All those movies with killers holding knives or sharp weapons are the worst. The main characters only survive due to luck and timing, no matter how smart and competent the character is, that character shouldn't have lived through what just happened and the only reason they are still alive is because of luck of the draw or their timing. The cops never care about anything, The cops don't care, can't help, don't notice, or refuse to believe anything anyone during the crisis. The main characters are Cannon Fodder are just worthless Helpless Idiots that are dumber than Peter Griffin from Family Guy. Those Stupid characters make horrible decisions and die or barely survive. it's like they're actually suicidal, there's a dangerous evil man on the loose, but that character is going to go out to the tool shed by himself/herself to see about getting the electricity back on. For some reason that character will be conveniently surrounded by sharp garden tools in the dark. It's really boring, stupid violence for the sake of bloody violence. The villains are Invincible is just flatout lame,It's just rage worthy and predictable. A lot of the bad guys are unstoppable, but via intelligence not physically.
Examples of such crappy Slasher movies are Halloween, Scream, Jigsaw, Childs Play, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
I'm honestly not a huge fan of slasher movies for the most part.
Still, I did enjoy Scream...but that had the advantage of being a whodunit too.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
Too many slasher films are stupid, yes. After The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas and Halloween created the archetypes in the 1970's - and all managed to be well made, intelligent in narrative and thrilling even while being nearly bloodless in the killing - the imitators decided the only way to 'outdue' those movies was to up the ante in gore. Call it the Friday the 13th effect, which from it's beginning in 1980 turned slasher violence into the equal of sex in hard core porn, where the victims aren't just killed but mutilated in a shocking, repulsive way. By the late 1980's, audiences going to a Friday the 13th movie found the best way to enjoy it was to cheer for Jason against those idiot teenagers. Laughter would happen instead of screams.
I don't mind gore that much, but I could always do with less. It's the buildup of anticipation in a horror movie that gets me, not the moneyshot. So my kind of horror movie I have to search for. Many millennials may find films lacking gore are too old fashioned, but I don't agree.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
Lumping the original Halloween in with the rest of those chumps is sickening. Scream is good though.
I don't care what anyone says, the Friday the 13th series' really aren't all that good. Their plots are awful, and their main characters are shit.
Modern Slashers that are phenomenal AND have interesting plots:
You're Next (2011)
Come to Daddy (2020)
Happy Death Day (2017)
Mandy (2018)
Happy Death Day 2U (2019)
Ready or Not (2019)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Better Watch Out (2016)
Cabin in the Woods (2012)
The Witch (2016)
The Descent (2005)
There's wayyy more I could recommend, but if you're into horror movies at all you owe it to yourself to check these out.
It's not a slasher, but I also have to seriously recommend "The Thing (1982)", for having the smartest main protagonists in a horror film outside of "You're Next".
hmm im not sure i'd put the witch and the descent in the slasher category. happy death day was awesome. i also like Hush, wolf creek and high tension if we're talking modern.
Thing about slasher films, is that franchises tend to get progressively worse/flanderize themselves as they go. The original movie may be quite good though.
Exceptions include the Friday the 13th series, which was pretty hokey throughout, as they never tried to be more than what they were, and Scream, who even at its worst still provided a decent level of wit and fun characters.
An example of getting progressively worse/flanderiizing themselves as they go is Halloween. The first movie was all kinds of good, but even by the sequel they’d started throwing shit in there that was like wtf. And then came the endless sequels/reboots/contradictory back stories...
The Descent I can kinda see but they kinda remind me of Wrong Turn and The Hills Have Eyes. Mainly because [SPOILER - highlight to read]: they're still just mutants, its a bunch of kills only using their claws, hands, and feet instead of wearing masks and killing with knives, the setting is different but so what.
The Witcher is a horror movie but it's also a slasher, [SPOILER - highlight to read]: family members are getting killed left and right by a human that just so happens to be a witch.
Despite the gore, I very much admire the first Descent movie. It's Neil Marshall's best work to date. I also am I big fan of The Strangers (2008) - watching it in a theatre seriously spooked me.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
I remember watching THE DESCENT in a hotel room w. my family. We had the lights down, etc. I seriously had a jump scare at one point and my family still makes fun of me for it.
KMC Community Forums
Jun 26th, 2020 02:55 PM
Thanks Scribble!
