, bringing the idea of an iconic, weapon-wielding horror villain into the cultural lexicon.
In the ’80s, a time of reactionary conservatism and materialistic prurience, the subgenre exploded. Horror icons like Jason Voorhees from “Friday the 13th,” Freddy Krueger from “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” and Chucky from “Child’s Play” were born and immediately franchised. The burgeoning VHS and video-store market was flooded with cheap sequels and exploitation pictures, offering unprecedented access to gory thrills, lurid kills, and new stabs at the slasher villain Mount Rushmore.
How to Act in a Horror Movie By the 1990s, slashers were such a known quantity that creators started purposefully unpacking, reassembling, and even criticizing the formula. Wes Craven, the originator of Freddy Krueger, gave us two meta-flicks that explicitly addressed his responsibility and attitudes toward the genre: “New Nightmare” (1994) brought Freddy Krueger into the real world, and “Scream” (1996) called out tropes by name. Bernard Rose’s “Candyman” added empathy (and even sensuality) to the slasher figure, alongside controversial examinations of race and society. Meanwhile, Don Mancini’s “Child’s Play” franchise verged further and further into outright camp comedy.
Since the 21st century’s onset, the slasher has lost some of its cultural influence and luster. Many of the classics were remade, but horror as a whole largely split into three different directions: grimy “torture porn” (“Saw”), no-budget found-footage indie (“Paranormal Activity”), and “elevated” arthouse crossovers (“Hereditary”). All horror talks to each other, of course, and you can see some slasher DNA in any of these examples. But by and large, it was no longer the subgenre du jour in the early aughts and 2010s.
But if there’s one thing slashers will do, it’s rise from the dead. Modern filmmakers have experimented with the subgenre in exciting ways. Christopher Langdon revealed time-loop (“Happy Death Day”) and body-swap (“Freaky”) takes on the concept. Both Nahnatchka Khan’s “Totally Killer” and Tyler MacIntyre’s “It’s a Wonderful Knife” added time travel to the mix. Ti West turned nostalgia and genre conventions into a weapon with his decades-spanning trilogy of “X,” “Pearl,” and “MaXXXine.” And Chris Nash’s “In a Violent Nature” put us into the POV of a Jason Voorhees–esque killer like never before.
Are we about to see another golden age?
Meet the Modern Scream Queens Leading a New Age of Horror Slasher genre hallmarks
The “final girl”
The story involves a group of (usually) teenage victims who are picked off by a killer until just one person remains. This lone survivor is (usually) a girl who represents a kind of virginal purity as compared to the deviant, sinning peers around her. In the end, she is spared, though traumatized, and lives to see another day.
This is the “final girl,” a character trope that waltzes between progressivism and regression with vulgar, uncaring speed. Notable examples include Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in “Halloween” and Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) in “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
More violence, faster
When Kevin Williamson was writing “Scream,” producer Bob Weinstein insisted he add a murder in the middle of a bloodless 30-minute stretch. What was Weinstein’s editorial comment about a slasher without consistent carnage? “I just don’t think we can do that.”
This is, in some ways, the “raison d’être” of a typical slasher flick. Building tension and suspense in the mold of Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” or Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” is great, yes. But slasher audiences are looking for the explicit and increasingly creative act of murder as the main generator of scares. When you see fans lavish praise on “kills,” this is precisely what they’re talking about.
A hidden, but human, killer
This hallmark can often be bent or broken. Many times we know who the killer is (Michael Myers in “Halloween”) and/or the killer crosses over into inhuman or supernatural qualities (Freddy Krueger, Chucky). But by and large, the killer of a slasher flick is a normal(ish) human being, and the profound horror comes from the idea that a normal(ish) human being is capable of such madness. More often than not, our killer is masked until the end—or a cathartic revelation simply never comes.
“Psycho” (1960)
In this seminal work of noir-turned-horror, Hitchcock introduces tropes like a hidden killer, explicit violence, a twist ending, and the final girl. “Psycho” remains key to understanding the genre’s origins, especially for actors looking for inspiration in playing victims, survivors, or monsters.
“A Bay of Blood” (1971)
The giallo, an Italian subgenre of loud, pulpy horror-thrillers, is a huge influence on the American slasher. It especially put emphasis on POV murder, innocent women against horrifying men, and bold tableaus of over-saturated violence. Mario Bava’s “A Bay of Blood” is a major entry, telling the lurid tale of a murder spree at a beachside property. Carlo Rambaldi designed its gory, bravura special effects nearly a decade before he won Oscars for Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”
“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974)
Leatherface is one of the slasher icons, and his introduction comes in one of the most purely upsetting pieces of art ever made. Hooper’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” retains its influential power in every facet of its craft. The setup is simple: What if a family of deranged cannibal killers kidnapped and terrorized some young adults? But the raw filmmaking and performances touch on some particularly brutal ideals of evil that a large portion of the audience just hadn’t experienced.
“Black Christmas” (1974)
Originally underseen, Bob Clark’s “Black Christmas” has since been recognized as an immensely important text in the slasher canon. (After all, it wrote the winning formula of “serial murderer” plus “a holiday.”) In it, an anonymous killer targets and dispatches a group of sorority students. Clark and screenwriter Roy Moore’s surprising mix of misanthropy and feminism remain striking to this day.
“Halloween” (1978)
Perhaps the ultimate slasher movie, Carpenter’s “Halloween” features a litany of sequences and ideas that have since been imitated ad infinitum. This includes point-of-view shots, a killer’s mask, a strong-willed final girl, an adult authority figure trying to make sense of madness, and the representation of unknowable, uncontrollable evil.
“Friday the 13th” (1980)
Other “Friday the 13th” films in the 12-movie franchise may play more like a regular slasher, especially when it comes to their use of hockey-masked villain Jason Voorhees. But the first visit to Camp Crystal Lake remains essential not just for how much it solidified the subgenre’s inverse relationship between morality and violence, but also for its relationship to Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” especially in the final twist.
“A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984)
“One, two, Freddy’s coming for you.” In Craven’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” there’s nowhere to run from the man with the finger-claws, as he infiltrates your dreams in surreal, gore-soaked vignettes of carnage. Craven’s entry is especially notable for blurring the humanity of the killer, making him an explicitly supernatural, even undead figure.
“Scream” (1996)
More than a decade later, Craven returned to the scene of the crime with a new blade-wielding icon and a satirical bone to pick. “Scream” works beautifully as a slasher film and a comedic takedown of the subgenre, with characters telling savvy filmgoers the rules of the very type of film they’re watching. This is another benchmark for actor inspiration, particularly from a multilayered Neve Campbell and deeply committed Matthew Lillard.
“X” (2022)
West’s “X” is a lurid genre film about filmmakers making a lurid genre film (in their case, pornography), but the deconstructive impulses play less overtly critical than in works like “Scream.” In this case, West and his performing muse Mia Goth are crafting an unabashed love letter full of playfulness and joy, even when they make some nifty statements about our relationship to fame, sex, and violence.