Editorials
10 of the Most Memorable Slasher Movies Released in the 25 Years Since ‘Scream’ Changed the Game
By 1996, slasher movies were out of style. The Golden Age of Slashers waned over a decade ago, and ’90s horror was still searching for its identity thanks largely to massive shifts in technology. Wes Craven‘s second attempt at meta-horror changed everything; Scream‘s quiet December release snowballed into an enormous hit and reinvigorated the subgenre, ushering a new wave of teen slashers.
While the slasher trend seems to be on another upswing, the last twenty-five years since Scream‘s release offered no shortage of films that gave the subgenre a new angle, fresh update, or fascinating deconstructions that kept the blood pumping. And spilling.
The ten slasher movies on this list stood apart for being trendsetters, breaking the mold, offering clever commentary, or inspiring franchises of their own.
Scream 2
Despite significant setbacks like a script leak, screenwriter Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven pulled off the impossible, releasing an epic sequel one year after the original film. For many, this entry outshines its predecessor, a rare feat for any sequel. It upped the ante on the sharp commentary, set pieces, and brutal body count, including the still lamented death of a popular character.
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Scott Glosserman’s mockumentary-style slasher lovingly breaks down the relationship between Final Girl and Serial Killer. Budding serial killer Leslie Vernon allows journalist Taylor Gentry and her two cameramen to accompany him on his rise to slasher infamy, walking them through the entire planning stage and the fateful night of slaughter. It includes the selection and subsequent stalking of his chosen final girl Kelly, with who he intends to have an epic battle for survival after dispatching her friends. Except, Kelly is eventually revealed to contain zero final girl qualities. It’s a gratifying bait and switch.
House of Wax
A remake closer to Tourist Trap than its namesake film, House of Wax doesn’t deviate from the conventional slasher movie formula. What it does do is demonstrate how much inventive set pieces and creative kills can elevate your slasher. An entire town made of wax makes for a highly entertaining slasher playground. It’s also a time capsule reminder of Dark Castle Entertainment’s string of big-budget horror features, an increasing rarity these days.
Dream Home
Cheng Lai-sheung works two jobs to save enough money to buy her dream apartment with a stunning harbor view. When her dreams are crushed, Lai-sheung decides to keep them alive no matter the cost- including the lives of her neighbors. This bloody slasher puts the viewer in the killer’s shoes and does so by telling her story out of order. Her dreams are entirely human and relatable, making this one all the more chilling. The nonlinear storytelling, shocking violence, and a complete upending of its Final Girl make this a gory winner.
You’re Next
Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett created a fan favorite with this home invasion twist. Erin (Sharni Vinson) accompanies her boyfriend to his family reunion in their rural home, but it’s soon interrupted by a trio of masked killers. Their plans to decimate the family are thwarted by Erin, who reveals her secret talent for survival. Deeply funny as it is bloody, You’re Next charms with eccentric characters and a formidable final girl in Erin. It’s never been so satisfying to see home invaders have the tables turned on them as it is here, revealing the Final Girl as the brutal killer that slaughters her way through masked attackers.
Maniac (2012)
Director Frank Khalfoun makes viewers complicit in the carnage in this remake. Elijah Wood assumes the role of Frank Zito, now an unassuming, shy type whose burgeoning friendship with artist/photographer Anna (Nora Arnezeder) seems sweet and normal. He’s smitten by her charm and seems genuine in his offer to help her with an art exhibit. But it’s interspersed with Frank’s compulsion to scalp women. He seeks out victims through dating apps or even just women he haphazardly meets, and because it’s shot in POV, we see the acts of violence through his eyes. Framing everything through the killer’s eyes makes for an unconventional slasher, but even more so is its literal approach to drive home the discomfort of violence and questions of empathy.
The Final Girls
Max Cartwright finds herself with another chance for closure after her mother’s untimely death when she and her friends get sucked into retro slasher movie Camp Bloodbath after a freak accident at a repertory screening of the film. There she encounters the character that made her mother a Scream Queen. Reunited, the women band together to fight off Camp Bloodbath‘s killer. This slasher comedy lovingly pokes fun at the subgenre’s tropes and stock characters while giving you the feels with its exploration of grief.
Tragedy Girls
High school seniors Sadie (Brianna Hildebrand) and McKayla (Alexandra Shipp) are lifelong best friends with a sweet demeanor and drive for more social media followers. They’re knowledgeable, too, especially compared to lumbering serial killer Lowell Orson Lehmann on the loose. When the body count starts piling up around them, you can count on Sadie and McKayla to outlast them all, and with style. However, what sets these two apart from most heroines in slashers is that they’re only final girls on the surface. Beneath they’re conniving killers masterminding Lowell’s and their own killing spree for the sake of achieving fame. Sadie and McKayla are both final girls and killers, rolled into one bright, bubbly package.
Happy Death Day
Tree Gelbman is the typical college mean girl. When she’s murdered on her birthday, she finds herself stuck in a time loop that forces her to relive the same day over and over, resulting in her murder every time. She must solve the mystery behind her murder if she wants to end the cycle, but it has the added benefit of causing her to grow as a person. Happy Death Day takes a humorous Groundhog Day approach to this slasher movie, at once proving how well the slasher meshes with other genres as well as introducing an unconventional Final Girl that learns how to become human the more she dies.
Halloween (2018)
The heroine who inspired the final girl trope evolved it again 40 years later. Ignoring all other sequels, Halloween fills in the gap of what happens after the final girl has survived her harrowing encounter. In the case of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), it’s been decades of struggling to cope with the trauma of that fateful Halloween night, which in turn instigated decades of survival prepping for one more encounter with Michael Myers. In another reversal, it becomes clear that while Laurie spent 40 years thinking about her attacker, her attacker hadn’t thought about her at all. This entry inspired a new trend in slasher franchises.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
You must be logged in to post a comment.