There's something spooky happening this time of year.
This spooky season—better known as October—having only read one book (Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf, which wasn't nearly interesting enough to make a full-length blog post about), I thought I would dedicate this month to talking about my favourite horror genre—the slasher.
As a writer, I love reading horror and thrillers and all sorts of spooky stuff that makes you think about the nature of humanity and the sound of your heart pounding as another dramatic plot twist is revealed. Sometimes, however, I prefer to sit down with a good horror movie and unwind, and even though I watch horror movies all year round, what better time to talk about it than on October 31?
The slasher genre, as a unique subgenre of horror, "involves a killer stalking and murdering a group of people, usually by use of bladed or sharp tools". It saw its golden age in the late 1970s and 1980s, through the classics of the genre: Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th. These films saw a group of tropey, reliable, likeable characters killed off one by one by one, until a virginal, likeable attractive white female character tended to be your final girl. It was all very familiar, all very expected. Moviegoers at the time relished in the cheap, lazy thrills of these cheaply made exploitation films, films which I eagerly devoured like a hungry hippo throughout my twenties and voraciously into the 2020 lockdowns.
No comments:
Post a Comment