The Slasher Movie Superlatives

Watch enough slasher movies, and identifying all the familiar tropes starts to feel like second nature: the car failing to start, phones running out of juice (or there’s no service), sex becoming a death sentence, characters making the ill-fated decision to split up, a seemingly vanquished killer suddenly springing back to life. More than any other horror subgenre, slashers tend to adhere to a formula—so much so that there’s a whole franchise dedicated to satirizing them. But just because slashers check off certain boxes doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to admire about these films.

Like a network sitcom, there’s value in the self-imposed limitations of a slasher flick. In the hands of a great screenwriter or filmmaker, a slasher doesn’t just embrace established tropes: It takes old ingredients and creates something fresh and inventive with them. (See: Happy Death Day, which basically reimagined Groundhog Day with a masked killer.) And with last weekend’s release of MaXXXine, the third part of what may be the most unconventional horror trilogy of modern times, we at The Ringer want to celebrate the very best these movies have to offer. These are the Slasher Movie Superlatives.

Before we get started, let me channel my inner Randy and explain the (very loose) criteria. This isn’t just a greatest hits collection of the most iconic scenes in slashers—though some have made the cut. Instead, I want to spotlight anything that made a lasting impression in moments big or small: a creatively gruesome death, a killer who’s more than meets the eye, a minor character punching above their weight, behind-the-scenes brilliance that elevated what transpired on screen, and so on. As far as rules go, there isn’t anything strict in place; I just made a conscious effort to avoid paying too much attention to a single franchise. With that out of the way, let’s take a stab at handing out some superlatives.

Best Incorporation of a Victim’s Activity Into a Kill: In a Violent Nature

With slasher films spanning so many decades, it’s a tall order to show audiences something that’s never been done before. The novelty of In a Violent Nature is its narrative framing device: Rather than follow another group of doomed teenagers, writer-director Chris Nash imagines what one of these movies would look like from the perspective of the killer. The result: a ton of leisurely strolling in a lush forest that’s occasionally interrupted by some of the gnarliest shit you’ve ever seen. But there’s one kill in particular that already belongs in the pantheon: The One With the Yoga Girl.

Midway through In a Violent Nature, our silent killer starts picking off a group of camping teens. One soon-to-be victim, Aurora (Charlotte Creaghan), elects to do her morning yoga at the top of a picturesque cliffside. When the killer finds her, she’s caught between him and a steep drop, and before she can do anything, he jabs a rusty hook through her abdomen. Then, as a stunned Aurora turns to face her attacker, the killer [deep breath] removes the hook, plunges it into her head, and proceeds to pull the hook still attached to her skull through the gaping hole in her torso. It’s horrific, unforgettable, and, if you’re a true sicko, morbidly funny: a yoga practitioner literally twisted into a human pretzel. If we were handing out scores for slasher kills like it’s the NBA dunk contest, Aurora’s would earn a perfect 50.

Most Effective Anti-Sex PSA: Halloween (1978)

It’s a time-honored tradition: If a character has sex in a slasher, they’re courting death. But of all the movies in the canon, none has conveyed that message as convincingly as the original Halloween. From the opening scene of John Carpenter’s masterpiece, in which a young Michael Myers brutally stabs his topless older sister to death when her boyfriend leaves the house after some hanky-panky, Halloween draws a disturbing correlation between carnal desires and its killer’s bloodlust. (Spare a thought for poor Lynda, whose only crime was being horny at the worst possible time.) All told, this is more persuasive abstinence-only education than anything the Catholic Church could come up with.

Worst Depiction of Podcasting: Halloween (2018)

In the lead-up to David Gordon Green’s legacy sequel to Halloween—also confusingly titled Halloween—The Ringer launched a podcast series about the franchise’s enduring influence on pop culture. How fitting, then, that the new Halloween made podcasting a major part of its plot. The film begins with a pair of intrepid podcasters, Aaron Korey (Jefferson Hall) and Dana Haines (Rhian Rees), traveling to Haddonfield, Illinois, for a deep dive into Michael Myers’s infamous killing spree all those years ago. In theory, it’s an intriguing premise for a podcast; the problem lies in the execution. In short: Aaron and Dana are terrible podcasters.

