Slasher film

Slasher films are a subgenre of horror films, typically involving a violent psychopath stalking and murdering several people, usually with bladed tools. Although the term "slasher" is sometimes used informally as a generic term for any horror movie involving murder, analysts of the genre cite an established set of characteristics which set these films apart from other horror subgenres, such as splatter films and psychological horror films.

Some critics cite Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) as an early influential "slasher" film, and most agree that the genre's peak occurred in American films released during the 1970s and 1980s. Classic slasher films include Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), Victor Miller and Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980), Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and Don Mancini and Tom Holland's Child's Play (1988). Wes Craven's satirical film Scream (1996) renewed public interest in the genre, and several of the original slasher franchises were revived or rebooted in the years following the release of Scream.

Many films in the slasher genre continue to attract cult followings.

In her book Games of Terror: Halloween, Friday the 13th and the Films of the Stalker Cycle, Vera Dika theorizes that all slasher films adhere to a specific formula: there is always a past event in which the film's community, often teenage characters, commits a wrongful action, or which causes the killer to experience severe trauma. The plot involves opposing objectives of the killer and a hero/heroine. Typically, a film begins with a commemoration or anniversary of the past event that reactivates or re-inspires the killer. Often the victim survives, but is damaged in some way by his or her experience with the killer. Dika also believes that the genre's appeal is rooted in the audience's feelings of catharsis, recreation, and displacement, which is related to sexual pleasure.

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