10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

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Slasher films have had a decades-long history in the world of film, but how much have they changed since their heyday in the 1980s?

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10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

The campy, gut-wrenching slasher movie is nowhere to be found in the new Hollywood; this particular horror sub-genre, much like its audience, grew up and graduated into something a lot more complex. The good ol’ slasher is certainly not dead, it simply has a lot more to say now than it did two decades ago.

Eighties were a defining decade for horror films in Hollywood and slasher movie franchises were the go-to formula for box office gold. But the modern slasher has had to evolve a lot, in terms of styling, story-telling and cinematography. Here are ten ways slasher movies have changed since the eighties.

10 Less Blood

10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

The word ‘slasher’ immediately brings to mind gruesome acts of butchery, and for many years Hollywood has associated this sub-genre with visual depictions of blood spilling. And while one can see the connection, modern slashers, especially the ones made post 2010, have resorted to subtler depictions of what a slasher film can mean.

This has made things substantially less campy. This has meant less blood, especially since ill-conceived murders and jump-scare tactics weren’t that effective as tropes anymore. The audiences simply wanted more than an extraordinary amount of bloodshed and a severed arm in the basement without any context.

9 A Better, Mature Visual Experience

10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

With better CGI and the technical advancements, the phenomena of horror obviously found a more deserving treatment in Hollywood, which made way for better story-telling in terms of narration or plot points.

However, filmmakers and writers also began to identify what the slasher films of the eighties were lacking, in terms of visual styling and experimented with more nuanced forms of scene design and screenplay. Films like even Patrick Brice’s Creep or Christopher Landon’s Happy Death Day are simply much more ambitious in terms of possibilities.

8 The Shift In Audience

10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

There was a remarkable change in the kind of crowd a quintessential eighties slasher film would pull, be it Halloween or Friday The 13th, to be specific it wasn’t a shift in the demographic but a shift in the intent of the slasher movie.

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In the new millennium the bang for a buck concept wasn’t something newer filmmakers were going for; names like Alexandre Aja, Ari Aster etc explored a kind of filmmaking which wasn’t just great for weekend movie nights, but a legitimate movie-goer’s experience, something an educated audience would laud, and that paved the way for a new kind of slasher film.

7 The Misogynist Tropes

10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

Slasher films were treasure troves of sexist tropes which were designed to appeal to an audience that is so used to seeing women at the receiving end of a tragedy.

So, the damsel in distress trope found a more distinct niche in Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie or Valerie from Slumber Party Massacre, where the scared, defenseless young woman would almost always be in need of rescuing and several other screaming young women would be used as bait and/or would be treated as plot devices just to make the entire experience a lot more melodramatic. The heroines of modern slashers like Scream or even Jennifer’s Body received a much better treatment.

6 Not Just A Man In A Mask

10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

For many years, slasher films have been about a man in a scary mask chasing a girl, or a group of teenagers, for some misplaced sense of rage. But post the nineties, slasher films tried to do away with the same old murderer with a hatchet concept and tried to make things more relatable.

Like in the film It Follows the villain is an entity that’s essentially a curse that can be transmitted from person to person via sex. So, the corporeal, mask-wearing attacker started to get replaced by more conceptual or metaphorical forms of fears or anxieties, which are more real and grounded.

5 Treatment Of Trauma

10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

In most eighties franchises, the concept of trauma was quite shoddily handled, especially for the benefit of franchise culture. Scream was one of the first franchises to actually acknowledge how trauma shapes people’s lives and changes them. Sidney, the main lead can’t seem to escape her past, which is very relatable.

In Scream 3, she works as a crisis counselor for an abused women’s hotline, in Scream 4, she writes a book on the Woodsboro massacre, this means Sidney’s past will always be a part of her. The film also depicted how the pain surrounding the massacre changed the lives of people around Sidney.

4 Treatment Of Sex

10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

In eighties slasher films, much like in giallo, sex was used as a narrative device; it was either used to establish something or used as a sign of an impending tragedy. It has also often been used to label the women at the centre of the narrative, and thus, to determine her future in the movie.

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Laurie in Halloween is the ‘good girl’, she reads, she’s a virgin and is designed to be the picture of innocence and is thus meant to survive. Whereas, Marcie in Friday the 13th dies almost immediately after she has sex. However, modern slashers stopped using sex as a weapon of audience manipulation.

3 No More Scream Queens

10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

This can be explained easily with the shift in focus that emerged with modern horror films; the new audience was too tired with the screaming, hapless, hands-in-the-air lead and yearned for a stronger, self-reliant female protagonist.

Interestingly, the female leads in modern slashers are almost all confident women, who can make their own opinions and could in fact, chase the killer and not the other way round. And interestingly, the tough woman was a far more engaging narrative challenge, and also a lot more relevant.

2 Emergence Of Family Horror

10 Ways Slasher Movies Have Changed Since The 80s

New-age slasher movies were all about seeking the evil that’s already at the dinner table, rather than looking outside. Since Hollywood has been particularly engrossed with the inward journey, slasher films, too, started to explore the area. Eighties slasher films mostly featured the ‘outsider’ killer who was remotely related with the protagonists of the story or shared some familiar ties with them.

Modern slashers have a focus on family-led dramas and the horror was rooted in human flaws. There were supernatural influences, sure, but modern slasher is much more concerned about human dynamics and tensions than nightmares or scary one-armed men. The Scream franchise managed to work the balance really well, and did away with the supernatural aspect altogether.

1 The Artsy Element

As the camp element was done away with in the modern slasher, artsy, folk noir or intellectual horror started replacing the cliches of eighties horror. Midsommar, for instance, was conceived like a slasher movie and in terms of concept, it certainly qualifies as one. However, its treatment of a massacre is very different and has a lot to do with atmospheric horror.

Velvet Buzzsaw, or Suspiria heavily relied on elements of the slasher sub-genre, there’s quite a lot of blood and often premeditated butchery, but the stylistic intervention of its narration makes all the difference.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/ways-slasher-movies-changed-since-80s/

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