What is going on with recent slashers ?
The slasher's future is uncertain (?)
Slasher films: you know them, you’ve seen them, and chances are, you’ve like them them as much as I do. Masked killers. Isolated victims. Bloody revenge. These movies have defined horror for decades, but something strange happened in the 2010s.
They disappeared.
From the genre’s gory golden age in the 70s and 80s to its sudden drop-off in the 2010s and its hopeful resurgence today, slashers have always been a reflection of cultural anxieties. So, why did they vanish for a while? And can movies like X and Bodies Bodies Bodies bring them back?
Let’s dive into the bloody history of slashers, why they went dormant, and what their future might look like.
The Birth of the Slasher Genre
To understand where slashers are going, we need to understand where they came from.
Slasher films owe a lot to Italian giallo cinema—a subgenre known for stylish, murder-mystery horror. Movies like The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace (directed by Mario Bava) or Don’t Torture a Duckling (Lucio Fulci) paved the way for what would become the slasher formula:
A masked or silent killer
A group of victims (usually young, reckless, and isolated)
A weapon of choice (no guns—slashers love their knives, chainsaws, and machetes)
The Final Girl, our last survivor who faces off against the killer
The 70s and 80s perfected this formula.
We got Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Slashers were everywhere—cheap to make, easy to sell, and guaranteed to scare audiences.
But they were never just about blood and guts. Slashers have always been deeply connected to social fears.
Carol Clover, in Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, argues that the Final Girl (the last woman standing) isn’t actually a feminist figure, but a projection of male viewers’ anxieties.
"To applaud the Final Girl as a feminist development... is a particularly grotesque expression of wishful thinking. She is simply an agreed-upon fiction and the male viewer's use of her as a vehicle for his own sadomasochistic fantasies an act of perhaps timeless dishonesty."
Meanwhile, Richard Nowell, in Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle, suggests that the Final Girl evolved to reflect changing audience expectations—especially as more female viewers became fans of the genre.
But by the early 2000s, something shifted.
The slasher void: what happened in the 2010s?
If you think about the 2010s, how many truly iconic slasher films come to mind?
Exactly.
Unlike previous decades, the 2010s lacked a defining slasher. Sure, there were horror movies—plenty, in fact—but they were mostly ghost stories, psychological horror, or supernatural thrillers.
So, what happened?
1. The slasher became outdated
Slashers relied on tropes that audiences had seen too many times. The whole "killer punishes teens for drinking and having sex" narrative felt… stale. The genre was either mocked (Cabin in the Woods) or parodied (The Final Girls), which made it difficult for new slashers to be taken seriously.
2. The MeToo era changed horror
Traditional slashers often relied on depictions of female suffering, with lingering shots of terrified women running from masked killers. But post-MeToo, this dynamic felt uncomfortable. There was less tolerance for exploitative violence against women, making it harder to market slasher films without scrutiny.
3. No defining cultural fear
Slashers thrive when they tap into a collective anxiety. The 70s and 80s were full of fears about urbanization, family breakdown, and repressed sexuality—perfect for masked killers lurking in the shadows.
But the 2010s? There was no 9/11-level cultural trauma shaping horror like in previous decades. Instead, the decade saw an obsession with clowns (It, Terrifier), fueled by the 2016 clown panic—but that’s another story.
For slashers to return, horror needed a new fear to latch onto.
2020s : a new killer for a new era
The 2020s are proving that slashers aren’t dead—they just needed an update.
1. Social Media as the new monster: Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
In classic slashers, the killer was always an external force—Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger. They represented societal fears made physical.
But Bodies Bodies Bodies flips this idea.
Instead of a masked murderer, the "killer" is social media, narcissism, and paranoia. The film follows a group of wealthy, self-absorbed friends who play a murder mystery game, only for someone to actually die. As paranoia spreads, they turn on each other—until it’s revealed that the “killer” never existed. The first death was just a TikTok stunt gone wrong.
This movie is about self-destruction. In the 2020s, our fears aren’t about masked killers in the woods—they’re about our own friends, the internet, and performative social dynamics.
2. Reinventing the final girl: X (2022)
Traditionally, Final Girls were “pure”—virginal, bookish, morally superior. But X destroys this trope.
The film follows Maxine, a porn actress and aspiring star, who fights off a murderous elderly woman named Pearl.
This challenges two major slasher traditions:
The Final Girl is no longer a virgin (she literally stars in an adult film).
The killer isn’t a masked man—it’s an old woman grappling with her lost youth and sexual repression.
Slashers have always been about societal anxieties. In 1980, the fear was teenage rebellion. In 2022, it’s aging, desirability, and obsolescence.
Ti West, the director, understands this. That’s why he followed X with Pearl (2022), a prequel diving into how Pearl became a killer, and will complete the trilogy with MaXXXine (2024).
This isn’t just a slasher comeback—it’s a reinvention.
So … can slashers make a true comeback?
The golden age of slashers may be over, but the genre isn’t dead—it’s evolving.
Films like X and Bodies Bodies Bodies prove that slashers can still be relevant, but only if they adapt to modern fears. The days of masked killers punishing teens might be behind us, but horror will always find new ways to reflect society’s anxieties.
So, what’s next?
Maybe the future of slashers isn’t about killers at all—but about the horrors of our own selves, our digital lives, and our ever-changing fears.
Thank you for reading (⁀ᗢ⁀)
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