For starters, one of their primary interview subjects—Myers—isn’t exactly a talkative fella; in fact, he’s never spoken once in his 40 years at a psych ward. (Nor did he ever speak during the original Halloween.) Aaron and Dana’s grand plan for a juicy Myers pull quote is to flaunt his old William Shatner mask and shout “SAY SOMETHING!” in the hopes of eliciting a reaction. And guess what? It doesn’t work. The duo are even more inept dealing with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), bribing her for a brief interview before asking if she’d be willing to sit in a room with Myers. Even if Laurie said yes—which she wouldn’t in a million years—this isn’t a visual medium: How does putting a traumatized woman and a nonverbal killer together make for good podcasting?! By the time Myers escapes and brutally murders Aaron and Dana in a gas station bathroom, he isn’t just enacting revenge: He’s doing journalistic damage control.

Most Compelling Meta Examination of Horror Directed by Wes Craven: New Nightmare

Scream is often regarded as the most iconic film from the late, great Wes Craven: a self-referential masterpiece that strikes a perfect balance between poking fun at slasher tropes and delivering some of the canon’s most shockingly brutal kills. (For my money, the Drew Barrymore sequence is the greatest opening in the history of horror movies.) But while Scream earned plenty of fanfare, it wasn’t the first time Craven interrogated the genre that put him on the map. In New Nightmare, the principal members of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise return to play fictionalized versions of themselves—Craven included—as New Line Cinema plans to milk every last drop of its valuable IP. “The fans, god bless ’em, they’re clamoring for more,” New Line’s real-life CEO Bob Shaye tells Elm Street’s original Final Girl, Heather Langenkamp. “I guess evil never dies, right?”

While Scream is the more polished slasher, New Nightmare’s meta-narrative tackles some heady ideas: What happens to a creator when he loses control of his creation, and what can we cling onto when fiction blurs into reality? I’m not sure everything about New Nightmare works, but it does deliver the single scariest iteration of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), who’s reimagined as an ancient, supernatural entity who uses the character’s likeness for its own means. Besides, any movie that ends with its protagonist reading the actual script is a winner in my book.

Weirdest Subversion of Slasher Rules: Friday the 13th Part 2

Friday the 13th is a classic slasher franchise in the sense that characters are always punished for drinking, smoking pot, and/or having sex. (Pamela and Jason Voorhees are puritans at heart.) But there’s one glaring exception to this rule in Friday the 13th Part 2: a character whose omission from the typical bloodshed was either a bizarre accident or a subversive stroke of genius. It’s time we had a Ted Talk.

Ted (Stu Charno) is one of the counselors hired to get Camp Crystal Lake up and running again. (Why the one campsite with a deadlier track record than modern-day Boeing needs to be revived defies understanding.) On the last night before their counselor training begins, some of the teens—Ted included—head into town to get shitfaced at a dive bar. (Back at camp, meanwhile, Jason begins his killing spree.) While the other characters eventually make their way home, the last we see of Ted is when he’s drunk out of his mind as the bar closes up, and he asks another patron if there’s somewhere else he can go to keep the party going. I’ve got a few theories as to what happened to Ted: Either Friday the 13th Part 2 ran out of time during production to film his return to camp, his death scene was curiously omitted during the editing process, or everyone involved in the making of the movie thought it would be funnier if crushing beers ended up saving a dude’s life. Whatever the case, the fact that I’m still thinking about Ted surviving Friday the 13th Part 2 after all these years means it worked like gangbusters.

Most Scientifically Inquisitive Kill: Jason X

You know a horror franchise has gone off the rails when it heads to outer space (see also: Leprechaun 4: In Space), but credit where it’s due: For all its faults, Jason X delivered the most creative kill in the series. After [sigh] scientists in the year 2455 find Jason’s frozen corpse and bring it aboard their ship, our guy wakes up and decides to make up for lost time. His first victim is Adrienne (Kristi Angus), who gets her head dunked in liquid nitrogen, after which Jason smashes her face like an ice cube. Love it or hate it, when Mythbusters goes about recreating the death, you know Jason X has captured the audience’s imagination. (FWIW, you can’t actually do this to someone’s skull.)

Scariest Mask: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Jason Voorhees is rocking a beat-up hockey mask, Michael Myers and Ghostface got their respective looks from a Halloween store, and Leatherface is out here wearing the skin of his victims. This is an easy call to make.

