Misogyny in horror films

Misogyny can occur in horror films when there is a degrading representation of women. This is found particularly in slasher films, where there is often gendered specific violence towards women. Female characters experience violence and brutality at the hands of male antagonists far more often than male characters in these films. Female characters are more likely to experience sexual violence, particularly in the rape/revenge subgenre. Women in horror films are typically reduced to roles that are considered tropes, such as the final girl, the blond victim and the femme fatale.

Mark Edmundson believes that watching horror films is one way that some people have of dealing with evil. He sees the world as "evil, randomly violent, godless", and believes that "gothic horror functions in psychologically and culturally significant ways."

According to J.B Weaver III, slasher films do not predominantly victimize women like many individuals believe. However, the fact is both women and men characters who have been sexually involved die in the slasher genre. Even though Weaver's research is unable to pin point whether women are or are not the gender who is dominantly killed in an explicitly sexual way, he shows small ways it can be seen. The research done by Donnerstein and Penrod led them to believe that the violence occurring in slasher films "is overwhelmingly directed at women". Slasher films are primarily sexually violent films that consist of "scenes of explicit violence primarily directed toward women, often occurring during or juxtaposed to mildly erotic scenes".

Teen slasher films consist of teen-protagonists that portray the stereotypical American family. Films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Carrie (1976), show the relationship between society and horror films. Pat Gill states that, "teen slasher films both resolutely mock and yearn for the middle-class American dream, the promised comfort and contentment of a loving, supportive bourgeois family." These films portray useless parents and their inability to help their children when they are in dire need of help. Psychologists have taken a deeper look into the reasons for the, and some have come to a conclusion that there has been an "ethical shift in the meaning and value of family responsibility". A change from the obligation to others towards to a focus on self. According to some research divorce is seen to be the main reason for this shift, and it has been suggested that horror films tend to portray what they see going on in society. According to Pat Gill, this is why teenagers in horror films are left to fend for themselves and the boundaries of their homes are "entirely permeable to evil".

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