Slasher Horror Genre Conventions

A slasher film is a type of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or an axe. Although the term "slasher" may be used as a generic term for any horror movie involving graphic acts of murder, the slasher as a genre has its own set of characteristics that set it apart from related genres like the 'splatter film'.

“Black Christmas (1974)” is widely considered the first proper slasher film. Directed by Bob Clark (later the director of A Christmas Story) “Black Christmas” was noted as one of the earliest films to present some of the sub-genre's characteristics that the slasher film would come to be known for. These included:

• A mysterious stalker
• A set of adolescent or young adult victims
• A secluded location with little or no adult supervision,
• Point-of-view camera shots representing the "killer's perspective,"
• Graphic depictions of violence and murder

Dimension Films eventually remade the film in 2006, a trend that appears to be followed now more than ever with films such as “Halloween”, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13^th”. This would suggest that audiences now want what they know is good and therefore I will try and keep to the common conventions associated with the slasher horror genre in terms of it’s characteristics listed above.

Other films that helped to kick-start the slasher genre were “Savage Weekend”, “Scream Bloody Murder”, “Silent Night”, “Bloody Night”, “The Toolbox Murders”, “Drive-In Massacre”, “The Driller Killer”, and, “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” largely known for it’s effect on audiences with several feeling the need to leave viewings.

However none of these could match the proverbial huge box office success of John Carpenter's “Halloween” (1978) and Sean S. Cunningham's “Friday the 13^th” (1980), both of which spawned numerous sequels and remakes and countless imitators. These became the benchmark for the slasher genre and were the cornerstone to the gain of widespread popularity the genre suddenly received.

Halloween, though not the first film of its kind, was the first to introduce the concept of the killer being a seemingly indestructible evil force. The widespread success of this idea has led to it being considered the film responsible for the proliferation of the slasher trend, popularizing many of what would become key elements in the genre. Long successions of slasher films were produced, though “Halloween” actually has far less graphic violence than the later films that defined the slasher genre. “Friday the 13^th” was the first to couple this type of murderer character with the sequential murder countdown, which had been seen earlier in 1945's “And Then There Were None”, which was based on Agatha Christie's famous 1939 murder mystery novel of the same name.

The larger part of slasher villains are portrayed as mentally deranged and/or physically deformed individuals who were traumatized, in many instances at an early age. Examples of these would be Jason Vorhees “Friday the 13^th”, Freddy Krueger “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, Michael Myers “Halloween”, Ghostface “Scream”.  Long-running franchises in the genre tended to focus more and more on the returning villain than on surviving victims, effectively transforming characters once viewed as sick psychopaths into sympathetic antiheroes for some.


I originally gained interest in this genre after seeing the likes of "Halloween" and "Scream". Also most importantly was "The Texas Chainsw Massacre". I gained a large interest in this film as I wanted to know how one film could have such a huge impact on an audience and wished to mirror this type of effect for my own production. The idea that "this film could be reality" immediately makes it more terrifying. Another convention surrounding this genre that I really want to embrace in my own product is the idea of the villain going through a traumatic experience. The idea that this  psychotic individual used to be a regular person adds more depth to the character. Being able to create an illusion of a villain who in reality is just another victim and has become this evil fiend because of these past experiences. This leaves the film holding the strong message of "Who is the real killer here?".