Editorials
10 Great Slasher Films That You Maybe Haven’t Yet Seen
Of all the many subgenres of horror, one of the most popular and well-loved is the slasher. Between the proto-slashers of the ‘60s, giallo films, and the exploitation horror of the ‘70s that gave rise to the golden era of slashers from 1978-1984, there are hundreds of slasher films to satiate your bloodlust.
While the number of slashers produced dropped off dramatically after 1984, the slasher never went away, even jump-starting anew in the ‘90s thanks to Wes Craven’s Scream. All of this to say, with so many offerings in this subgenre, there’s plenty of great entries that have fallen through the cracks.
Some of the best slashers that fizzled at the box office upon initial release have finally found the audience they deserve, like The Burning, but many more remain in obscurity. These 10 slashers fall into the latter category; fun horror movies worth watching that don’t come up in discussion very often.
The die-hard slasher fan will recognize many of these titles, but for those looking to dig beneath the surface these 10 are a great place to start.
Fade to Black
Eric Binford is a socially awkward cinephile obsessed with movies, to the point that he’s bulled and ostracized by his family and peers. Then he meets Marilyn O’Connor, a model that happens to look just like Marilyn Monroe. The resemblance makes her the object of Eric’s cinematic desires, but when he’s accidentally stood up on their first date, it sends him into a homicidal tailspin. While most slashers are of the masked variety and often involve a whodunnit type mystery, we’re with the killer as he ascends to serial killer status. Instead of masks, though, Eric dresses up as a different cinematic icon for every kill. Dracula, the Mummy, Hopalong Cassidy Cowboy, and more become intricate facades for Eric to act out his movie star dreams. Just with a dash of murder. It’s likely because of Eric’s movie method of slaying that’s kept this gem trapped on VHS.
Alone in the Dark (1982)
This cult slasher also changes the formula a bit, as it features four psychopaths as they break out of their mental hospital during a blackout and target the family and home of their new doctor, Dr. Dan Potter. Jack Palance and Martin Landau are clearly having a ball as two members of the quirky psychopath quartet. Look for Donald Pleasence as the eccentric head of the asylum, too. Alone in the Dark mixes black humor with some solid tension and atmosphere, particularly in the second half. It’s as entertaining as it is bizarre.
Next of Kin (1982)
Thanks to a recent release by Severin films, this Australian take on a giallo won’t remain “lesser seen” for much longer. Following the death of her mother, Linda inherits the retirement home that she ran. Soon after, people start dying in strange ways. At its core, Next of Kin is a murder mystery in which an intruder picks off the residents of the retirement home, but it plays out far more atmospheric and moodier than that. It’s spooky and feels like a complement to Kubrick’s The Shining. Again, this one doesn’t feel much like your standard slasher, but it’s a great one.
Dream Home
Proving that not all “lesser seen” slashers emerged from the golden era, this 2010 slasher is a fantastic one that will also appease the gorehounds. Cheng Lai-sheung works two jobs to save up enough money to buy her dream apartment with a stunning view of the harbor. When her dreams are crushed, Lai-sheung decides to keep them alive no matter the cost- including the lives of her neighbors. Told in reverse chronological order, this bloody slasher puts the viewer in the shoes of its killer. That her dreams are completely human and relatable makes this one all the more chilling.
Just Before Dawn
This 1981 slasher likely has a bigger following than any other on this list. And yet it’s still not enough. For whatever reason, Just Before Dawn doesn’t come up in conversation near as much as it should when discussing slashers. I suppose that’s because at first glance, it doesn’t seem to offer anything different; its plot sees five campers that ignore the warnings that there’s an axe-wielding maniac on the loose and find themselves getting picked off one by one. It’s well shot with a haunting score, but it also takes its time to establish the characters (a rarity at this point during the golden era). And it takes an unconventional approach to its Final Girl, too. Basically, Just Before Dawn deserves far more love than it’s received over the decades.
Night School (1981)
An American giallo that sees police perplexed by the recent string of murders, Night School takes a more traditional approach to its formula. The victims are women who have had their heads decapitated by a machete, and the murderer’s identity is concealed under a motorcycle helmet. So, the beheadings are slightly different. But the main thing that sets this one apart from the rest is the killer’s identity. I won’t spoil it for anyone, and there’s a pretty strong chance you’ll guess who it is before the end, but it’s still a standout for the subgenre.
Visiting Hours
Michael Ironside stars as serial killer Colt, a creepy guy obsessed with TV journalist Deborah Ballin. He attempts to kill her, and she barely survives. She’s sent to the hospital to recover from her injuries, and Colt follows her there to stalk and kill anyone that might get in his way of finishing what he started. William Shatner plays Deborah’s concerned boyfriend. Visiting Hours is a violent slasher with something to say, though it does occasionally play for unintentional laughs and loses steam in the logic department toward the end. Even still, Ironside always makes for a terrifying villain.
