The paper examines how the slasher genre has developed over the years. The main point of this examination focus on differences in the stylistic appearance of the killer, the development of the “final girl”, the film sole survivor and if there are some narrative changes in the plot structure. The films selected for analysis are scattered over the years, including films like Halloween (Carpenter, 1978), A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984) and Scream (Craven, 1996). The main changes that have occurred over the years according to this examination tells us that the stylistic features to hide the killer from the spectators isn’t that important and prominent today as it was in the late 70’s and early 80’s, especially the lightning feature, that characterized Michael Myers in Halloween. Even the characteristic point-of-view shots, who marks the killers presence, is as gone. The biggest development for the final girl is that she doesn’t need to be a virgin anymore in order to defeat the killer, who was the case early on. The narrative structure haven’t changed significantly over the years, but the characteristic opening scene which used to contain a sequence that takes place several years earlier where the killer experiencing a trauma of some kind is gone.

With twelve films released over the last thirty years, the Friday the 13th series has proved a popular mainstay of the slasher sub-genre of horror, in spite of negative critical reception and minimal academic engagement. The academic discourses that do address the series often frame their arguments based on socio-political function, socioeconomic platforms, psychoanalytic traditions, and cultural relevance. While there is some work that attempts to understand the generic positioning and function of the Friday the 13th films, little work has engaged with the film texts in order to understand and explain the form and structure of each instalment in the series. This thesis not only aims to explore and describe the aesthetic form of the slasher sub-genre of horror, but also to argue the central significance of perspective on the aesthetic effect of the slasher. Perspective, a term that builds upon theories of point of view and subjectivity, permeates the formal design of the slasher film. Therefore, this relationship will be the driving focus of the analysis undertaken with regards to the Friday the 13th films, which will include chapters focusing on specific uses of the camera, sound, editing, and sequences creating a narrative understanding of preceding films in the series. Following this analysis, the aesthetic development of the Friday the 13th series will be contextualised within contemporary generic trends, demonstrating to what extent this franchise is representative of the slasher, and where it proves anomalous or progressive. This will not only demonstrate the role the Friday the 13th films play within the slasher, but also how the slasher has aesthetically evolved over more than three decades. Ultimately, the relevance of this analysis and formal historicizing will be suggestive of the wider context of film studies and cinema as a whole.

Emerging out of a tradition of dystopic and apocalyptic cinema, the survivalist film has arisen as a new subgenre owing to a collision of several divergent modes of cinema. While the scholarly discourse has been preoccupied largely with the task of setting up the parameters of this new cinematic line little attention has been paid to unraveling what the new modes of masculine performance within the films mean in the post-9/11 moment in which they have emerged. This paper looks at the ways in which the gendered heroics on the screen are indebted to the slasher and zombie subgenres in offering alternatives to performing and reclaiming masculinity in the modern survivalist film. Looking towards the collapse of society within these films and the historical preoccupation with these film's ancestral sources at moments when masculinity is threatened in new ways, I argue that when society collapses on the screen so too collapses the character's understanding of "proper" gender performance as well as the audiences expectations of appropriate response to this subversion. I find that survivalist films offer a new mode for exploring gender through the ways in which masculinity is performed, received, and reclaimed. Owing largely to the meeting of horror subgenres within these films masculinity can be encountered by the audience in a way that has until now not been possible for the spectator, presenting an opportunity to reevaluate how we recognize and regulate expectations of gender both on and off screen.

This qualitative thesis examines levels of pessimism as they relate to modern and postmodern horror cinema. Beyond assumed differences in levels of pessimism between the two genres, the study also examines implicit and explicit moralization of these categories. Specifically, the study questions if postmodern horror cinema's characteristic increase in pessimism is simply a change in the genre's convention, yet a change that is irrespective of either genre's capabilities to moralize. First, the study singularly examines the conventions of each genre as it relates to levels of pessimism. Second, the study discusses works that bridge the two genres. And third, the study speculates on the future of pessimism in postmodern horror cinema, specifically examining the genre's increased reliance on a combination of narrative and documentary techniques. In addition, this study uses content analysis as its methodological framework, whereby representative works of horror cinema (the data) are subjected to in-depth personal reading and textual analysis given the levels of pessimism between the two genres (the coding) via text immersion. Nonetheless, this study should be viewed more as a guided and informed exploration of certain characteristics regarding the genres and less of a defense since the data will not be quantified.

