the premiere of death death death (Bodysuits Bodysuits2022) is a good occasion to remember what was hidden behind one of the most popular modalities of the horror genre: the slasher.
In death death death, Bee (Maria Bakalova) arrives with her girlfriend Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) for a gathering of friends at the remote family mansion of David (Pete Davidson), Sophie’s lifelong friend. The guests bring provisions for several days, and it is what they call a “hurricane party”. But unlike Bee, Sophie’s friends are a bunch of pedantically wealthy 20-somethings. And when, after drinking, taking drugs and dancing, someone proposes to play a game where one of the attendees must “hunt” the others while they try to guess who “the murderer” is, the party must end between recriminations, surprises and backstabbing. … of the real ones.
Directed by Dutch actress and filmmaker Halina Reijn, in her English-language film debut, death death death is one more in a series of tapes that seem to continue the tradition of the genre slasher classic: is a neo slasher. The term refers to films produced in the 2000s and later that propose some innovation to the formula defined in the 70s and 80s and that, found footage to the home invasion and with titles like Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, The Strangers, The Final Girls or the recent X They prove that the kill continues.
Like It’s behind you a few years ago, death death death is novel, but without ever escaping the conventions of the genre slasher. And it is that, with more than two hundred titles produced in the eighties alone, the slasher It is one of the most popular subgenres of horror movies. By the end of the decade, however, the few slashers that were still produced were sequels, or titles for the direct-to-video market, and after that first cycle, the style would eventually degenerate into an endless series of sequels and imitations. When Scary Movie he pouted from scream Y I know what they did last summerIt seemed that there was nothing left to add.
But, like Jason, Ghostface or Michael Myers, the genre slasher it never quite went away.
On the trail of the murderer
Ironically enough, critics of the genre slasher they never had difficulty, if not defining it, at least identifying it. In the typical slasher, a masked madman—and armed with a knife, machete, or other sharp object—goes out to stalk and take down a group of attractive young men in “creative” ways. For Adam Rockoff, author of Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film 1978-1986however, the truth is that the slasher it is not easy to define: it is a “tough, problematic and fiercely individualistic” genre. Just like the killers themselves.
Thus, the idea prevails – erroneous, by the way – that the murderer is always “Coco”: a supernatural entity that wears a battered hockey mask and wields a rusty machete. However, the killer in most movies is an ordinary person (like Mrs. Voorhees in the first Friday the 13th of 1980) and who has suffered some humiliation or abuse; or the death of a loved one, or some kind of injustice for which he seeks revenge. If Leatherface, or Ghostface at scream they seem immortal, it’s only because the box office demands them that way.
If there is a constant that would remain unchanged throughout the entire cycle, on the other hand, it is the consistency of the weapons chosen by the assassin in turn. These range from the aforementioned onion knife to knives, machetes, axes and even arrows. Not to mention power tools like chainsaws, or the title drill in The Driller Killer. And it is true that the film often begins with a prologue, which takes place years before the events in the film and on the anniversary of the tragedy and often on a holiday – as in BlackChristmas Y Silent Night, Deadly Night, April Fool’s Day or of course in Halloween–.
However, one of her most recognizable motifs is that of the heroine, “screaming in abject terror,” as Rockoff notes. “Eyes wide with fear as the killer approaches: the postmodern damsel in distress, the final girl. Many of the best examples of the genre followed the guidelines that Carol Clover points out in her book Men, Women, and Chain Saws: that of a virginal but masculinized figure, a tomboy with an androgynous appearance and name. She, unlike her friends, abstains from sex, alcohol and drugs… and is the one who lives to tell the tale, after facing the killer with a decidedly phallic weapon.
In the slasher genre, do girls just want to have fun?
However, the notion that in a slasher –and as stated in scream, the film that came to resurrect the genre back in the 90s – having sex is a death sentence is perhaps the biggest misunderstanding. “It was not my intention to put an end to the Sexual Revolution”, confessed John Carpenter years after the premiere of Halloween. If, in it, Laurie is the only survivor, it’s because she’s the only one who isn’t distracted having sex and can tell there’s a killer on the loose. Likewise for Reijn, if the characters in death death death stopped for a moment and just looked around and not at the cell phone, the movie would end.
The film is also a satire on Gen Z, “cancel culture” and political correctness. Film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert once said that slashers they were not only “sleazy” and “exploitative” but specifically misogynistic. With few exceptions, the gender of the killer slasher it was ambiguous. Even when – in the style of the movies gialli that preceded them – the identity of the murderer in turn remained hidden until the final scene, it was clear that it was a man. And many of the first slashers They included a murderess, like –!spoiler alert!– Happy Birthday to Me, Sleepaway Camp or again Friday the 13th.
Movies like death death death either Sissy (2022) by Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes, thus offer something that might seem novel: women who kill. However, the truth is that, far from being “damsels in distress”, the protagonists of horror cinema have learned to defend themselves, subverting the tropes and reinventing the final girl for a new generation. During his recent visit to Mexico, Jamie Lee Curtis –who in Halloween, the final night performs for last? turn to Laurie Strode, final girl quintessential – made it very clear: “Women have been fighting since the beginning of time.” And he finished: “I think every woman in this room is a final girl.”
And it is that, in one way or another, the girls were always the ones to fear.
Anthony Camarillo Journalist and filmmaker, he has been a collaborator of Cine PREMIERE since 2002, host of Horroris Causa on UAM Radio 94.1 FM and member of the team of Mórbido: International Fantastic and Horror Film Festival. He currently teaches Narrative, Screenwriting and Film Genres at SAE Institute Mexico, as well as short film script workshops.