Alrighty. This will take some time.
I fucking love horror. it is my favourite genre. and I love it so much that i literally cannot even begin to decide what my fav horror film is. Therefore I will be posting various horror subgenres with both my pics for best film and best overall franchise, and any other films I consider worth checking out.
Starting us off we have...
Slasher Films.
Best film: HALLOWEEN. While obviously dated and imitated a thousand billion times over the past 40 years, this film still holds up in my mind as the finest slasher film out there with one of the few genuinely terrifying slasher villains (rather than more "fun" villains like freddy or jason), an absolutely phenomenal soundtrack, perfect cinematography and a simple yet timeless story which makes it clear why this film is the one which truly started the slasher genre.
The sequels....are near universally shit. No2 is barely more than a DLC pack for the first movie. No3 is not even a halloween film. No 4-5-6 start mediocre and end in absolute shit with idiotic plot arcs and annoying characters and zero fucking scares. Halloween h20 is a slight improvement and retcons 4-5-6 to its credit but is still barely better than the likes of I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, and resurrection is probably the worst of them all.
Runner up: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. While HALLOWEEN was a better made movie and a better slasher movie, it only barely edged this film out for one simple reason. While it is less polished, less influential on how slasher films would develop, and a generally less well shot film, this proto-slasher movie's greatest strength is in just how fucking scary it is despite having nearly zero gore, and just how perfectly the audio and video combines to make the watcher feel as disorientated, confused, and terrified as the characters. This is one of VERY few films that still scares me when I rewatch it.
The sequels....dont ask. There is no good sequel.
Best Franchise: FRIDAY 13TH. While HALLOWEEN started and set the bar for slasher films that would never be matched by its imitators, FRIDAY 13TH and its sequels quickly became the most influential franchise in slasher history for one simple reason. They took the basics of HALLOWEEN, threw in a touch of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (both with Jason being a deformed freak, and in the first one with Pamela Vorhees aping Leatherface's brothers), and then mass-produced slasher films that while never matching individual films like HALLOWEEN, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET were still invariably better by a wide margin to the sequels to those films, which bring up its average as a franchise to overall pretty good while the aforementioned franchises started strong then divebombed into utter shite. There were a few duds in this franchise such as no.5 but even that was more enjoyable than 90% of the halloween/Nightmare sequels.
Runner up: SCREAM. While its meta take on horror might be dated as fuck, the fact remains that each film in the franchise is at the very least a solid slasher film (even three despite it being the least popular) which have enough scares to satisfy the average horror fan. Scream 1 is easily the best, after that they are all pretty much the same in terms of quality. None of them are exceptionally good slasher films in any way, but then none of them are particularly bad either. which is a heck of a lot better than almost every other slasher franchise. What keeps it from the no.1 spot is the fact that while better films, none of the scream films are really more enjoyable than FRIDAY 13th movies, and are nowhere near as influential. Again though it is was only barely edged out.
Films/Franchises still worth checking out:
- NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET due to the original spin on the slasher concept and robert englund's performance as freddy. The sequals should be skipped aside from no.3 (which was ok) and New Nightmare (which was fanfucking tastic as a more meta take on the franchise) as they devolve into unfunny schlock. That is apart from...
- FREDDY VS JASON but only if you have seen a good few Friday 13th movies and the better Nightmare on Elm Street films. Takes a longass time for good stuff to happen and every moment that does not have freddy or jason in is just painful but the fights between the two make it all worthwhile.
- PSYCHO is easily the best film connected to this subgenre but it just isnt a SLASHER film which is why i have denied it the top spot. regardless it is still an absolutely phenomenal movie which I would recommend to anyone and everyone.
(p.s. despite it often being counted as a slasher film I have not added hellraiser to this list, but it will be featured in the "Supernatural Horror" post)