Most Stylish Underling: Butterball

There’s a worthy debate to be had over whether Hellraiser should be considered a slasher franchise, and the answer might be … sort of? The first two entries, which also happen to be the only good Hellraiser movies, probably don’t qualify, but the subsequent sequels largely reduce Pinhead and the rest of the Cenobites into slasher-esque villains killing people with abandon. Wherever you stand on the issue, I just wanted an excuse to bring up my favorite Cenobite. Take a look at this style icon:

Film Futures

This is Butterball, a Cenobite who rocks sunglasses despite the fact that his eyes are sewn shut. (His stomach is also held open by hooks, as one does in a kinky hell dimension.) According to actor Simon Bamford, Butterball originally had dialogue, but all of it was given to the Female Cenobite (Grace Kirby) on account of the dentures he had to wear. But Butterball doesn’t need to say anything to leave an impression: Equal parts goofy and nightmare-inducing, he’s the Cenobite permanently etched into my brain. And if Butterball taught us anything, it’s that you can still serve fierce looks in the underworld.

Best Killer Motivation: Scream 4

Compared to other slasher franchises, the Scream movies have maintained an impressive baseline level of quality by playfully questioning their own existence, and I’ll always go to bat for Scream 4 as the best sequel for one simple reason: It was ahead of its time. The big twist in Scream 4 is that one of the killers is Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts), the younger cousin of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). Essentially, Jill grew up envious of Sidney’s fame—nevermind that it was achieved through a lifetime of trauma—and orchestrates a bloodbath in which Jill is the lone survivor, thereby becoming a celebrity in her own right. To be clear, her plan is ridiculous, especially when she goes full Jackass to injure herself, but Scream 4 was eerily prescient when it comes to the toxic relationship between social media and fame.

The digitally savvy teens in Scream 4 understand the importance of internet virality: One character, Robbie Mercer (Erik Knudsen), spends the entire film live-streaming for a captive audience, right down to his death. Sidney’s publicist, meanwhile, doesn’t look at the new spate of killings as a tragic byproduct of her client’s book tour: All she sees is an opportunity to capitalize on the media fervor. (It’s also telling that the film cast Roberts and Rory Culkin as the killers, two young actors living in the shadow of famous relatives.) Influencers hadn’t quite entered the mainstream when Scream 4 was released in 2011, but 13 years later, Jill perfectly embodies the horrors of clout chasing.

Worst Hygiene: Scream

Sticking with the Scream franchise, the first film has some indelibly gruesome moments: Drew Barrymore being disemboweled and strung up from a tree; Rose McGowan’s head getting crushed by a garage door; Matthew Lillard’s electrocution via television set. But there’s one moment that lives in my head rent-free, and it’s from a character who nobody has any reason to remember. At Woodsboro High School, Sidney overhears two girls in the bathroom speculating that she made up the first Ghostface attack for attention. The comments are awful, but the most fucked-up part is when one of the girls comes out of a bathroom stall after flushing the toilet, applies lipstick, and sticks a finger in her mouth without ever washing her hands:

Don’t judge me, but I find this to be more horrifying than anything Ghostface has done in these movies.

Most Traumatizing Death Scene: House of Wax (2005)

I spend what one might consider an unhealthy amount of time thinking about horror movie deaths, and which ones I would hypothetically prefer to go through. (Present and future Ringer colleagues be warned: This is what happens to your brain after chatting with Austin Gayle.) Being repeatedly stabbed by Ghostface? Not ideal. Tormented by Freddy in your sleep? A literal nightmare. Getting a machete to the head by Jason? Hey, at least it’s over quick! Death by chainsaw? Again, I think the severe blood loss keeps the suffering to a minimum. But if there’s one fate I’d want to avoid at all costs, it’s what happens to poor Wade (Jared Padalecki) in Jaume Collet-Serra’s House of Wax remake.

After being apprehended by Vincent Sinclair (Brian Van Holt), Wade is injected with something that paralyzes him before all the hair is forcibly waxed off his face. Then, Vincent props Wade up to have his entire body sprayed with boiling hot wax. (If you’re thinking to yourself, maybe the paralysis means he doesn’t feel anything, Wade’s moaning in agony throughout the process.) Finally, our guy is positioned in the House of Wax, unable to move anything beyond his pupils, and by the time Wade is found by his pal, Dalton (Jon Abrahams), nothing can be done to save him. All Dalton accomplishes is peeling the skin off his friend’s face. I’m sure the Mythbusters team would assure me that nobody could survive long enough to be turned into a living wax figure. No matter: Wade’s death has, and will continue to be, the thing that keeps me up at night.

