Women in Horror

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    With October in full swing, there is one thing most people are watching, and that’s horror movies. Whether it be the classics like Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), and Carrie (1976). Or the more recent horror movies like Midsommar (2019), Us (2017), and Halloween (2018). Looking at these films you might not realize their similarities, because at the surface there aren’t many. Yet there is one thing, one aspect that connects not only all these horror movies but most of them. And that is their use of women. This is a constant theme within the horror genre. Whether it be through the largely popular “ Final Girl “ trope. A term used for the final person alive after our villain’s reign of terror, which is almost always a young girl. This is often confused with the “ female survivor “ trope which recognizes the female survivors who aren’t quite final girls. Some examples of this would be Dani from Midsommar or Adelaide and Zora from Us.  In its original usage, the “ final girl “ is usually the innocent one, who survives the wrath of the killer and is usually saved by law enforcement. A perfect example is Laurie Strode from the original Halloween. Laurie is teased throughout the beginning of the movie for being too innocent, but that is what saves her. As well as Michael Myers’ doctor, Sam Loomis. Yet at the end of the day, it was her innocence that saved her from the killer. 

    This all changed with the release of Wes Craven’s Scream in 1996. The 80s is considered the near-death of the slasher franchise. But it was Scream’s release that became a breath of fresh air to the horror genre. Our main character Sidney Prescott did everything that the final girls before her had stayed away from. The most notable being that she had sex, which had been turned into a death wish in the horror movies that came before it. Another example comes at the end when Sidney is the one to kill Billy and Stu, ending all their antics herself. Whereas other final girls were usually saved by a man, subjecting them to become a damsel in distress, which Sidney wasn’t. Sidney Prescott brought a new version of the classic trope to a new generation of girls. After Scream you can see the impact Sidney Prescott had on final girls and on the horror genre itself. Now, outside the final girl trope, what else does the horror genre have for women? 

    So much. 
    
You might be asking yourself what are some examples of women in horror who aren’t final girls? Some examples of this are the original Friday the 13th and Carrie. In Friday the 13th, the killer is revealed to be Mrs.Vorhees. Who is the mother of Jason Vorhees, a little boy (and killer in the next 12 movies) who died at the camp at the hands of neglectful teenagers. She is getting revenge on the teenagers who are at the camp years after her son’s death. While with Carrie our main character gets revenge on her classmates and mother after being doused in pigs’ blood at the prom. The pig’s blood is an obvious metaphor for a women’s menstruation cycle, which Carrie begins in the first act of the film. These are their motives, something we rarely see when men are at the killers in a slasher movie. This is one of the things that makes the new Halloween sequels so scary. That being Michael Myers has no motive, meaning no one knows why he’s doing it, or how they can’t stop it. That is something that is seen throughout horror when it has a woman as the killer. Women usually have motives, why the male killers are usually just killing for sport. And even in instances where they do have motives, the reason they’re doing this is usually because of women (usually a mother). 

    The subject of women in horror is such a broad topic that I couldn’t possibly bring it justice in just one blog post. So this topic is so broad that it takes people’s entire novels and hour-long TV episodes to properly pick apart women’s impact in horror. But below there are some links to great Youtube videos and TV show episodes that’ll help you learn more about this topic just in time for Halloween. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjDwLg2bgTk 

https://youtu.be/TkUbP2KVVl8 

https://youtu.be/-yPDXEacY8U




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