Horror films has been around quite a long time. There are many sub genre. One of the genres I am going to talk about is the Stalker/ Slasher sub genres.

Slasher film is a sub-genre of the horror film genre 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 chainsaw or scythe.

The antagonist (The killer) of slasher horrors often have a unique motive for his or her mass murder. Some of obvious motives are: revenge, jealousy. Some killers even kill for their own psychological gratification such as Chucky the killer doll from the ‘Childs Play’ Franchise.

In every slasher horror, the antagonist always demonstrates a high level of stealth and they ALWAYS know where their victims are. They like to torment them and make them paranoid before they go for the kill. In almost every horror film, the last surviving victim (the protagonist) kills the killer when everyone is dead. The killer often dies in a ironic way.

One of the earliest slasher films go way back all the way to 1930’s. Films as old as these are usually based on novels such as a film called Thirteen Women. This is because not many people in that time had the imagination or creativity of gruesome ways of how to kill people.

In the 1960’s, Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous horror slasher film was released and gave the audience a totally new way of building suspense. It also gave audience a view on how violent deaths looks like with the infamous ‘shower scene’. This scene has been a meme of popular culture forever and has been referenced in many TV shows and films

Slasher films became extremely popular during the 70’s and 80’s and was known as the ‘Golden Age of slasher films’. This time period is when very popular slasher film franchises such as Halloween and Friday the 13th was born and extended to many sequels because both financially and socially successful and became very popular.

These films were the first slasher films to have the killer’s to possess supernatural abilities. The antagonists of these films are shown some sort of curse. This idea gave film ideas a whole new world of ideas for the motives of the antagonists (the killer).

These films has shown unique story lines when they are released but the franchises of these films tend to die out because each of these films got at least ten sequels, all with the same similar story line. That is the problem with some of these famous famous because their sequels will lack originality to the original and the film makers need to out live the original to make it successful

This time period is when a lot of sequels to popular slasher films from the past has sprouted and dominated the cinemas. At this point, the sequels were starting to become a little too repetitive and predictable because there was not much originality. However there were slasher films that also made a name for itself such as Scream.

Scream was original because it gave the audience new content and has the original appearance of the killer with its unique ‘ghost mask’. Scream.

The problem with sequels is that they lack the originality as they did in the original and the only reason they make a lot of money is because they know that the original film was really good. This tricks a lot of audiences to watch it as they assume the sequels are good as well

After many decades of releasing slasher films, the audience wanted something fresh. In this century, slasher films have been looking to find many gruesome ways to murder their victims instead of the old stabbing someone in the back. This made slasher horrors unique up to this day. Also, with the return of 3D technology, it can further increase the scare when sharp objects start flying towards your face.

There are some successful slasher horrors

Because of the decades of hundreds of slasher films, there has been so many clichés developed. Cliches such as:

-The Killer is always somehow very stealthy

-The victim always trips over and does not bother standing up

The list goes on and because of this there has been many spoof films about the stupid cliches found in slasher horrors such as ‘Scary Movie’

Another cliché to point out is that, the last remaining survivor is ALWAYS a female and also important to point out is that the police or authorities ALWAYS arrive later which became very annoying for me personally. Slasher horrors became too predictable and that is why most slasher horror films are failing to interest the audiences today. The story has to be unique and there must be a twist to the story to keep it interesting.