Most Creative Way to Make Extra Money On Set: Candyman (1992)

It’s wild to imagine a world in which Eddie Murphy was cast as Candyman, but as fate would have it, his salary demands and average height led to the movie going in another direction. It’s a good thing Candyman landed on Tony Todd: Standing at 6-foot-5 and armed with a deep, seductive voice, he’s the reason Candyman endures as a horror icon. (No shade to Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, but 2021’s Candyman could’ve used way more of the original flavor.) Todd’s commitment to the role extended to one of the film’s defining scenes, when Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) submits to Candyman before a bunch of bees emerge from his exposed ribcage and mouth.

As Todd later explained, the sequence really did require sticking bees in his mouth, and he was offered an extra $1,000 for every sting he suffered. In all, Todd was stung 23 times, leading to a $23,000 payday. “Everything that’s worth making has to involve some sort of pain,” Todd explained. If that’s true, it certainly doesn’t hurt to pad your checking account for the trouble.

Best Improvisational Scene: I Know What You Did Last Summer

A year after Scream arrived in theaters, screenwriter Kevin Williamson returned to the world of slashers with I Know What You Did Last Summer, which took the box office by storm while launching the careers of its young quartet: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Ryan Phillippe. But it’s not any of the stars, or the mysterious killer stalking our protagonists a year after they covered up a fatal car accident, that is I Know What You Did Last Summer’s greatest legacy. No, it’s when Hewitt’s character, fed up with the killer toying with them, stands in the middle of the street and shouts “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!” before doing a full 360-degree spin. Make no mistake, this is when slasher cinema peaked:

If this moment seemed, uh, a little out of place, it’s because it came from an unlikely source. As Hewitt told US Weekly in 2018, the scene was directed by a child (!) who won a contest to create a moment for the movie. Watching this scene is like experiencing a symphony briefly unraveling by someone in the orchestra doing free form jazz, but the fact that it’s still being meme’d underlines that its sheer goofiness has won people over. Whoever that kid was, they’ve got the best directorial origin story this side of The Fabelmans.

Most Likely to Be Hailed as a Cult Classic in 20 Years: Halloween Ends

Sure, David Gordon Green did such a terrible job with the first of three planned Exorcist movies that Universal cancelled the trilogy, and many would argue he failed to capitalize on the hype around 2018’s Halloween. (Halloween Kills was, and continues to be, a god-awful film.) But I have a sneaking suspicion that history will be kind to Green’s trilogy-ender, Halloween Ends. Unlike Green’s previous entries, Halloween Ends sidelines Michael Myers for the majority of its runtime, instead putting the spotlight on a new character, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a babysitter turned town pariah after a terrible accident one Halloween night.

In lieu of a traditional slasher, Halloween Ends is closer to the works of Stephen King, imagining Haddonfield as a town slowly rotting from the evil lurking within, not unlike Derry throughout the events of It. The community painting Corey as a monster, in turn, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as his encounter with a decrepit Myers in the town sewers—That’s So Pennywise—seems to transfer the Boogeyman’s evil onto him. If Halloween Ends stuck to its guns with Corey taking over as Myers 2.0, it would be up there with the very best of the franchise. Alas, Green capitulates to the fans with one final, tedious showdown between Myers and Laurie Strode. Still, despite a bumpy climax, Halloween Ends has a lot of interesting ideas on its mind, and takes the biggest swing in the franchise since Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which was similarly trashed upon release before being reclaimed as a cult classic. And while we’re at it, John Carpenter didn’t have to go this hard for the Halloween Ends theme, but it’s his best work since the original.

Let’s stick this blog in a time capsule and see whether the horror community embraces Halloween Ends in 20 years.

Most Shocking Killer Reveal: Psycho

When an all-timer like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho has been in the public consciousness for decades, it’s easy to forget that its most iconic moments were once revolutionary. Nowadays, practically everyone knows what happens to Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane at the Bates Motel, but if you’re lucky enough to watch Psycho without knowing much about it, the protagonist being stabbed to death while taking a shower is genuinely jaw-dropping stuff. The same goes for the climactic reveal that Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is the one doing the killing, inhabiting a terrifying alter ego that takes the form of his abusive mother. The corpse, the smile, the scream—no matter the era, this is as good as horror gets.

Psycho is frequently cited as one of cinema’s earliest slashers; 64 years since its release, few can hold a candle to its enduring greatness. And no one can match Norman’s freak.