Frightmare
This one is for those that like schlock with their horror, and those that like their slasher blended with the supernatural. When drama students decide the best way to pay tribute to their favorite horror star is to dig up his body for a party, they’ve unwittingly triggered black magic that sets off the dead star’s quest for vengeance. It’s ‘80s slashers meets Gothic horror, but full on weird. Frightmare also has some pretty great death sequences too, which is usually a main draw of the slasher. One of the best reasons to give this a try, though, is for a young Jeffrey Combs in an early role.
Popcorn
To raise funds for the film department, a group of film students decide to put on a movie marathon fundraiser in a defunct theater scheduled for demolition. They develop William Castle level gimmicks to accommodate their three B-movie horror films, and set their plan in action. But on the night of the event, a murderer begins to kill the students one by one, and assuming their faces to fool his next victim. Popcorn boasts one of the most enjoyable setups in slasher history. The movie within a movie concept with nods to familiar tropes and references is a delight that’s only matched by the strange method of the movie’s killer. And it only gets progressively weirder and dreamlike as it barrels toward its conclusion.
Hell Night
As part of a hazing ritual, four college kids are forced to leave their costume party and stay the night locked in a decrepit mansion where a family massacre once occurred. Their peers have set up scares and traps throughout the mansion to spook them, but no one was aware that the survivor of the family massacre still lurks within. Linda Blair stars as lead protagonist Marti, the good girl turned survivor. Her performance earned her a Razzie nomination, but that’s forgivable. Hell Night offers a haunted house type setting full of gimmicks, but more than that, it provides one hell of a killer reveal that a certain ‘90s slasher received full credit for years later.
Five decades ago, Stephen King published the story of a bullied girl with telekinetic powers and forever changed the world of horror.
Carrie follows a high school misfit who seeks revenge for a hideous prank by psychically destroying her senior prom. The name Carrie White has become synonymous with the concept of a formal dance thanks to a flawless adaptation from Brian De Palma. Now fifty years after the film’s release, Mike Flanagan is putting his own stamp on the troubling story.
Rather than a feature film, the writer/director will expand King’s relatively slim debut novel into an eight-episode miniseries for Amazon Prime set to premiere on October 7.
Flanagan is no stranger to the world of Stephen King. A long-time Constant Reader, he first made waves with his daring adaptation of Gerald’s Game (2017), a novel many fans considered un-filmable. His underrated Doctor Sleep merges the disparate plot of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with King’s original source material, and his 2024 genre-bending tearjerker The Life of Chuck faithfully executes one of the author’s most metaphysical novellas.
He’s currently mired in pre-production for an expansive adaptation of The Dark Tower series, keystone to King’s connected universe, and Warner Bros. recently announced that Flanagan will helm a new version of The Mist, King’s 1980 novella which sees a small Maine town overrun by otherworldly monsters.
Considering the vast array of the author’s previously unadapted material, an obvious question arises. Why reimagine Carrie in 2026? Noting the timeless nature of the content, Flanagan expressed his desire to bring the story of a bullied girl into modern times, mirroring his approach to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He explained, “The only way to approach it was to build something new out of the ingredients of Carrie. Otherwise, there’s really no purpose in trying to retread ground that’s been so beautifully walked before.”
His miniseries will maintain the novel’s bloody bookends while delivering “big surprises” along the way.
A New Prom Night Nightmare
The roughly 60-second teaser introduces Summer H. Howell as Carrie White just before the moment of catastrophe. Standing in a prom dress, she smiles at her applauding classmates with an ominous crown perched upon her head. Moments later, Carrie unleashes a rage-filled scream into the night air while promgoers rush for the exit doors. But careful examination of this scene shows Carrie wearing a different, albeit dirty dress as she seems to telekinetically punish her peers.
In an exclusive first look with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan explains that in his version of the story, “the events of that prom are going to be completely different.” An open trunk emitting a crimson glow does hint at the pig’s blood dumped on Carrie’s head, but it’s likely Flanagan’s formal dance will be a different kind of horror altogether. Despite these changes, the series may end with the widespread destruction outlined in the source material. Unlike any previous adaptations, King’s novel ends with the near-total destruction of Chamberlain, Maine. A flaming street in Flanagan’s trailer promises similar carnage no matter what prank sparks Carrie’s deadly revenge.
The Monstrous Addition of Social Media
On the opposite end of this fiery conclusion is an extreme act of bullying that brings together the story’s main cast. King’s novel begins as Carrie gets her first period while showering in the girls’ locker room. Completely unaware of the concept of menstruation, the sheltered girl thinks she’s bleeding to death. Her classmates respond with vitriolic rage. Led by ultra-mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), they mock the terrified teen while pelting her with tampons. Glimpses of this disturbing event reveal that Flanagan has excised the scene’s nudity while adding a seismic update. As Carrie sobs in the shower stall, Chris and her friends film the breakdown with their phones.
Other scenes note the presence of social media, bringing King’s fifty-year-old story into the digital age.
Flanagan’s adaptation promises to explore the destructive power of social media, an often invisible entity with a potential for harm rivaling Carrie’s own powers. While King’s tormented heroine suffers in front of a small group of girls, Flanagan’s version of the incident will likely become a viral video, potentially circling the globe on social media. Similar to Katt Shea’s criminally underrated The Rage: Carrie 2, which includes elements of revenge porn exploitation, Flanagan’s modern retelling will distinguish itself by exploring the nebulous cruelty of online bullying, a force ten times more powerful than the irl pranks King first envisioned.