Slashergenren har återkommande kritiserats för att vara sexistisk, exempelvis genom att unga kvinnliga karaktärer som dricker alkohol eller har sex vanligen mördas tidigt i filmen, medan karaktärer som bättre motsvarar samhällets förväntningar om hur en duktig tjej ska bete sig belönas med att överleva filmen. Slasherfilmer ger uttryck för ideologi i sin narrativa struktur, genom att göra implicita moraliska ställningstaganden kopplade till död och överlevnad. Syftet med den här undersökningen är att ta reda på om slasherfilmer släppta under de senaste tio åren fortfarande ger uttryck för en sexistisk ideologi. Undersökningen kommer att utgå från följande frågeställningar: Vilka roller, egenskaper och handlingar förknippas med överlevnad respektive död hos de kvinnliga karaktärerna i filmerna? Vilka ideologiska ståndpunkter tillkännager denna uppdelning av roller, egenskaper och handlingar? Hur skiljer sig dessa ideologiska ståndpunkter från motsvarande ståndpunkter i äldre slasherfilmer? Teorin bygger på populärkulturens förmåga att avspegla samhället och dess ideologier. Det analytiska ramverket baseras på Umberto Ecos strukturella analys och ideologikritik av James Bond. Genom genre- och narrationsanalys har fyra slasherfilmer analyserats. Resultatet visar att slashergenren fortfarande ger uttryck för sexistisk ideologi, men att mindre förändringar har skett. De kvinnliga karaktärerna skuldbeläggs och straffas för sina sexuella drifter och relationer eller belönas för avhållsamhet och ensamhet. Resultatet visar dock på en viss nedtoning av femininitet som en underlägsen egenskap och konsumtion av rusmedel som en oacceptabel handling bland unga tjejer.

Le cinéma d’horreur, plus particulièrement le slasher, sous-genre qui a émergé dans les années 1980, a souvent été le lieu pour l’exploration d’enjeux sexuels. Les héroïnes qui ont marquées cette décennie ont connu une évolution parallèle aux changements socioculturels. Le présent projet vise à montrer la transformation de cette protagoniste au fil des décennies. Je m’intéresserai d’abord et avant tout à la théorie de Judith Butler qui montre le gender comme une construction sociale. Puis, ma démarche s’appuiera sur le rapport spectatoriel tel que développé par l’auteure Laura Mulvey dans son texte « Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema » ainsi que sur la notion de Final Girl théorisée par Carol J. Clover et qui concerne précisément les personnages de survivantes dans le slasher américain. À la lumière de ces études, j’analyserai trois films d’horreur produits au début des années 2000 : All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006), Teeth (2004) et May (2002). En plus de préciser les rouages liés à la construction du gender (féminin) et de l’identité sexuelle, ces études de cas serviront à présenter une nouvelle forme de personnage conscient de sa féminité et de son pouvoir. / Horror cinema, more specifically the slasher, a sub-genre that obtained its popularity during the 1980s, has often been the place for a discourse about sexual politics. The evolution of the heroines from some of the films of this decade is indissociable from the importance of context and culture. This work concentrates on the transformation of this female protagonist during the years. First, I will take a look at Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity. My approach will also emphasize the gaze of the spectator with “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’’ by Laura Mulvey and the Carol J. Clover’s theory of the Final Girl, the latter regarding those slasher female leading characters. Then, three movies of the new millennium will be analyzed: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006), Teeth (2004) and May (2002). These analyses will serve to demonstrate the mechanisms at play in the construction of gender and sexual identity. Furthermore, they will reveal a new kind of female character, one who is both aware of her femininity and her/its power.

