1980s

In the 1980s slasher films were created and were the latest craze in the horror genre. A slasher film is a sub genre of horror film, and at times thriller, typically involving a mysterious psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims usually in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe. Although the term "slasher" may be used as a generic term for any horror movie involving graphic acts of murder, the slasher as a genre has its own set of characteristics which set it apart from related genres like the splatter film.

The shining- 1980 The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A man, his son and wife become the winter caretakers of an isolated hotel where Danny, the son, sees disturbing visions of the hotels past using a telepathic gift known as "The Shining". The father, Jack Torrance, is underway in a writing project when he slowly slips into insanity as a result of cabin fever and former guests of the hotel's ghosts. After being convinced by a waiter's ghost to "correct" the family, Jack goes completely insane. The only thing that can save Danny and his mother is "The Shining."

A popular means for presenting gore in the '80s was through body-horror. Based on the primal fear of destruction of the human body, and a fascination with it. Body Horror is principally derived from the graphic destruction or degeneration of the body. Such works may deal with disease, decay, parasitism, mutilation, or mutation. Other types of body horror include unnatural movements, or the anatomically incorrect placement of limbs to create 'monsters' out of human body parts.

·         Postmodern parodies were created in the 1980s as the horror genre had now become well established. One of the most famous parodies of this decade is “Scream.”

·         Scream 1981- A group of friends go on a rafting trip down a river and stop in at an old ghost town to spend the night. Soon their rafts disappear, and then they begin to be eliminated one by one by a mysterious killer.

Final girl theory

The final girl is a trope in thriller and horror films, particularly slasher films. This specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in dozens of films, including Halloween and its Friday the 13th and its reboot and A Nightmare on Elm Street. There are also examples of final girls in other genres as well. The term was discovered by Carol J. Clover in her 1992 book “Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.” Clover suggests that in these films, the viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.