A Completely Reimagined White Family
In addition to modernizing these canon events, Flanagan hints at updates to Carrie’s oppressive upbringing at the hands of her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). Dead before the novel begins, we never meet Carrie’s domineering father Ralph, known to carry a bible alongside his gun. Flanagan’s White household will be an altogether different beast. In his version of the story, Carrie and her mother have been hidden away in the unassuming home, forced out of hiding by Ralph’s unexpected death. Perhaps we will finally meet this elusive man whose shadow hangs over his wife and child. Considering the White family’s fundamentalist lifestyle, this reimagining hints at tradwife culture and a home ruled by staunch patriarchal control.
Whereas King’s Carrie has been tormented by her classmates since Kindergarten, Flanagan’s Carrie will be a wide-eyed newcomer to public school, eager to make friends and engage with her peers. We glimpse Carrie cozying up to Chris and the equally popular Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) as she navigates a new social scene. Of course, we know this kindness is part of an elaborate plot designed to lull Carrie into a false sense of camaraderie, setting up an atrocious act of public humiliation. These brief moments of feigned compassion put Sue’s own complicity into question. Will Flanagan’s version of the character find the courage to defend Carrie from vicious bullies or will she succumb to peer pressure and join in the mob mentality?
Perhaps the biggest deviation from King’s original text is the relationship between Carrie and her mother. King’s Margaret White is a horrifically abusive religious zealot whose worldview has been hardened by internalized misogyny. She shames Carrie for menstruating, locks her in a closet to “pray,” and regrets not killing her child in infancy. She’s also responsible for Carrie’s social ostracization. Known to berate her neighbors for their “sins,” Margaret forces her daughter to live by an extreme code of conduct and disallows any potential friends lest they corrupt the girl with their worldly ways.
Flanagan’s version of the character is perhaps just as much a victim as Carrie herself. Also trapped inside her home, his Margaret is overly vigilant, her own trauma manifesting as strict control. Describing a more sympathetic depiction of the iconic villain, Flanagan explains, “Our Margaret White is a woman who fiercely loves her daughter and wants to protect her from this world … [She] doesn’t know how to do that and thinks the way to protect her is to close her off; not punitively, but to create this private utopia.”
Despite this potential softening, Sloyan’s Margaret may still have a sharp edge. Though she has appeared in many Flanagan projects, from Hush (2016) to The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), she is best known for her role as the abhorrent Bev Keane in the poignant saga Midnight Mass (2021). Perhaps inspired by King’s Margaret White, Bev is pious and sadistic, willing to punish anyone who does not adhere to her warped approximation of Catholicism.
Flanagan specifically wrote Margaret with Sloyan in mind, likely remembering the actress’s eerie ability to create deceptive empathy and shift our allegiances on a dime.
Expanding Stephen King’s Telekinetic Universe
While most of King’s story deals with an unthinkable prom night in Chamberlain, Maine, large sections of the semi-epistolary novel see experts debating the nature of telekinesis. Do Carrie’s frightening abilities represent a new phase in human evolution or is the prom night carnage merely a fluke? King settles the debate with a shocking denouement in which a young mother recounts her infant daughter’s ability to dangle her crib toys in midair. We’re left to wonder if she will become another tormented girl who surprises the world with metaphysical strength.
Flanagan plans to build out this brief scene while amplifying themes of female empowerment. After introducing our main cast of characters, episode two will open with an unrelated story in which we meet another girl with the TK gene. Each subsequent chapter will expand this world, building out a roster of telekinetic young women. Considering King’s fondness for stories about powerful kids, often described as possessing “the shining,” Constant Readers will no doubt have their eyes peeled for various Easter Eggs nodding to the author’s vast catalogue.
Giving Carrie Her Own Voice
Perhaps the most striking distinction in Flanagan’s new trailer is the extent to which we hear Carrie’s voice. The sneak peek is fully narrated by the titular prom queen as she demands accountability. “I want to know why,” she explains while detailing Chris’ elaborate plan. Aside from the aforementioned coda, King’s book essentially ends with the aftermath of the prom night tragedy, leaving little time for Carrie to reflect. His shifting narrative does bring the reader into her fragile mind, though not before she’s been cowed by relentless cruelty. We watch Carrie sink into bloodthirsty revenge, but never hear a considered desire for justice or repair.
Flanagan’s original monologue allows Carrie to voice her pain and mourn the life she could have had. We’re also treated to a mug shot-style photo of Chris with a bruised and bandaged face, implying that the mean girl will have to answer for her senseless sadism.
Flanagan is known for filling his series adaptations with heartwrenching speeches that cut to the heart of his thematic intentions, and this teaser seems to follow suit. After years of fans, critics, and scholars analyzing Carrie’s pain, perhaps his modern retelling will offer the titular anti-hero a chance to finally speak for herself.
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