This paper will consider the function of queer space and presence in the post modern horror film genre. Beginning with George Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and continuing through to contemporary examples of the genre, the paper posits the function of the queer monster or monstrous as integral to and representative of the genre as a whole. The paper analyzes both the current theory and scholarship of the genre and through Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and queer theory offers a theory of how these theories can add to existing theory and scholarship.

Depuis le début du nouveau millénaire, le cinéma s’est vu envahi par une pratique qui n’avait jamais atteint une telle ampleur : le remake. Lorsque comparée à son film source, la nouvelle version est à tout coup semblable, mais différente à la fois; ont-ils plus de points en commun qu’ils en ont avec les films de leurs époques respectives? En utilisant cette vague de remakes des années 2000, la présente étude propose une analyse comparative afin de démontrer l’évolution de la représentation du mal et de la violence retrouvée dans les remakes d’horreur de type slashers. En guise de première partie, ce mémoire débute avec l’élaboration de la fonction du genre ainsi que celle du remake. Puis, un second chapitre est dédié à la constitution des premiers cycles des slashers afin de comprendre le cheminement du sous-genre. L’étude se conclut par la comparaison de ces informations avec les résultats de l’analyse des remakes de slashers. / Since the new millennium’s arrival, cinema has been invaded by a practice that never before reached this scale: the remake. When compared to its source, the remake is similar, but different at the same time. Are there more common aspects between them by comparison with films of there respective period? By using this wave of remakes, this study suggest a comparative analysis to demonstrate the evolution of the representation of the evil and the violence through horror remakes, slasher films to be more precise. The first part of this thesis dissects the genre functions as well as the remake functions. Then a second chapter is dedicated to the constitution of the first slasher circle in order to notice the progression of the subgenre. This study concludes by the comparison of these informations with the result of the present analysis of the slasher films.

Den här vetenskapliga uppsatsen analyserar den kvinnliga huvudkaraktären Laurie Strode i John Carpenters original och Rob Zombies remake av slasherfilmen Halloween. Uppsatsens syfte är att studera hur samma karaktär har porträtterats ur ett feministiskt perspektiv och hur vi kan förstå dem utifrån de epoker de skapades i. Med en semiotisk analysmetod besvaras hur porträtteringen skiljer de två filmerna åt. Detta genom att analysera karaktärens denotation och konnotation både visuellt och i dialog. Med hjälp av feministisk filmforskning belyser uppsatsen hur filmen Halloween och slashergenren har vidare utvecklats med tiden. Begreppen Hora-Madonna-komplexet och the Final Girl samt forskning kring kvinnor i skräckfilmer används för att förankra tolkningen. Resultatet visar att denna utveckling lett till en mer öppen och tillåtande porträttering av en kvinna utan att med detta lämna den grund som slasherfilmer byggs på. Den visar också på hur filmens remake har frångått vissa begrepp som man kan anse centrala för slashergenren utan att förlora möjligheten att titulera sig som en sådan.

The aim of this study is to assess to which extent the concept called the final girl can be applied to a character produced outside USA. To achieve this, I have used a Japanese film called Evil Dead Trap (Toshiharu Ikeda, 1988), where I have analyzed the character Nami and her relations to the conventions of the final girl. Some of the more common conventions are that the final girl do not engage in sex or use drugs such as cigarettes. The theoretical framework focuses on identifying and establishing the different conventions of the final girl by using two different researchers and their texts. The state of research was used to place the movie in a historical context. Because of this, the research used focused on Japanese horror cinema from the fifties to the nineties. When the framework was established, an analysis of the final girl was made. Throughout the analysis I saw that, apart from three exceptions, Nami followed the conventions of the final girl. The exceptions were that she did not survive the movie, she took drugs in the form of a cigarette and showed a lack of intellect when they arrived at the military base.